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If there was one thing that defeats your efforts to market with data, it would be lack of resources. Marketing departments are notoriously under-staffed for the workload delegated by executives. It can become overwhelming to imagine doing tests when you're just trying to get communications out the door.

In the interest of helping you find more time and happiness in your work, I offer this excellent list of 26 "time hacks."

Please. Do some split testing with the extra time you find. Your visitors will thank you.

26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I'd Known at 20 from Etienne Garbugli @egarbugli

 @getelastic Linda Bustos sees what I see: that the state of mobile websites is like the state of desktop websites circa 1995. What will we look back at and laugh at in five years?

I think we'll laugh at the "hamburger" menu, what Linda calls the Adidas menu.

I also think we'll laugh at responsive designs for small screens, like phones. Small screens need a custom design.

The good news is that we have better tools for testing, and I expect Mobile 1.0 to have a short life relative to Web 1.0.

Linda's article is full of examples for you to not emulate. It will be seen as a harbinger of change in mobile.

Retargeting Emails - Do E-commerce customers like or loathe them? March 10th, 2011Leave a commentGo to comments By Charles Nicolls, SeeWhy At SeeWhy, when we first launched our remarketing service in 2009, Randy Stross wrote a piece about email remarketing in The New York Times suggesting that while remarketing might be a great idea for ecommerce websites, it's not a great idea for consumers. He likened emails following up on abandoned shopping carts to a salesman chasing you down the street if you didn't buy from his store. There are major differences, of course. We've long argued that remarketing emails, when done well, not only drive conversions but also build brand trust. They can deliver great service and provide customers with the confidence to return to buy-either online, by phone or in store. If Randy was right and customers universally resented the intrusion, then these emails wouldn't work. In aiming to answer the question more substantively, I turned to data, and specifically email marketing benchmarks. The key metrics to look at to determine whether customers like or loathe remarketing emails are: the recovery rate the open rate the clickthrough rate the unsubscribe rate Frankly, the evidence is overwhelming: Remarketing, when done well, is appreciated by customers. Here's the evidence: (1) The recovery rate The recovery rate is the percentage of visitors that abandon shopping carts, and remarketed visitors thatthen return and purchase following remarketing. At SeeWhy, we measure recovery rates across all our customers, and currently the average is 20 percent. So, one in five shopping cart abandoners come back and buy, having being remarketed. In some cases, the recovery rate is as high as 50 percent. Moreover, when remarketed customers buy, they spend on average 55 percent more than customers who didn't abandon their shopping carts. (2) The open rate The average email open rate for remarketing emails is currently 46 percent, m

Ironically, one of the best models for agility and persuasion is found offline, in the world of traditional retailing. Merchandisers at brick-and-mortar chains continually experiment with displays and layouts, offers and messaging, in order to find what works best at each store, then share their findings among stores.

Slideshare is great for delivering pithy advice that slowly coalesces into understanding. That's why I love slide decks like this one.

You may not be able to implement these tips tomorrow, but you will begin to think about at online marketing differently.

And that can make all the difference.

Take a look at content marketing through the eyes of several experts, including me.

If you enjoy studying the psychology of persuasion the way we do here at Conversion Sciences, you'll love this infographic from the folks at Help Scout.

This article on ebooks comes at an important time at Conversion Sciences as we put the final touches on a unique ebook of our own (preorder Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects).

Content is the way you charge and release the power stored in your marketing batteries (customer lists, email lists, social media networks).

And don't forget that ebooks now outsell print books.

We tracked the eyes of 22 people as they watched three kinds of video: Talking head video, webinar-style slide video and hand-drawn whiteboard-style video.

What we found out was that a human face is magnetic. Even when props were added, the viewers' gazes returned quickly to the face.

This article on how onscreen talent can hurt your product demo videos echoes our findings.

Yes, humans love human faces. We gaze at them and examine them. Unfortunately, this is a problem when we want someone to look at something else.

The Penn and Teller magic video in this article is worth the trip.

Imagine if you were given six months of identity protection by Target or Zappos or Neiman Marcus before they had an online security breach. Imagine if the identity protection was valid for any purchase you made. This is the promise of AllClearID. They are a client of ours and are at the forefront of revising the way we look at online security.

If you run an ecommerce site, this is a value proposition that will increase your conversion rates. We've done the tests.

So, should you use a carousel, those rotating hero images now found at the top of most B2B and B2C websites?

The answer is "carefully."

This clever little site illustrates the reasons rotating banners are so frustrating. The timing, the amount of text and the order all come into play.

We have been able to tune a rotating hero on an ecommerce site so that it outperformed a static image. But it took several test cycles and didn't work in every case.

Have a little chuckle at yourself and enjoy the content on this site -- if you can read fast.

 @conversionIQ has a list of ecommerce sites that seem to be doing things right. These are sites that follow best practices, and thus we would assume they are enjoying high conversion rates and strong revenue per visit.

Of course, if we were to make a list of 50 ways your site could improve its conversion rate and RPV, we'd be right on about 25 of them. That's why we always back our recommendations up with a series of A/B or split tests.

Nonetheless, it's always good to look at those online athletes that are at the top of their game.

Would you like a free strategy session with a Conversion Scientist?

Why does Airbnb test? What are their challenges?

This article does a great job of explaining the thinking behind testing at Airbnb. Homeaway and other competitors better be doing this kind of work, too.

For those of you who are testing, this article gives a great overview why you should test longer before calling a winner.

We've been having great success with video in a e-commerce setting here at Conversion Sciences. You may not need to commission "ten fully functional video studios" and full-time staff of 45 people as Zappos has. But clearly Zappos believes that video is increasing their sales enough to make such an investment.

What could online video do for your business?

The folks at CrazyEgg have a wonderful summary of the five website formulas found in my book. Read this and you can skip chapters 3 and 4.

The folks at CrazyEgg have a wonderful summary of the five website formulas found in my book. Brochure Site Consultative Site Publication Site Online Store Online Service Read this and you can skip chapters 3 and 4.

 @conversion_team-I'm speaking about "flipping" you message when writing copy that converts at #convcon West in San Francisco. Basically, "flipping" prevents "blending" your message, which makes it lose impact and relevance.

The catch is that you must understand something about the Web visitors that you're flipping your message toward.

The Conversion Team has a solution, and this article does a great job of helping you get an actionable understanding of how to write for your visitors in a persuasive and relevant way.

 @chiefmartec "out of 12,000 experiments that Google ran in 2009, only about 10% of them resulted in adopted changes." You are not Google. But you must realize that in every industry, an online leader is going to emerge, and it will be the company that adopts a testing culture.

Intuition is no longer your friend. Your intuition cannot comprehend the variety of ways our visitors are coming at us. Data and testing are your friends, or your online audience will continue to abandon you.

Get excited about testing and taking that leadership role in your marketplace.

My partner is fond of saying that the best judge of your marketing is your accountant. This is relatively easy to do online, to measure your marketing results all the way to revenue. Plus the learnings can be tried in other parts of the marketing portfolio.

Marketing is always trying to get a seat at the executive table. This report shows why CMOs continue to struggle.

"For every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them."

This statistic plus 51 more are presented to you by our friends at @unbounce.

While good UX (User eXperience) does not always translate into higher conversion rates or revenue per visit (RPV), these trends point to excellent hypotheses for what MIGHT increase the performance of your site.

Single Page Sites: Simplicity is often a great way to increase conversion rates Infinite scrolling: Consider this for category pages. I haven't tested this yet. Persistent top nav: I am very curious to see if this increases CR and RPV. Let me know if you've tested it. Web 2.0 Aesthetics: I hope this includes the rotating banners at the top of so many sites. Typography Returns: Your message is the most important part of your conversion optimization plan. Typography can help... or hurt

 @crestodina I spoke at the Conversion Conference #convcon this week about flipping your message according to your Web visitor. This can be applied to subject lines, search ads, display ads and landing pages.

One of the most powerful "flips" is between the four kind of visitors outlined by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg in their book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?.

Here is a creative twist on the four kinds of visitors you'll encounter on your website: video game characters.

Is the page, post or email you're working on right now targeting Frogger or Mario or Galaga or PacMan?

It should.