As a swing dancer, I noticed that whenever someone new showed up at the Gotham Swing Club dances you could spot right away if she had a ballet background. Even though she might not know how to swing and made all sorts of mistakes, damn she’d make even the most common of mistakes look elegant. And it didn’t necessarily mean she picked up swing any quicker than anyone else; she simply looked good while moving through the novice ranks.

After talking with some pro ballet dancers, as well as several (actual) Rockettes, about how their job works, the one common element that I heard was that they spend several hours every day working on their basics. The same basics they learned on Day One when they were, like, 5 years old. They would never consider to not work on their Basic technique every day.

That’s why they look so good when they move. Their core technique is so embedded in their body that they cannot help but make it look great. Their good technique has become a habit. Their good technique doesn’t derive from what they are; it derives from what they do.

Do you to work on your core conversion techniques every day? It’s easy to forget and to fall back into bad habits, as I witnessed recently in a group of conversion professionals ! One member of the group had wanted the rest of us to vote for one or another nominee for some award (the details don’t matter). He didn’t get a great response rate so he used one of the most awful techniques possible: he created a shocking Subject line for his follow-up email, sure to get everyone who read it to open the email: “Microsoft buys Adobe for $24.6 billion” which of course is not only false but also has nothing to do with the nominee award balloting in question.   I knew right away that this is a fellow who doesn’t have his basics locked down far enough. He may be consciously competent in his regular works– he likely does fine  work when he thinks about doing fine work — but there’s no way he’s unconsciously competent, doing great work even when he isn’t trying. He’s not practicing every day.

You may be thinking, “What the heck is wrong with a subject line like that?” Well, to start, companies who use such a technique rarely increase their conversion rate. Oh, you most certainly can increase your Email Opened rate ‘cuz of the catchy subject line; it’s not hard to craft a Subject line that induces “opens”. But the moment people realize they’ve been bamboozled  — that the implicit promise of more info about the fictitious Microsoft-Adobe merger are not forth-coming — your chances of converting drop down to the pre-subject-line levels, or worse.  You haven’t spoken at all to what’s-in-it-for-me to induce incentive to convert to the *actual* call to action (in this case, “vote for a nominee”; in most Grok readers’ cases, “Buy My product”, “Fill Out My Form”, etc).

Or, you may be thinking, “Well, in a group of Pros, it’s ok to slip a bit on the Basics, cuz you all know them”. And that’s just the point. A Pro doesn’t ever “slip a bit” on the Basics because, just like Pro dancers, they cannot do so without intent. Their core technique is so deeply embedded that slipping becomes a matter of conditions beyond their control: and writing the subject line of an email is completely within one’s control . So if you find yourself “slipping a bit”, you should consider that maybe you haven’t been working on your technique regularly enough. Great technique is a habit, not a happenstance.

What have you worked on, today, that better clarifies why your customers ought to buy from you?

Or are you a lettuce picker? The sort of person that toils for long hours in the field and accomplishes a long day’s back-breaking labor of work that most white collar business execs would consider a less-than-optimal career.

That fact is, when it comes time to harvest, virtually the entire crop must be worked on at the same time. You don’t have time to cherry pick, and anyway the average business isn’t expert enough in how and what to optimize to know which portion of the crop should be cherry picked. Instead, when that crop is ripe, it’s time to get out there in the field and put in a 14-hour day getting it harvested.

Often when we speak wiith prospective clients new to OnTarget™, they have the impression that there is some magical formula that leads to higher improvement rates and that it can be achieved without any hard work or commitment. The reality, however, is that our most successful clients who enjoy on-going regular improvements of 40-80% in their conversion rates year after year are the ones who are implementing change on a regular basis. They’re lettuce pickers, and not so proud as to let hard work get in the way of increased revenue.

Are you a hard-working lettuce picker when it comes to your website? Are you guessing at what changes will improve your site? Or do you work diligently every week, every month, and every quarter to effect continuous improvement?

We pull into the most ordinary of Shell gas stations (international readers: you might better recognize this company as Royal Dutch Shell) and are greeted by a very happy personality, Billy, who pumps the gas at this full service station. He has an entire conversation with my mother — not just about the expected “what grade of fuel”  but about regular life issues such as weather, health, etc. Like two old friends who bump into each other in a cafe. Then he finally goes and pumps the gas. Then I watch Billy move on to the next car where he proceeds to have another friendly conversation with another customer who he clearly is well acquainted with. And on Billy moves to yet a third customer, just as our fuel gauge reaches Full. Billy’s station is always busy, it seems.

“Mom, how long have you been coming here?”

“Oh, since I got my first Subaru, in 2001.”

“Nine years you’ve been going to the same place. There’s plenty of other gas stations all over the place. And you don’t go anywhere else?”

“Why would I? He’s a polite young man and he always smiles. And it’s full service for only a penny more than the self-service stations. Plus, now I recognize the other customers, too.”

Can you imagine that? A sort of social-networking-meets-customer-retention at a gas station? As you might guess, this Happy Billy no doubt means a very happy Shell station owner, selling what is otherwise a most fungible of commodities wherein people will often drive miles to save a penny per gallon. Instead at this Shell station on Post Road in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, people go out of their way to pay more (in a recession) for one of Billy’s smiles.

Now, I’ll be honest. This wouldn’t work in New York City, where I live. People are in just too much of a rush. But in the correct environment where life is slower and individual customers are seen as individual people this is incredibly effective. I can only hope Billy gets a bonus based on revenues.

I wonder, how many online businesses are willing to think of their customers as fellow citizens of the same small town and to know them with the online equivalent of a Billy smile? When’s the last time you felt that sort of allegiance to your cable company, or the convenience store where you buy milk? And think of the long-term revenue it means for a company that achieves that sort of loyalty.

Does your sales and customer service staff treat your customers to a Billy Smile?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now I’ll be the first to admit: normally this sort of humor is right up my alley — I’m the one in the FutureNow office who sees “giggle-value” every time a new iPhone flatulence app comes along — but seeing this as an advertisement was funny the first time, and each time I re-watched I became less and less enthusiastic and more and more offended. What’s next? Shall we be subjected to Dunkin’ Donuts Butt Munchkins?

I’m guessing most people would be offended by this ad. But leave personal sense of what qualifies as funny aside for a moment, and consider: At the end of the day, the purpose of the ad is to sell more product. Perhaps in this case one might argue the real focus is on creating product awareness, so that at some point in the future I *might* try the product. Either way, I’m dubious as to whether the ad does anything more than make me aware of Hardee’s new product but lacking the inducement to act.

Did you watch the video? What’s the actual product name? As I wrote this post,  I had viewed the video 8 times, but actually cannot recall the product name since my mind wants to refer to it as “Hardee’s B-holes”. Now there’s an anti-inducer.

What do you think? Offensive, or just puerile humor (not that there’s anything wrong with that, fellow South Park fans!). And what does it say when the more times the audience is exposed to the marketing, the less likely the viewer is to choose the product, or even remember its name?

“Are you saying that we shouldn’t bother with creating multiple personas with granular details but rather focus on creating only a few (4 if we use the logical-emotional, quick-deliberate quadrant)? But if we add the stages of the buying cycle in there, we could end up with [too many] personas. This is still unclear to us.”

First off, thanks for reiterating these common issues. You probably won’t be surprised to hear us suggest what we’ve said on numerous occasions before: start with what you can handle. If you are unsure of how to proceed, that in itself tells you to shoot for the simpler solution by focusing on the *actual* goal, which is to improve conversion, sell more widgets, get more leads, etc. If you do nothing, you obviously will just continue to have the same results you already have. But if you over-reach for “perfection” to the point at which your eyes glaze over and you become catatonic then you’ll also have the same results you already have. So start small.  A subtle and deep Persona development that doesn’t get implemented correctly is hardly better than using the quadrant approach, and both approaches will definitely work on the important stuff that ought to be improved first.  In fact, if that wasn’t the case, then you’d have to worry, right? Navy blue is still blue, right? An Anjou pear is still a pear, right? And meerkats are still…oops, ditch that last.

And just to let you know: there’s no particular reason that smaller companies should find this harder than larger companies…just the opposite, in fact. We had a recent client, a *huge* technology company, who’s marketing pros convinced themselves they “got personas” and then wondered why their recently-developed PA personas were different than their expectations. So they missed the real point, which is not to reinforce a company’s self-centric approach, but instead to re-think their marketing to be customer-centric. Smaller companies tend to be more likely to implement change, often because fewer sacred cows need be put out to pasture before improvement can begin.

In short, go with the quadrant approach (or even one-dimensional, if need be!) and move on from there. Add in buying cycle, but don’t add a dimension just to keep the count “evened out” — add in distinct differences that result in a required change in persuasion, not a change in demographics. A Spontaneous persona, for example, will often breeze through her Early and Middle stage buying process faster than you can model for, so there’s nothing to be gained by inferring a difference that cannot be measured. Think of buying a candy bar — the buying process is fast for pretty much everyone, except outlier demographic specialties (a diabetic, a seed nuts allergy, a strict bodybuilder, etc). I often refer to this as “the demography seasons the modality.”

Now think of buying a house — surely the Spontaneous is going to go through a completely different process buying a home than buying a candy bar. There will be a Early buying process, and a Middle as well before the house is chosen, inspected the deed is signed and the lawyers paid. The nature of the underlying goal influences how the customer goes about achieving that goal, even when she has a pre-disposition to act in one preferred mode or another. Got it? I like to refer to this as, “The topology mediates the modality.” How much of your content strategy today answers the Methodical’s early stage buying needs?

“We also began questioning the practicality of designing at the page level for all of our personas. Some of us feel that it is possible to use personas for creating a scent trail at the individual page level if personas are very clearly defined but we also believe very large international sites would become extremely cluttered if multiple personas were used in the persuasion architecture of each page. Could you explain your
position on this?”

Another great question, probably because we hear this one a lot as a “freeze” point for larger companies. The answer is almost *never* to be creating multiple page versions, one variation for each persona. That’s not working for personas; that’s working for personalization in an aggregated populance. And if that worked, you’d've seen that emerge a decade ago as a solution that everyone would have jumped on. The reason it doesn’t work is that Persuasion Architecture(TM) Personas aren’t designed to be stereotypes of demographic groups; instead, they are representative models for the buying process and there’s a limited number of ways that the Human Operating System works. Each of us is a little mix of each of the modalities, and even that varies in time, place and context. The Personas are models; the Customers are not. So each of us, as individuals, exhibit varying relative balances of the PA Personas at each step in our own buying process.

So when you design for persuasive scenarios you’re optimizing how the various personas *could* move through the site *persuasively*. Not all possible paths; just those paths along which effective persuasion occurs (that distinction will drive your IT folks crazy. Sorry! ). And to answer the final part of your question, the question of internationalization is a good one, but again is answered by the persuasive process. If someone from Japan buys a camera the same way as someone from Poland, then your issue is one of language. If those processes are culturally different, then the persuasion is different, and has to be analyzed to really lead to optimization (and you’ll have to also determine for yourself, if, say, one quadrant type is different from one culture to another while another quadrant might remain the same), and then you layer the internationalization on top of that.  Usually, though,  when one mode changes due to culture, all modes change and the relative mix of modes changes as a whole.

Again, keep the goal in mind: more conversion, more sales, more leads. You’re looking to optimize your sales system by optimizing all parts of the process. You correctly comment that this can get complex and, in your words, “extremely cluttered”. The “clutter” claim often comes when a company attempts to graft persuasion architecture on top of information architecture — without having understood the persuasion first, an information system was designed and implemented un-prepared to persuade — of *course* it’s going to turn out complex and cluttered. Our experience has been that when you plan the persuasion first, you’ll actually be amazed at how un-cluttered your very talented information architect’s work will be since she’ll be working to a plan for persuasive paths.

I hope that helps! Let us know if you need any further clarification.

This post is intended to respond to the questions we were asked. If you want to know more about personas I’d recommend you read our books or if not download two documents: our Persuasion Architecture (PDF) & Getting Started with Building Persona (PDF) whitepapers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not only will the dog not go out the door, despite evidence it’s not there (she sticks her head thru, for goodness sake…sounds like logical, rational, tested evidence of no door, right?), but instead is cued to the behavior of the door handle. And it’s not immediately clear that she believes the evidence since she then waits outside for the door handle to be involved in re-entering the house. What she really needs is the repetition of the new activity several times before modifying her own behavior. So there’s a delay between the implementation of the change and its measured improvement.

What’s interesting is that you see this behavior in humans too. How many diet solutions focus on giving one a sense of “feeling full”, not because one needs to eat so much, but simply one has gotten used to eating a certain relative volume of food and therefore reinterprets a smaller volume as “I’m not done yet”. Or, your City fixes some streets and roads and months later drivers still need “Warning: New Traffic Pattern” signs to remind them that something different, even something improved,  has come along.

Of course over time, we all become used to the new way of doing things and that’s when the actual benefits of optimization will start to yield your company the long-tail, long-term results.

This is why we so often talk about a “cycle of improvement” and a “culture of testing”, because optimization gets its biggest bang from operating continuously. So the next time you make some improvements to your site, consider the idea that it’s completely normal for a dip in conversion to occur at that point in the persuasive process; use the time to plan your next round of improvements, so that when you come out of the dip you’re ready for the next cycle. Get realistic about your expectations and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Reason #1: The Easter Bunny hides his products.  I mean seriously, this is Bad Marketing Commandment Numero Uno, “Hinder Thy Customers From Finding Thy Products”. Now think about this: Senor Bunny has these colored eggs — (the plastic ones have candy inside, in case you grew up in a Easter-Bunny-Free-Zone) — and his merchandising goes to great lengths to hide these eggs from you. Not only is this bad marketing, it’s a stupid technique for the product itself: hide something you just finished painting in pastel colors?

Reason #2: The Easter Bunny provides a product that is unethical. The Evil Rabbit promotes addiction and ill health, by giving kids candy and eggs (hmm, so maybe The Bunny is a secret marketer for the World Dentistry Council and drug conglomerates peddling cholesterol-lowering meds?). Nevertheless, everyone knows candy rots your teeth, and Aubergine Dye #2 is carcinogenic. And when the kids are too old for candy, I bet Mr. Bunny stays “kewl” by slipping them a few smokes. Any marketer that preys on unsuspecting kids and teens ought to be fired on the spot.

Reason #3: The Easter Bunny’s market share is based on incompetence, of his competitors. I mean, let’s face it: the only nearby competitors in the calendar are a Ground Hog (too shy) and St.Patrick (too hungover). Even with a merger, they’d still just be a drunk guy in a green suit with a clover-eating pet rodent.  Not the sort of marketing image that sells. The Easter Bunny is only doing well because he showed up, and looks cute. Now, while it’s true that success is often achieved by those who simply show up, a recession is the best time to grab market share from complacent competitors. Just imagine the run Mr. Bunny would get for his money if you put him up against some real competition, like a Turkey serving Pumpkin Pie and Football, or the commerce god himself, The Fat Man in the Red Suit.

And that’s why this Sunday I shall enjoy not a traditional Ham but rather Easter Hassenpfeffer.

[If you're looking for two quick Easter-Bunny themed laughs, check out Doug Savage's cartoons at: http://www.savagechickens.com/2007/04/easter-egg-hunt.html and http://www.savagechickens.com/2008/03/easter.html .  The latter just cracked me up. The former I had think for a bit before I got the reference (hint: famous horror movie)]

[Extra thanks to whoever the author is of the funny cartoon at the top of the post.I don't recognize the signature, although the style looks familiar. So if you know who this is, please let me know!]

Is it Walmart-ish? Is it a Mom’n'Pop? And does it even matter, if they have what I’m looking for? That’s just an outright good point to keep in mind, even when tabs aren’t involved.

Of course, lack of physicality also manifests as the “great leveler” that allowed an Amazon.com to compete with Barnes and Noble and all the other bookstore chains. It’s also the driver as to why a singular fellow like Matt Drudge (from DrudgeReport.com) or Craig Newmark (from CraigsList.com) give the Associated Press and other news orgs at the Newspaper Association of America a hissy fit.

While there’s a few points I think I’d debate with David over a beer or coffee — such as, “Tabs Can Connect With Secondary Navigation”, to which I’d ask, “well, how did the visitor get to the point where they needed the Navigation after they got their bearings anyway? Doesn’t that imply a lack of (or broken) persuasive engagement with the content? And therefore tabs are operating more like a crutch for someone with a busted leg: a way to re-enable mobility when it’s broken, rather than a vehicle to increase velocity” — I think the conversation itself would be a lot of fun.

Check it out! It’s a 5 minute read and well-worth your coffee break time.

We’ve commented any number of times on GrokDotCom that rampant poor product imagery represents a consistent loss of sales for online businesses. Most retailers just end up using the low-quality, “ordinary” images provided by the product manufacturer. Rare is the retailer who invests the money to re-shoot product with an eye towards improved presentation on the web.

Certainly, replacing or augmenting poor product images with product videos can help sales. Is it better? Yes! Particularly if the video has greater quality than the manufacturer images it replaces. Is it enough? I doubt it. To get to the next level where the video has a substantial impact on sales, there must exist a certain persuasive quality to the video, and you don’t get that by simply running stills together at 30 frames per second — no one would claim the typical YouTube video to be on a par with the work of Hitchcock, Kubrick, or Fellini.

Now, no one is expecting retailers to win Hollywood awards for their product videos, but quality video production is waaaaaay more complex than quality still image production. It has to be scripted. Do you use a voice over? Is it a male voice, or a female voice? What about using a model — do we go with the hot one in a bathing suit or with Average Joe Everyman?  What’s the ideal length for this sort of product and audience? What will the calls to action be? Think about your typical product showcase on QVC or HSN and how much effort and time go into selling each product.

Technology like EyeView are springing up to measure video analytics (hmm, “vanalytics”, anyone? Too risque?) and even test it. But this, too, begs the question: are consumers even trained that they can click within video? (YouTube certainly seems to think they can be trained). So low early conversion rates may be ok, but give consumers a year or two and those clicks will be up significantly.

Where does this go next to get to this higher quality level? Videos can be used to show product in new, more revealing informative ways such as this sort of 3D imagery by Ortery, which revolves around a product, taking a series of stills, and then automatically creates Flash video of the product ready for upload. How about testimonials, perhaps by creating a product-specific “home shopping network” for one particular product? Imagine having Bazaarvoice integrating customer video testimonials directly into a longer, fuller product video.

What do you think?

P.S. If video and commerce interest you, then don’t forget to subscribe to my friend Xavier Casanova’s blog, VideoRetailer.org which covers the intersection of video and commerce.

Over New Year’s, I went on a dance cruise to Mexico — a group of dancers goes on a regular cruise ship and effectively “takes over” the dancing, especially late night — and everyone (including non-dancers) ends up having a great time. We’d planned this trip back in the summer, with my two wacky cabin-mates absolutely insisting that we upgrade to a Junior Suite something-or-other which had a lot more room and a balcony. This was August, “pre-Recession” for readers with short memories, and so splurging seemed like a good idea.

Despite FutureNow’s having a record quarter ending in September, by early November my more practical side was fretting we should’ve just gotten a regular inside cabin with the fake porthole. Or maybe even save some money by not going at all. I may well have chickened out but The Hummingbird and Dr. Evil (right) reminded me everything was already paid for and non-refundable so there was nothing to do but relax and enjoy it.

You know what? I had a blast. Wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

And not because of the balcony but rather despite the balcony. It was the people I was with that made the experience into a rocking-chair tale fifty years hence; in fact, a fake porthole might even have lent further spice to the story.

As I’ve thought about the trip the past week, this concept of remembering to live in the present came back to me again and again. How many of the hundreds of people who just stood and watched for hours from the railing wished they’d learned more from their Aunt Ethel’s b-day gift of 6 lessons at Arthur Murray’s so they might’ve joined in? What about the singular, nutty fellow who despite his lack of dance lessons joined in anyway and ended up trading an appetizer of “looking foolish” for a main entree portion of fun that is beyond price?

Are you too busy to take a dance lesson? Or walk your dog? Or take your Mom out for ice-cream? Or – let me segue this to my business theme — work on some project you’ve been putting off, say, increasing your conversion rate? or getting started in testing? or revamping your website?

Recently, I’ve been listening to some Alan Watt’s Zen-ish podcasts and he talks about one translation of the concept nirvana as being “to exhale”. Which is to say, literally and figuratively, action comes when we “breathe out”.

Are you holding your breath waiting for the Recession to end before you try something new? You’ll have suffocated long before then. Exhale, and start acting now to change your company’s situation.

Are you just waiting for your Dev Team to have enough free time before they get around to improving that shopping cart? They’ll never get to it, unless you stop thinking about it and start doing something about it.  Exhale, and start.

Not enough budget to start testing and optimizing? When have you ever had enough budget for everything? Stop worrying about it and exhale. Right Now is always the Right Time. It’s time for your Future, Now.

Of course, I’d get kicked soundly by my partners here at FutureNow if I didn’t mention our newest software, OnTarget. If you ever did want to get started in optimizing your online goals (increase sales, conversion, lead gen, etc), OnTarget “helps you exhale” by giving you as much actionable guidance as you can digest to get started. Learn more about OnTarget from our post last week to “Please Keep Our Message OnTarget“  or read more on our website.

[To be sure, we do have a much updated and improved video that we're about to release in a day or so, but the secret video gnomes here tell me it's not quite ready as this post goes live; nevertheless Right Now is still the Right Time to publish this overly long post ]

Come watch the Chairman of the Web Analytics Association talk with our own Bryan Eisenberg (himself Chairman Emeritus of the WAA) about proactively using Analytics Data to drive continuous Testing and generating actual dollars, a concept even more important this year than last.

Click the above image to watch.

By the way, we received a number of inquiries from folks who saw the video already asking, “what software is being used in the screenshots?” That’s our OnTarget™ software, and you can learn more about it in a separate post we did a few days ago: “Please Keep Our Message OnTarget“

What does February 1st have to do with testing, you might ask?

Well, people are great with signing up for a gym membership the day after New Year’s. But the only statistic that really counts is, “how many people are still at the gym when February starts?”

Recently one of our many new clients signed up with us, and, clients being clients, this one was gung-ho to get started. “Throw as much at me as you can!” was the challenge.

Now, I’ve heard that before. Usually it turns out that our definition of “throwing a lot” is way more than the client can handle and pretty soon “Uncle!” gets called. So we have a process for ratcheting down the volume to something the client feels is manageable.

This particular client enthusiastically jumped into making some improvements on some landing pages week one, but by weeks two and three other important issues — all legit — were holding the tech team from implementing planned changes.

The question here is how that priority list got put together. If the test you just postponed a month ends up lifting your conversion rate from 2% to 3% (a 50% increase by the way!) and your small company currently sells a million bucks of product a quarter, that one month push-back cost you $167,000 ($1,000,000/3*.50) in sales, which is the Opportunity Cost of having delayed that test.

Even at American developer prices, something like $125/hour for really good people in this economic environment, that’s equivalent to about 1300+ techie man-hours that money would have paid for. Are you sure you don’t have the resources to do both regular development and testing, too?

Put it another way, if your company were trying to raise investment money in this economic environment and your multiplier was a now-reduced 8x multiplier, you may have just walked away from an extra $16m in valuation ($167,000×12x8). Still want the techies setting the testing priority agenda?

Which leads to me to my point: “It’s hard work doing hard work!”

On the surface that may sound obvious, but somehow human nature makes this easy to forget. Or to under-estimate the amount of work between “thinking it up” versus “getting it done”. Or to hand off to an assistant. But the problem hasn’t gone away; you’ve just transferred it to someone else’s gym membership. And soon it will be February and either your jeans will be fitting looser or you’ll have a couple of completely legit-sounding reasons for being a Conversion Potato.

Back to our actual client: the trick seems to be how to effectively tickle clients into realizing the cost of not testing continuously and to constantly re-state that information in bottom-line financial terms that shows the impact of such testing. It doesn’t sound like much to push things off a week, or two weeks, or a month, up until you finally get there there and realize “oh my goodness, do you realize how much more money we’d have if we’d improved this back when we planned to?”

So … what is your testing plan for 2009?

Now can anyone tell what the heck the product is? (I happen to know, since I also remember a late night commercial that explains it.)*

Put yourself in the place of the site visitor who is seeing this for the first time. I mean, thanks for the Freebie and all, and congrats that PC Magazine seems to like it … but what is it?

A product? Perhaps magicJack is a flat tire fixer? Is it an apple-flavored  children’s breakfast cereal with a magic toy inside?

From the picture, I might guess maybe it plugs into a phone jack and does…well… something phone-ish?

Or maybe it’s a service by a local magician? The possibilities are endless.

What isn’t endless is a prospective customer’s attention span, even when a Freebie is involved.The best way to sell something is for the customer to have a recognized need for that something. If I don’t know what you’re selling, it’s unlikely I can recognize that need on my part. It strikes me that an awful amount of marketing dollars are being spent to get a prospect to act on the freebie offer for something which remains indistinct.

Here on the Grok we often talk about the three fundamental questions of Persuasion Architecture(R): “who are you talking to?”, “what action do you want them to take?”, and “what do they need to take that action?” Most of the time our posts touch on how easily companies flub #1 or #2. However, this is an example of a company flubbing #3: What I need to know to take action is “what the product is” !

In your own marketing efforts, do you ever forget what it is not to know about your wonderful company and its product or services? Are you forgetting to say the obvious?

===============

* For the curious, I’ll save you a google search and tell you that what MagicJack does is plug into your computer’s USB port, and then you plug your traditional landline phone into MagicJack and make phone calls through the internet. Easy enough to understand once you hear it. Now, look at the ad again and see if it makes more (or less) sense.

Hard:  Write another book.

Easy:  Tell people where they can get a free sample chapter.

Idiot:  Skip the Easy part.

With all the hoopla surrounding the release of our latest book, “Always Be Testing“, both Bryan and I forgot to let you know we’ve a sample chapter available online as a PDF.  Enjoy.

So busy was I trying not to drink the kool-aid, that I forgot to watch out for banana peels on the floor! Whooops!

Does your organization or company have a gag reflex when it comes to testing? Never mind the medicine to fix a problem, are they even prepared to acknowledge that the problem exists?

Ronny Kohavi from Microsoft’s Experimentation Platform had a short post the other day about Dr. Ignác Semmelweis (pronounced “Eeg-natz Shem-mel-vise”, those darn Hungarians!), a 19th century doctor, whose observations (and subsequent testing) of what only a generation later would be understood as cross-patient germ infection, reduced mortality 10-fold when applied. It also ran counter to established medical opinion and Semmelweis was subsequently run out of his hospital.

Today, an organization that does that is euphemistically said to have a Semmelweis Reflex, which Ronny quotes from Wikipedia as “a reflex-like rejection of new knowledge because it contradicts entrenched norms, beliefs, or paradigms”. A related adage for this same idea, one I’m sure you’ve all heard, is “don’t drink your own kool-aid” [Admittedly, even that phrase is three decades old now -- how many readers know the events that gave rise to that reference? And who even drinks kool-aid anymore in this Snapple-VentiChai-RedBull world?]

Now, the lesson is not that anyone with an opinion (and a bullhorn) should be considered a prophet and possibly tomorrow’s saint; no, there really are plenty of kooks in the world. The Semmelweis Reflex is not only reserved for groups who are, hmm, let us say, “ignorant of the facts”. Rather, the Semmelweis Reflex is just as prevalent and possibly more dangerous in a group that considers itself experts in its field — the ones who should know better than to reject new knowledge out of hand — just like those fine well-intentioned doctors at Semmelweis’ Vienna medical research institution.

Does your organization not give testing the weight it deserves because you “know” such-and-such is true? Is your conversion rate maxed out at 2% because “that’s the way it’s always been”? or “that’s what everyone else in my industry gets”? or “I really know what my customers want”? Perhaps you indeed do; if so, testing and re-confirming core assumptions is always healthy.

Ronny’s post (download the PDF he provides) is absolutely worth its quick read (and worth sharing with HiPPOs) and it just might start you thinking. And the next time time an expert — and (gulp!) even an expert at FutureNow — tells you that such and such is true, feel free to question it! Ask for evidence, or better yet — try a small experiment of your own to confirm that idea.

And make “because I say so…” a phrase best reserved for children’s bed-times.

Editors Note: John co-authored Always Be Testing with Bryan Eisenberg and is FutureNow’s Chief Scientist. John worked as an astrophysicist at NASA (on parts of the Hubble Telescope that work). So when John talks about the science of testing, we listen since when a mistake on a NASA multi-variate test occurs the impact can be a lot worse than that of an inefficient “Add-To-Cart” button.

Bryan will be presenting the session “Pay Per Conversation” together with Brett Crosby, Group Manager of Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer, on the 18th at 11:15am and immediately after, Bryan will be available to sign copies of his book being provided as a courtesy by Google.

Get there early since Google will only be giving away a few hundred books. If you can’t make it there you can always sign up for our next Always Be Testing webinar for your chance to win 1 of 3 signed copies (by both of us).

Want to know more about the book? Watch the interview below or read one of the online reviews:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click Z (Mike Grehan):
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3630480

100 Dollar SEO (Carlos Del Rio):
http://www.100dollarseo.com/always-be-testing-a-cookbook-for-web-optimizer/landing-page-optimization

DamnIWish (Andy Sernovitz):
http://www.damniwish.com/2008/08/use-reviews-to.html

Click here to view the embedded video.

Better yet, why don’t you buy a copy for yourself and send us your own review to link to.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bryan and I have co-authored a new book all about testing and helping you figure out what to test. It’s called Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Webiste Optimizer (published by Sysbex/Wiley) and we’re expecting it out next month; you can pre-order it now on Amazon.

In the discussion thread, a respondent worried that he may not be able to use GWO because his company’s website has a database-driven content management system. He described himself as a “perfectionist” and it didn’t settle well that content was somehow taken “out” of his site and hosted on Google. Further, one of his company’s consultants commented to him that GWO just “isn’t useful” for a complex database-driven site.

First off, we can tell you from experience* that his consultant is mistaken. (See explanation here.)

Secondly, everyone thinks their own site is complex. Everyone. (Just like everyone thinks their kid is cute enough to be a model for Gap Kids.) But ecommerce sites are pretty similar — and simple. It goes something like this:

• Get customer to site
• Display product to customer
• Help customer decide to buy
• Accept her money with a thank you
• Ship out the goods
• Repeat

Customers don’t care if what we have behind-the-scenes is simple or complex. All the customer cares about is how simple and enjoyable — or not — the experience is for them.

Now, back to the issue of perfectionism. This fear of taking an incremental step lest it turn out wrong, even if the step is toward improvement, seems to evoke fear, dread and a certain “deer in the headlights” mentality.

Ever hear the adage, “Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong”? It’s a great way to think about testing and improvement of any kind, because it deals with the fact that the first step toward improvement always “feels” the hardest. It speaks to the moment when you’re most susceptible to false objections like “It’s too complex!” or “That’s inefficient!”

Let’s get those first steps out of the way. Let’s embrace being wrong, because we will almost surely learn some way to improve. The fact that the improvement won’t be immediate or perfect just isn’t a viable reason not to try. Asking for it to be perfect first and always is a perfect recipe for “never”.

If your company does, say, $5m/yr online and you can raise the conversion rate from, say, 4% to 5% (a 20% lift) because of your testing with GWO — or any testing tool for that matter — you just added $1 million ($5m x 20%) to the bottom line. If I were a CEO and found that so-called perfection was costing me $1m/yr in lost revenues, plus employee salary, I’m pretty sure I could find less expensive, less perfect employees.

I wonder, just how many companies out there are paying millions of dollars a year for perfectionism? And how many imperfect employees, freed from this apotheosis, consistently deliver better results for their companies and their customers?

Could this be why three quarters of online retailers don’t test even though it’s free?

. .

*FutureNow is an Authorized Consultant for Google Website Optimizer.

PayPal recently announced a streamlining of its payment flow process that doesn’t require a PayPal account to use. In other words, you can “check out” via PayPal, reap the security benefits of the merchant store not knowing your financial details, and pay for your item without having created any long-term relationship with PayPal (although they wouldn’t mind).

Adding PayPal to an e-commerce site can sometimes result in lower conversions — which makes sense because you’re being taken away from the experience you were just having at the merchant site. On the upside, some mid-sized UK merchants using this new process are reporting an increase in their monthly total payment volume, with gains of over 9% on average.

But I’ve got a different request altogether.

I use PayPal. A lot. Probably at least $500 a month of online purchases of various things that, at the time, I’m convinced I really need. It always amazes me how confusing the PayPal part of the checkout process is. First I’m on the merchant site. Then I’m off it — but not so obviously that I notice right away. It’s just a white, empty-feeling page with the merchant logo and a familiar PayPal button. Then the interface changes again to make it obvious that it’s PayPal.

In order to return to the merchant site, I have to click a small-font text link that competes with PayPal-branded buttons for my attention. At this point, I’m still not sure if the purchase “took” — that confidence doesn’t come until I return to the merchant site.

Won’t some of those e-tailers enjoying that volume increase please, please, PLEASE put just a fraction of that revenue toward hiring a bright developer to create a way to do this undercover? Its seems this could be easily resolved with a bit of (*buzzword alert*) AJAX.

Enter your PayPal user name, maybe some kind of modal lightbox pop-up to asks for my password, it goes back behind the scenes to confirm this with PayPal, then seemlessly closes the pop-up and updates my status on the merchant site to say, “Purchase completed via PayPal. Thanks for your business!”

I like using PayPal. I just don’t want to notice it. Kinda like the electricity in my home; I just want it to be there when I plug in my laptop.

What do you think?

After so many months, it dawned on me: the containers for the green teas are overfilled. When you open the bottle, there’s more product in the container than it should be expected to hold — even to the point that if you opened it up while exerting pressure on the bottle (careful, Readers-who-Test!), you’d spill blue-ish tea on yourself. Sometimes I have to reach down and take a “slurp” off the top so it doesn’t spill — which no doubt causes the rest of the family to consider that “Q’s own personal bottle” of the stuff. An interesting way to establish territorality.

Back to point: I feel happy when I open this product because I feel I’ve gotten more than expected, and certainly more than any competitive product. Obviously that extra slurp’s-worth costs them some finite amount of money, but I’m wondering if the delight I feel at getting more is common enough across their customers that it’s driving more sales than the cost of the slurp. And if I feel good about a product, I buy it regularly, and therefore my slurps and the slurps of my fellow… Slurpers represent significant lifetime value to the company.

Does your company’s product or service delight customers more than they expect?

We chatted back and forth about the conversion issues involved with placing it there — and in fact, one of our Conversion Analysts, Peter, commented on this very topic in his latest post — but soon our conversation turned to something much more interesting than left-sided calls to action: the testing of left-sided calls to action.

“Do you think they tested it?” Bryan asked.

“Hmm, the Joker in me wants to say Yes, but I’m guessing the money bet is No,” I replied.

Now, that’s not because Crutchfield doesn’t test. In fact, I’ve no idea at all what sort of testing culture Crutchfield nurtures; I’m just saying that in our experience, only rarely does this sort of innovation ever come about from testing. Instead, it’s sadly de rigeur for it to arise from a designer wanting to try something “different”, or an IT staff that doesn’t perceive one shopping cart as different from another, or maybe Matilda the Intern just forget an HTML tag. Anyway, the point is to go with the simplest explanation — which, in 2008, is that most companies still don’t test.

“I think you’re right,” Bryan continued, “cuz if they did test it, it probably wouldn’t do well.”

“Maybe some Clown in IT or Marketing just wanted to be ‘kewl’.”

Here’s what we’re talking about, as shown on Crutchfield.com:

Intuitively, I hope you’ll agree with us that right-sided feels like a better than even-money bet (though that in itself is a reason to do a test) — but what’s the point of leveraging your intuition to be “directionally correct” unless you eventually try to back it up with some evidence that you’re actually correct?

That started me down the road thinking about how to actually test this hypothesis.

(I can be wordy, so if you’ve lost the trail of thought, the question is, “Which converts better? Right- orLeft-sided Add-To-Carts?” and the hypothesis would be, “Right-sided Add-To-Carts convert better than Left-sided Add-To-Carts.”)

Here’s where it gets interesting: The supposition is that most Web surfers are so used to right-sided Add-To-Carts (and right-sided Calls-to-action, generally) that a left-sided one is bound to produce some cognitive dissonance. It might not be consciously noticed — less so on “narrower” sites and more so on wider ones — but the placement on the left will “feel” odd.

With that in mind, just how do you go about running a test you already know has a skew to it? How would you really determine whether the Clowns or the Jokers win The Great Add-To-Cart Positioning Debate of Aught-Eight?

Here’s what I would do: First off, start with the most obvious test, because we have to get a quick benchmark of just how far Clown is from Joker. Throw some percentage of traffic at the left-sided Add-To-Cart — enough for some statistical significance — and see just how well Right does vis-á-vis Left. (The fascinating thing about intuition is that a fair percentage of the time it’s fabulously, gloriously, achingly, wrong — and if this is one of those times, better to find out early and move on to the next good idea.)

Assuming we’ve shown some evidence of the skew in favor of right-sided shopping carts — otherwise, why continue reading this post? — how do we go about removing the skew that comes about from people being “trained” that right-sided is “normal” to answer the real question: If folks weren’t biased by convention, which side converts better?

To do that, what you’d really want is to look among your customers who’ve already successfully converted using one particular side and to present them with similarly-sided add-to-carts in the future (hmm, might have to set a cookie!), so you can gauge what the conversion rate is for people who’ve shown at least some indication that they can successfully convert.** The idea here is that, all else being equal — something the pre-existing bias hurts — the true question should be, “Do people actually have a preference for sidedness at all”?

By picking only from those who’ve successfully converted previously, you’re making a first attempt to say, “Hey, at least these folks don’t seem to be impeded by a systemic bias”; therefore, those who buy consistently using left-sided calls to action might then be expected to convert at approximately the same rate as those who buy consistently using right-sided calls to action.

“And surely,” you might argue, “those who show a preference for left-sided add-to-carts should convert better when consistently presented with left-sided add-to-carts than Right-Siders who are suddenly presented with a left-sided add-to-cart.”

See, you’ve switched the tables.

Get it? In short, you try to come up with series of tests — a Testing Campaign, if you will — which attempt to disprove the way your original hypothesis was leaning (we figured Right would do better, so let’s design tests that indicate when Right does poorer), and let us challenge any underlying bias (i.e., that Add-To-Cartss typically appear on the Right) that gives unfair advantage.

Well, those are my thoughts on the subject. What I hope you got out of that is that a “culture of testing” means thinking as deeply about the design of experiments as it does their performance.

I’d love to hear more about you. Are you a “Clown” or a “Joker”? Or are you just “Stuck in the Middle”? Would your brand loyalty or the customer’s familiarity with your site’s User Interface simply override any preference you have for being a Clown or a Joker?

- – - – - – -

**A few readers will feel reassured to know that, in actuality, you’d still send at least a few visitors who preferred one Side to see an opposite-Side call-to-action once in a while just to keep things honest; enough to get insight from the data, but not enough to cost the company too much from the loss from the expected conversion differential. I figured I’d say that as a footnote before some Sharp Tack out there writes in to scold me.

[Author's Note: What's with all the Clown and Joker references, you ask? From the song "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel (c.1973), comes the lyric "Clowns to the Left of me/Jokers to the Right/Here I am/Stuck in the Middle with You." I was bound and determined to get that song into a post sometime this month, just to stop humming it in my head. There. Now it's your problem. ]

[Editor's Note: Want more profitable ideas on how to beat assumptions with better testing? Take a look at our free website testing resources, including John's A/B testing white paper.]

An Open Letter to Andrew Cosslett, CEO of InterContinental Hotels Group:

Dear Mr. Cosslett,

As a business traveler, my needs are simple and predictable: I just want some restful sleep, power outlets numbering more than one, and an internet connection that works. Now, in the last 90 days, I’ve spent more than a third of those nights in a hotel room, so I’m waaaayyyy too familiar with lumpy pillows, concave mattresses, and TV remotes where the previous guest felt entitled to liberate the “free” AA batteries inside.

On a recent trip out to the Googleplex in the San Francisco Bay area, I found myself searching about for a quality place to stay. The usual spots had no vacancies, so I chose one of your less commonly known properties, Staybridge Suites. (I happen to love staying at “suites” hotels; the visual separation of a living area from the sleeping area, and an actual kitchen, creates the feel of a condo that a human lives in rather than just a hotel room.)

I check in, no problems. It’s actually *half* the price of regular hotels in the area. I’m pleasantly greeted by staff and quickly finding my room. But once inside, I’m delighted to see this:

That’s right, a hand-written note from the general manager, Ms. Lisa DeLorean. Not a computer-written-in-handwriting-font note, but a real, live, ink-on-quality-stock note. I wasn’t even terribly concerned about the words themselves — the note’s pleasant enough — but this fine business manager took the time to write that note herself, and addressed to me personally, so I know it’s not just the boilerplate greetings that tells you the name of the cleaning staff.

It actually took me awhile to read the note, as most of the “wow” effect came from just receiving it! Of course, she thanks me for choosing her hotel, but she also thanks me for all the other visits I’ve made to the affiliated chain members (Crowne, InterContinental, etc., none of which I suspect factored into her bonus those past years), and then she finished with a bang [emphasis mine]: “We want you to be very satisfied with your stay.”

Not just satisfied, but very satisfied.

And I was. The place was indeed restful, power outlets everywhere and free internet. And, yes, fresh batteries in the remotes.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the stat that a dissatisfied customer tells, on average, 12 others about their bad experience. (Well, Lisa DeLorean, I just told 85,000+ GrokDotCom readers about you, your fine hotel, and the classy way you treat your customers. Keep up the good work!)

Mr. Cosslett, as CEO of Lisa’s parent company, if this handwriting of thank-you notes is corporate policy, congrats to you too! If Lisa did this on her own initiative, you just found your next regional manager. Cuz if you don’t, I’m sure another hotelier will snatch up talent like Lisa’s — and fast.

Sincerely,

John Quarto-vonTivadar, delighted customer

P.S. — At the end of my stay, I tracked down Lisa DeLorean in the manager’s area and thanked her for the note. Curiously, she was taken by surprise, and expressed that no one’s ever thanked her before for writing these notes and (get this!) she was beginning to doubt if they made a difference. Chin up, Lisa, they most certainly do.

If any readers would like to stay at Lisa’s facility, here’s the 411: Lisa DeLorean, general manager, (650) 588-0770 — Staybridge Suites, at the San Francisco Airport, 1350 Huntington Ave, San Bruno, California

[Oh, and by the way, I have no financial interest in InterContinental Hotels Group or its affiliates, nor do I know Andrew Cosslett, and I never met Lisa DeLorean until the events related in this story.]

Anyway, human nature being what it is, I perked right up; everyone likes to gawk at a car wreck.

I don’t want to say much specifically until you’ve had a chance to watch this yourself — am I’m helping to make it viral? — but give a look-see and let me know your reaction.

Don’t read any further until you watch this video:

OK, now you’ve seen it. This brought up a few points for me:

First, it felt a little longer than expected, didn’t you think? I figured once I saw the ad for the Quattro — a name I’m fond of for obvious reasons — we were near the end. But no, it continues for some time past that. And the ending gave me a bit of a surprise, as I had only a hint of a feeling we were dealing with a game.

Second, even at the end when the game nature became clear, I kept thinking Shick Quattro was probably just a commercial sponsor.

Third, I actually went through the bother of going to the main site for this beast, ffk-wilkinson.com. Other than commenting on how extraordinarily painful it was to wait for this site to load — close to 2 minutes on a broadband connection!? — it turns out the razor itself is one of the characters in the game. So, Quattro isn’t just a commercial sponsor of a game; it seems Shick actually produced the game as theater for showing off its product. Well, that “shortened my leash” on how much I’ll allow this game to shave minutes off my valuable free time.

Finally, let me defend my geek: The clip was entertaining. But if marketing were entertainment, every day would be the Super Bowl.

The funny thing is, although I’m curious to see the game in play, I’m not terribly excited about the prospects of playing it.

What about you? Are you interested in this product, or were you simply entertained by the video clip? Do you have a passion to fight for kisses?

One little-known but poorly-kept secret out there in vendorland is that many big companies — the same ones who come to us for retail advice — use eBay to dispose of returned, open-box, or otherwise retail-disabled inventory. Did you know that?

So it dawned on me: Here I am, an experienced buyer — who better to ask than me about what makes me bid, bid, bid? Want to SellItNow™ your way to increased eBay sales? Here are some guidelines so you’ll be able to sell like the pros (and by pros, I mean folks like these, not just eBay PowerSellers).

10 tips for persuasive eBay listings:

#1) A Sticky Headline — If you can’t write a strong headline, you might as well not bother. It’s your only hope for getting anyone to ever see what you’re selling. (Don’t forget to test your headlines.)

#2) Better Product Images — Having better-looking product images than other sellers will do wonders. In fact, 83 percent of eBay shoppers skip listings without images, while sites with galleries get 15% more activity and those with so-called super-size photos show a 24 percent spike in sales.The better photo wins every time. Consider this photo, for example. And remember that lighting control is essential, as well as these two other points about product photos on eBay:

• Place a product image by the headline. It’s the best way to grab attention to your headline. Remember, you’re trying to slow the bidder’s eye as she cans hundreds of similar listings. It costs virtually nothing to add a photo by the headline, you’ll get way more click-throughs, and it simply looks more professional. If you don’t have $0.35 for this critical feature, you’ll never get my attention. Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish!
• Show multiple views with close-ups. This article makes the point, so we won’t repeat ourselves. It’s especially important to show multiple views and close-ups while exaggerating product flaws (see tip #5).

#3) Outstanding, Original Copy — If you’re tempted to just cut-and-paste your way into persuasive sales copy, forget it. Your words matter. First of all, it’s obvious when sellers just use the same boilerplate copy from the manufacturer’s website, which may not even be good to begin with, that everyone else is using. Besides, using the manufacturer’s copy implies to me that the product is brand new and untouched.

Show some personality. Showing personality helps potential buyers to see you as real; it builds trust. Why did you buy this product in the first place? Why are you selling it? Have you sold any of these items before? Different people buy in different ways, so the words you choose, and how you choose to dispense them, are everything. Start with spontaneous, emotional copy at the beginning, then get more methodical toward the end when listing product details. The second half of this article offers good advice on how to write for different personality types.

#4) So, What’s the Catch? — Why do you have such a good deal? Oftentimes, the most persuasive thing you can do is to be completely transparent about your business model. Are you making tons of money by selling digital cameras in bulk? Did you buy too much for your brick and mortar store, and you’re selling the overstock? Is your wife making you sell the XBox before you get a Nintendo Wii, so you’ve set a low reserve just to move it (this happens). I want to know. Sorry, but saying “Lowest price on eBay, guaranteed!” means nothing.

#5) Exaggerate Flaws — This one may seem counterintuitive for the novice seller but it makes perfect sense and the best eBay sellers do it masterfully. If there’s a minor scratch on that DVD player you’re selling, zoom in on it enough in a separate photo to the point where it seems ridiculous that you’re apologizing for it in the first place. Overestimating flaws builds trust. Trust is what makes people bid.

#6) Accept PayPal – It’s been the eBay gold standard since 1998. If you don’t accept it, you’re not making things easy. I’m skeptical. In fact, offer as many payment options as possible. Get the cash (GTC)!

#7) Know How to Price — Hear about all those folks trying to sell iPhones on eBay for $1,000? How’s that working out? It’s not. In the world of eBay, your competitors are two clicks away, at most. Overestimate the market for your product, and you’ll never get that crucial first bid. Here’s how it’s done:

• Be aware of what it’s selling for elsewhere. Find out how much similar products are selling for and you’ll have a good idea of what you should expect to get for it. Then…
• Take the expected winning bid price and cut it in half. Shave off another 10% off, and you’ve got your reserve price. Think that’s crazy? Too low? Guess again. Studies have shown that bidding is what drives up the price. The more competition among bidders, the higher the winning bid. The only way to kick-start the bidding frenzy is by putting the floor well below the ceiling.
• If you’re willing to accept a price that’s around or below where it’s selling elsewhere on eBay, list that price as the “Buy It Now” and throw in “free” shipping. Now you’ve killed two birds with one stone. You’ve created a compelling offer and you’ve avoided the stigma of “shipping rape” (see #10). Free shipping is often the #1 driver when it comes to online promotions.

#8) Link to the Owner’s Manual — (Where applicable) link to the owner’s/user’s manual/instructions for your product. Feel free to borrow product details from here, just don’t use the manufacturer’s boring words Just don’t use this tip as a substitute for tip #3 above.

#9) Have a Star Rating Above 99% — If you have a star rating below 99%, that means you’ve upset too many people for me to feel comfortable buying. Sorry, but if you have a 100% rating and you’ve sold to less than 100 people, I’m still not confident; it’s not a true 100%. If you’ve sold to thousands of people and have a 98% rating, your “success rate” means nothing.

#10) No Shipping Extortion — Last, but not least, some eBay sellers lose their minds when it comes to shipping. Do you think we’re stupid? Um, no, it doesn’t cost $15 to ship from a one-pound package from Kansas to Brooklyn within 10 days. If it costs $5 to ship it from China, why must I pay $25 to ship it in “4-6 weeks” from California? And, by the way, I’m receiving the package, so I often how much you’ve paid the very moment I get it. Try this, and the only one you’ll fool is yourself.

eBay sellers: I’ve still got one last free corner of space in my apartment. Please help me fill it with stuff! The quicker it fills, the quicker I’ll clear it out by selling on eBay and then have all sorts of free space to fill up with new eBay purchases!

Do you have any tips to sell more effectively on ebay?

Update: Seth reminds us people are irrational.

“Well, almost. The Economist (via Computers.net) has pulled up the Hitwise stats to show that social networks are about to overtake sex sites in the US any day now. The metric being measured is percentage share of site visits, with % visits to sites like MySpace, Bebo and Facebook on the increase, and % visits to porn sites going down (no pun intended). “

The post offers more information and a nice chart, but it still left me wondering.