Long time readers of this space will recall our friend Tamara Adlin, contributing to both GrokDotCom and Call to Action her stance that an organization should never be caught with their corporate underpants showing.  I couldn’t help but think of her while I started my morning, and my afternoon too, at FedexKinkos.  FedexKinkos has a wonderful service known "simply" as "File, Print, FedexKinkos".  I’m putting the final stamp of approval on a Conversion Assessment, and in one click, it’s off to the…

...continue to read "More Corporate Underpants"

(what’s this?)

Every year my friend Sarah has her birthday around the holidays. Sometimes I get her a birthday present and sometimes a holiday present. This year I’ve decided I would get her something for her birthday . 1800flowers.com sounded like it would be a good place to find a present. I didn’t see what I was looking for on the homepage, so I decided to type “birthday” into the search engine. See the screenshot below for my results.

The search result…

...continue to read "Finding a Gift That Makes Sense"

(what’s this?)

Realizing that I might have to break the bank and get a special present for someone, I decide to go to Tiffany.com. I’ve got the cash saved up and I’m ready to explore the site.

With limited knowledge about their products, I go to the right navigation and select Tiffany Holiday Gifts. Moving down the flash navigation, I chose “Gifts for Her”. This is exactly what I am looking for and I’m excited that I can easily find what I…

...continue to read "Magnificent Gifts Are Challenging To Find"

(what’s this?)

This year I need to find a good present for my nephew. Since I’m not a good enough uncle to buy him a car, it is time to shop for some toys. As a kid I always remembered going to KB Toy Stores and I find their website Kbtoys.com. He is seventeen, but I figure there should be some good posters there.

The homepage’s left navigation categorizes gifts by age groups. This makes it easy to sort through all the…

...continue to read "It’s Not Always Fun and Games Shopping Online"

Can you create a great ad? Seth Godin has announced a high profile competition that could feature your talent on the homepage of MSN.com. We’re bovinely inclined to help Seth; we like him, we like the book (The Big Moo: Stop Trying To Be Perfect And Start Being Remarkable) and we especially like that it’s all for charity.

If you have the talent, here is your chance to shine. If not, don’t worry about it, you might still enjoy the book.

…

...continue to read "Remarkably Talented Cows Displayed on MSN Homepage"

(what’s this?)

Moseying over to Buy.com to get my brother a present, I find the Family Guy Season 3 DVD on sale. Anything animated will keep him amused, he is 20. I think they have good prices and I’ve seen postings about them before on deal websites. After 5 clicks I finally get the item into my cart and hold on to your seats because checkout here we go.

I literally have my credit card on my lap ready to type in the…

...continue to read "A Quick and Easy Way to Lose Holiday Revenue"

The latest Wordtracker top 300 surge report confirms the holiday season has more than officially begun.  Searches for Christmas are in the top 10, Christmas gifts into the top 50, even Christmas wallpaper making an appearance at 170 (just ahead of Brooke Burke, sadly).  It’s crunch time for all those b2c retailers out there. 

For many of our Conversion Analysts, these next few weeks offer an opportunity to check out the bigger picture.  They’ve relentlessly pushed to get all their website…

...continue to read "It’s begining to look a lot like Christmas"

Dig below the surface of gender findings if you really want to woo women online

Do men and women behave differently on the Internet?”Yes,” say several reports released this year.

In August, Forrester Research published the report, “Men Are From CNET, Women Are From iVillage – Gender Roles Persist Even As The Technology Adoption Gap Closes.”

Here are some key findings from the report:

Finding 1: Men Value Technology More Than Women Finding 2: Men Are More Active Online Finding 3: Men Outdo Women…

...continue to read "Men are from CNet, Women are from iVillage"

How to begin evaluating your Web site’s conversion system

Today I am interviewing Joshua Hay, one of our Conversion Analysts, about the value of an outside perspective when it comes to evaluating your Web site. He’s a member of our team who performs Real World Sales Analyses, assessments that evaluate a Web site’s conversion system.Here’s your chance to get inside the mind of someone who spends most of his day analyzing site after site, evaluating the inner workings and identifying both…

...continue to read "An Outsider’s Perspective on Your Web Site"