Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

The key insight that I got from this @copyblogger post is that, regardless of our "resting" personality type, we are different when doing different activities. My Myers-Briggs type pegs me as generally an "Environmental" type. However, when I'm researching, I'm generally "Fantastical" (and I'm not just complimenting myself). When I'm writing I'm getting my "Structural" on. In short, we can't treat people as one personality type. We change from channel to channel. What are the four personality types when people are solving the problems your business solves?

Stock photography is the lazy designer's crutch. Ironic considering that most pages miss a most basic marketing truism: "Show the product." This post offers some great insight into proper use of images on your Web pages.

The lesson of this landing page case study is "Less is more to a point." This supports the lessons of my Backward Landing Pages post and column.

It might help to look at email as a social network. It is, only it is VERY large. My 91-year-old grandmother "friended" me years ago on email. We share video, pictures, posts … everything via email. So, if you have a social media strategy that ignores the biggest social network on the planet, is it a complete strategy? Not even close.

This post has a wealth of examples for optimizing your site. Scroll through to learn much, including an example from our .

Have you taken the free short course we offer there? You should.

I'm always wary of any list that claims to be "complete." This list comes pretty close, and includes one of my favorite selections from The Conversion Scientist Blog.

The list is novel in that you can select the categories of interest to you and the post will modify itself to serve you best.

I'll be intersted to find out if this novel feature increases conversion rates on the page.

What do you think?

You may believe us, but does your boss?

As you know we believe that dedicated landing pages are one of the most powerful ways to increase revenue and leads online. It would be best to have a special landing page for each offer you make in an ad, email or on your site.

But who has time to build all of those pages??

If you knew that more landing pages meant more money, you might be able to get your boss to give you more resources.

This post from Hubspot may have the data you need.

@theGrok writes: "We opened the first CRO agency in 1998. We no longer offer CRO services to clients. We still have a lot of friends in the industry. It's likely some of them will disagree with the way we approach it. That's OK! The goal of this post it help you hire a CRO agency that is a great fit."

Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg are the reason I'm in this business. I'm grateful, and many of our clients, current and past, are grateful. So, I can't think of a better source for guidance in this industry.

This is a very geeky look at what makes video go viral. Very geeky. That's why I love it. Dr. Brent Coker introduces us to the Branded Viral Movie Predictor (BVMP). Yes, it even has an acronym. If you've considered doing a video in the hopes that it might "go viral," read this first and be sure you have the appropriate doses of congruency, emotive strength, network involvement and paird meme synergy. Don't you love science?

This is a short little ditty from @ioninteractive that makes an important point about Landing Pages that is very easy to forget. Landing pages have a single-minded purpose or they are something else.

The question to ask on a landing page is, "Will WOW increase my conversions?" Some of these "WOW" features have proven to reduce conversion rates.  Rotating banners of any sort attract the eye away, and can pull readers out of the "meat" of the page where they are more likely to convert. Accordian menus and tabbed content may prevent scanners from quickly consuming the page. It's a bit of a Catch 22: they may not have the patience to click on each item until they've scanned the content... which is hidden. Social widgets can deliver social proof and increase conversion rates. However, social media chicklets that let the visitor go off to Facebook or Twitter work against the purpose of a landing page: to keep visitors on the page until they make a decision. Why send traffic that you've paid for off to Mark Zuckerberg? Lightbox popovers are universally derided if you ask people. However, they almost always increase conversion rates. 

Every audience is different, so test these WOW features with your own crowd.

Whether you're willing to admit it or not, you ARE trying to persuade visitors to take action on your site. Here is a nice "visual" summary of Cialdini's six principles to draw from.

Best Practices For UnsubscribingPosted March 5th, 2008 by Bill McCloskey <!--{PS..0}--> John Engler of Unsubcentral had some great comments based on my article last week and the problems I was having unsubscribing from a newsletter. I'm providing them verbatim with his permission…. Read the rest of this entry » v

B2B doesn't have to mean Boring to Business.

Proven in experiments by Dan Ariely in "Predictably Irrational"

We are all going to be publishers soon

Once you've blown your Web development budget on look and feel, you often find yourself short on the most important aspect: content; lead generating, social media supporting, expert making content. This is a great list of ways to generate and reuse content.

"Overall, a lenient return policy did indeed correlate with more returns. But, crucially, it was even more strongly correlated with an increase in purchases. In other words, retailers are generally getting a clear sales benefit from giving customers the assurance of a return."

Have you considered trying any of these. We would love to hear what you found.