If you were to walk through the offices of FutureNow, you would get a sense that while we were in college any one of us could have been cast in the movie Revenge of the Nerds. A few of us got made fun of for being socially-awkward “bookworms.”

While it may not make you popular with cool kids, fancy book reading does have its benefits. So I couldn’t help but laugh when I read about a new study published in the…

...continue to read "Harry Potter and the Secret of Conversion"

It does my heart good to see others say, thanks Carolyn Gardner in DM NEWS, what we’ve been saying for the better part of a decade. Online marketers need to focus on their sales funnels. It’s not enough to have read “Call To Action” or “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?” (so many did they became NY Times & Wall Street Journal lists’ bestselling books) you have to do something about it.

Carolyn Gardner writes:

“According to Shop.org’s State of Online Retailing…

...continue to read "Fixing Your Sales Funnel"

I’ve always been a fan of HackerSafe. I have seen a significant percentage of sites that used the ScanAlert Hackersafe logo increase conversions because of it. About a year ago, ScanAlert was acquired by McAfee, the company famous for their anti-virus and security solutions, smart move. This weekend, all of a sudden, the old familiar HackerSafe trust seal was replaced with the McAfee Secure seal. Dumb move, what gives?

Our buddy, Wayne at PelicanParts was just one retailer who was concerned with…

...continue to read "Mcafee Pulls a “New Coke”: Will it Hurt Retailer’s Conversions"

It was in the late ’90s when Jeffrey and I first met Jason. Business plans where stacked to the ceilings, valuations based on eyeballs were outrageous and everyone was staking their claim to an online gold mine on. Jason, a great guy despite being a reformed lawyer and accountant, was one of those entrepreneurs.

He was visiting the CEO of the Internet incubator we were advising about his portfolio companies in New York. The CEO introduced us and I showed Jason…

...continue to read "Free Whitepaper: “Marketing in a Recession” (Don’t Miss This)"

I used to run websites for a living.

I was responsible for the performance of those sites, and I was the de facto “web analytics guy” within my company.  But I wasn’t a full-time Web Analyst, and I had lots of other strategic and operational things to do.

Sound familiar?

When I did look at my web analytics, I often skimmed the information contained in my default “dashboard,” and rarely dove into the real data unless someone came to me with a specific…

...continue to read "Beyond the Dashboard: 5 Tips for Data Diving in Google Analytics"

After reading Danny’s, and Mel’s first impressions of the new search engine launched by former Googlers, Cuil, I did what anybody in the industry would do first: search for their name. I wouldn’t consider the result set the best choice, but the results were at least somewhat relevant.

However, my big concern came when I searched for broader terms like “conversion rate,” “web analytics,” “Search Engine Marketing” and then did searches for things like “airlines” and “marketing blogs.”

What was apparent in every one…

...continue to read "Cuil is Not Kewl with Brands Yet"

After my last post, I came across this error message and thought it exemplified all the qualities that a noticeable error message should exhibit.

1. It’s in a contrasting color (I know on our last conversation red was discussed and is used here, but if your site’s overall color-scheme is red it will not be effective at catching your customer’s attention).

2. It’s located in a place that the customer is already looking. By placing the error message where your customers last…

...continue to read "Noticeable Errors"

Today we (FutureNow, FUTR.OB),  issued a press release where we “sorta kinda” spilled the beans. We’re only accepting alpha clients right now and we’re not disclosing the name yet (hence, its code name: “Dr. Phil”) but we’re psyched. This is the best thing FutureNow has ever done. Check it out:

Customers will be buying subscriptions to a web-based expert software system  for continuous improvement of their online revenue goals. It solves the problem of how to prioritize and project manage online marketing…

...continue to read "Hot Tip! Super Secret “Dr. Phil” Software Release"

Here are the top 10 converting websites for June 2008*. These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by toolbar user to final conversion.

1. ProFlowers 28.40% 2. Office Depot 25.60% 3. FTD.com 24.30% 4. 1800flowers.com 20.30% 5. Lane Bryant Catalog 18.7% 6. QVC 17.50% 7. Eddie Bauer 16.8% 8. Roamans 16.1% 9. Vistaprint - 15.2% 10. eBay - 14.9%

*Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts

Just like last month the 3 major florists made the list; did dads get lots of flowers? I didn’t. However, I did get a nice…

...continue to read "Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate - June 2008"

I was recently looking for a new speaker stand for my iPod. It would never even occur to me to go into my local electronics store to see what was available and what might be right for me. I do what I always do when researching a new product. I go to Google. Once I do my research on the Internet and decide what I want - THEN I may go to a brick and mortar store to buy it.

Seems…

...continue to read "How Online Searches Affect Offline Sales"