Don’t miss the 15 year old and still current Calvin & Hobbes on the financial crisis http://bit.ly/RqdH.

Don’t miss my interview with David Szetela on PPC Rockstars today. You’ll hear us discuss the top page and ad elements that every PPC advertiser should test.

What do you think – Is Twitter the Next Second Life? http://tinyurl.com/8nof7j. You may also want to read The State Of The Twittersphere? http://tinyurl.com/6upklq. GigaOm claims Followers Aren’t Really Friends on Twitter. This leads to some of the challenge of…

...continue to read "TheGrok’s Not-To-Miss Links for the Week 12/29/08"

Our friends over at FormArmor have asked us to take their survey on ‘The Hidden Cost of Web Form Abuse.’

Web Form Abuse is an important topic due to the following:

Form abuse continues to plague site operators and marketers, big and small Anti-spam measures, like CAPTCHAs, don’t seem to work very well CAPTCHAs don’t remotely follow web accessibility guidelines CAPTCHAs are insulting to your human site visitors, are sometimes really hard to “solve,” and very likely are hurting your conversion rates!

So go ahead and take…

...continue to read "Take ‘The Hidden Cost of Web Form Abuse’ Survey"

In case anyone has ever questioned our emphasis on the power of the Unique Value Proposition, we thought we’d publish this brief case study.

Unique Value Proposition (or Unique Campaign Proposition), is a brief, concise statement about what makes your website/business unique, and why customers should buy from you and not your competitors.  It’s been a central part of our Persuasion Architecture methodology from day one.

At our recommendation, our friends over at Accepted.com ran a UVP test on their website.  We…

...continue to read "Mini Case Study: Unique Value Proposition & a 33% Conversion Lift"

We write a lot about linking especially when it comes to persuading readers to take action.

There are a lot of objections to linking, especially linking off the website. The web & the HT in HTML is all about links.

I won’t go there today.

This blog post about New York Times columnist Frank Rich titled “Frank Rich: Why I Link” is worth reading.

Why has Rich embraced linking when his peers have not? “The theory was: Why not be as transparent as possible by…

...continue to read "Linking Matters"

My friend Brian was checking out Dropbox on a tip from John Jantsch and they were feeding a Twitter search live feed onto their landing page. It is good in theory. The theory being that you create a bandwagon effect but check out what was said on the first live feed on the left:

“CaptainCowPie: Wow Evernote allows files to be stored and synched across computers and my iPhone. This may replace my Dropbox completely.”

Ouch! Talk about hijacking the conversation. Reminds Brian and me…

...continue to read "Did Twitter Cost A Sale?"

No less of a copywriting authority than Gary Bencivenga has declared credibility as THE most important factor in effective copywriting.  Why else would he call “Yeah, sure” the two most powerful words in advertising?

Once you’ve gained the reader’s interest through relevance, buyer confidence is everything – without it the sale is lost.  That’s why methods of substantiating claims and establishing credibility are frequent topics of mine.

And it’s also why Tom Wanek’s blog is a must read.

No where else will you find such a…

...continue to read "A Blog Worth Following"

Hanging out at SES Chicago last week, I spent some time with Stewart Quealy, VP of content development for SES, who told me that he enjoyed my last column about the power of a great unique value proposition. He suggested that as more new faces begin to adopt conversion rate optimization, some may not be as familiar with the fundamentals as many of us are.

And of course, the end of the year is always a good time to talk the fundamentals.…

...continue to read "Calling You to Action"

There are only a few more shopping days left. If you have a web geek in your life and are still wondering what to get them, I’ve compiled a wish list by asking my fellow web geeks at FutureNow what they want:

The list of favorite things we would want as gifts:

1. iPod Touch

2. A day of Helli skiing or Cat skiing.

3. Old-school snowsuit so you can feel like you’re a kid again.

4. New snowboarding boots- Women’s size 7 please (not for me,…

...continue to read "Gifts For Web Geeks"

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly spoof of a little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their businesses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Your faithful Friend and Servant, The Grok December, 2000

(With all due respects and a wink to the spirit of C. Dickens)

The Grok was from Mars. There was no doubt whatever…

...continue to read "A Commerce Carol – Grok Nostalgia from December, 2000"

Get Elastic’s recent post on reducing friction kicks butt – providing incredibly clear explanations of too-common Website flaws along with great examples of how to do it right.  I wish I wrote it.  Not only did the article reduced me to green-faced envy, but many of the post’s links pointed to further “must reads.”

Do yourself a favor and go read it now.

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...continue to read "Instant Clarity on Common Website Problems"