Bennet Haselton, a frequent Slashdot contributor, shares his ideas behind preventing the gaming of Digg and services like it.

Have you ever seen people put a link in their profile to their HotOrNot picture, saying “Go here and vote me a 10!!”? Similar to the people who send links to their friends and say, “I just posted this, please Digg this for me!” The difference is that on HotOrNot, it doesn’t work. On HotOrNot, you can cast votes for a picture…

...continue to read "Can You Stop People From Cheating Digg?"

...continue to read "Is Traffic Holding Back Your Business?"

…yes and no, some conflicting studies say. In this now famous eye-tracking study, researchers found men and women focused on slightly different, er, body parts.

But now antother study has come out, saying men and women both look at faces and, um, other body parts.

So what’s really going on? I think the second study points out two interesting things:

Women’s focus changed depending on their hormone level Women spent more time than men focusing on couples that were “intertwined”, if you know…

...continue to read "Do Men and Women Process Images Differently?"

In a bold move, CBS Sportsline cleans up their email lists by unsubscribing their readers. We also unsubscribed readers recently, and our list is healthier.

This is what their email said:

Dear CBS SportsLine.com Member, We would like to confirm that you still wish to receive THIS WEEK ON CBS SPORTSLINE.COM. This email newsletter is delivered to your inbox every week – bringing you updates and previews on the week’s expert analysis, video, Fantasy Sports advice and the hottest sports topics from CBS SportsLine.com writers.…

...continue to read "Could You Delete Your Email List to Improve Engagement?"

Would you date this person? Most of us wouldn’t.

But the person that would is sure to respond passionately to such a bold headline. According to Fast Company, if you want people to love you, you’d better figure out who’s gonna hate you…

We examined more than 1,000 Match.com ads–from men and women, old and young. Our search yielded headlines like this one: “Hey.” Folks, if your opening line is “Hey,” you better be hot.

Another said “Looking for love.” Well, duh, you’re on…

...continue to read "Athletic Math Nerd Seeks Someone To Hum Seinfeld Intro Music With"

Recently, Google announced the open beta for Google Website Optimizer, a free testing tool available to any AdWords marketer. I had the opportunity to discuss it with Tom Leung, business product manager for Google. Check out part one here.

Bryan Eisenberg: Now that people have a free tool, one of the questions they have is, “What resources will I need to actually implement tests?”

Tom Leung: Let me put it this way: if you have the ability to change an image on a particular page…

...continue to read "Transcript: Google Website Optimizer Interview with Tom Leung, Part 2"

Don’t you just love tracing back the connections to everything? Jeffrey and Bryan were driving from Dallas to Austin this morning to get in town for their Call to Action Seminar and saw a bunch of taxidermy billboards. Meanwhile, I was flying in to Austin from my hometown which is headquarters to Cabela’s, world-famous for the taxidermy displays in their retail stores. (I’ve actually heard people call it the “dead zoo” but you can’t get away with that where I live.)

Fast…

...continue to read "Subliminal Advertising? It’s a Subliminal World!"

Driving by Sonic on a main road in Houston at 11pm one night, I saw a large billboard advertising an Oreo fudge milkshake. The message quickly hit my stomach and my instant craving made me pull off to check out the goods. I looked around for a drive-through and didn’t see one. Instead, I noticed that each individual parking spot had an ordering menu so I pulled into a spot.

There was a big red button with copy that said ‘press when…

...continue to read "Conversion Stumbling Blocks in the Real World"

This quote from an AdWeek article at Yahoo News got my attention when it stated that:

…online marketers are largely unaware of their customers’ preferences.

The article then rehashes the common knowledge that online marketing spend is up, while average conversion rates are steadily sinking. It also cites a few research studies that speculate as to the reasons why conversion rates currently suck.

Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the “U.S. Retail E-Commerce Update,” said the disconnect between spending and results can…

...continue to read "Do You Know HOW to Convert Visitors to Sales?"

...continue to read "Lights On, Lights Off"