When shopping online, some people know exactly what they’re looking for. Some people know approximately what they’re looking for. Some people aren’t really sure.

Are your category pages serving customers in all three stages of the buying process? Are you providing copy that helps people in their search and provides persuasive momentum?

Let’s take a look at category pages. This is from a perspective of marketing to women, but these rules in this post can easily apply to all your customers.

...continue to read "Category Pages Ease Shopping Frustration"

I can’t remember the last time I was in the mood to get frustrated. It’s why I rarely buy online.

I just don’t have the emotional fortitude to endure online shopping carts and checkout processes. By the end of a buying session, I’m always left with ground-down teeth and a dozen less hairs (as you can tell by my photo below, I have very little to spare).

I’m not alone. PC World curmudgeon John Dvorak shares my pain. All his peeves are…

...continue to read "Online Shopping Frustrates Me"

...continue to read "How Does Google’s New ‘Street View’ Get Illegal Pics?"

It all started when I was doing research on women and images. I read lots and lots of women’s magazines.

I lost my will to live.

Seriously, I just didn’t get it. The models looked bored at best, in pain at worst. Fashion ads were the biggest offenders. Fashion photographers call these women beautiful models. I call them raccoons with a heroin addiction.

But I persevered. I find the study fascinating. So I went to view the Clio awards in print to see…

...continue to read "Images That Appeal to Women?"

Kevin Hillstrom’s post “Give Me Someone To Believe In” provides an interesting analysis of some of the recent news on Dell, Best Buy & Circuit City.

I especially liked this part:

Each week, the punditocracy tells us who we should emulate, and why. All too often, their logic is flawed. We shouldn’t copy Dell and their direct-to-consumer model. We shouldn’t copy Circuit City and their “Buy Online, Pickup In Stores” program. We shouldn’t copy Best Buy and their “Customer Centric” approach.

Could it…

...continue to read "Monkey See, Monkey Do Marketing"

...continue to read "Web Analysis With A Single Report"

Our friend, and fellow Wizard Academy faculty member, Mark L. Fox put together a video about “The One-Page Proposal: How to Get Your Business Pitch onto One Persuasive Page” by Patrick G. Riley.

Click through for a brief video overview of a One-Page Proposal. The one-page proposal is a communication tool that can get an idea moving forward, cut through the clutter, and get to a decision–quickly.

Isn’t communicating effectively always harder than it seems?

...continue to read "Foxy One-Page Proposals"

Over the years, we’ve watched the term “persona” achieve buzzword status. Monkey see, monkey do: some companies actually created personas. For all the hype, though, there are too many personas collecting dust in the “been there, done that” file.

Despite the buzz, personas are poorly understood. Not all personas have the same purpose. They can be used to develop user interfaces, plan marketing, model buyers, and so forth. But all bring abstract data to life to increase empathy. It’s much harder…

...continue to read "When Personas Fail"

Please let me know the last time you got to an e-commerce website, found something you were really interested in, looked at the “add to cart” button and said to yourself, “Oh, that button is hunter green. If it was chartreuse, I would definitely click it.”

GetElastic performed an analysis of the top 111 retail websites. They found that 15% of them use red as their button color. What should we learn from this? Nothing! Red is a color that stands out, unless…

...continue to read "Push Your Customers’ Buttons"

Many have said that they were surprised FeedBurner wasn’t acquired before. But it looks like it just happened. TechCrunch reports Google acquired Feedburner for $100 million dollars. This will give Google additional insights into web measurement and activity (a great add-on to Google Analytics) and an additional way to help publishers monetize feeds through RSS feeds [define].

We’ll keep you informed as more details are released.

...continue to read "Google Acquires FeedBurner"