Future Now’s will be presenting our “Call to Action” workshops this October at two locations! This workshop is meant for those looking to learn how to improve their online conversation rates and is based on the bestselling book by Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg.

The first opportunity to see it is at the Direct Marketing Association’s Flagship Event, DMA08 Conference & exhibition – being held October 11 – 16 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas.

There is even a $150…

...continue to read "FutureNow presents “Call To Action” in October"

We hear the questions businesses ask: How do I increase my sales or leads? How do I get more traffic to my site? How do I get better search engine rankings? How do I get fewer customers to abandon their shopping carts? What do I do with all this data I’m getting from my analytics software?

These are important questions.

What makes people buy? When you focus on this question, all the subsequent details fall much more easily…

...continue to read "7 BIG Questions for Online Marketers"

Kick the habit of assuming who your customers are, what they should want and how should deliver it.

Remember this classic scene from the Odd Couple?

Felix Unger: [to woman on witness stand] Ah … you assumed. My dear, you should never assume. You see, when you assume… [Felix writes the word "assume" on a blackboard] … you make an ass out of u and me.

Want to know what really gets in the way of better conversion rates? All too often it…

...continue to read "Unspoken Assumptions"

Unspoken assumptions in Apple’s conversion process undermine the online purchase of a 30GB iPod.

Poor Melissa. A dastardly somebody broke into my dear co-worker’s car and stole her video iPod!! *passes out tissues* This is a woman who lives the fully-integrated iPod life Apple imagines for its customers – podcasts, audiobooks, movies, TV shows, music. She was devastated. And she knew, without question, she had to replace her iPod immediately.

So she started her search for a replacement iPod the way many…

...continue to read "Unspoken Assumptions in Action"

You wind up writing a lot of articles in six years! Yep … six info-packed years of Future Now, Inc., in GrokDotCom, ClickZ and other places! Of course, every one of these articles is special, but which are the specialest of the special? Which have truly, madly and deeply inspired our readers? You’ll find the answer in this issue.

This December, I’m featuring my Top Ten Countdown. These are the articles Future Now, Inc. has published, here and elsewhere, that have…

...continue to read "The Grok’s Top Ten Countdown"

Not everyone coming to your website is in the early phases of the buying process and starting from scratch. Some of your visitors come to you with their research completed. They know what they want. They’re looking for you to deliver quickly and easily.

How do you recognize these customers? The easiest way to identify them is through the keywords and phrases they use to find you in the search engines. Look for the “long-tail” terms … the under-represented but highly…

...continue to read "Are You Stranding Your Long-Tail Customers?"

Persuasion begins when you anticipate your customers’ needs. This is true for every buying and selling persuasion scenario you design into your website. Even Live Chat!

Live Chat doesn’t have to be a tack-on concession to customer service. It can be an integral part of your site’s persuasive process. The trick is understanding how to use the technique to advantage and exhaustively planning the Live Chat experience so it fits seamlessly into your bigger picture.

Here are some ideas to get you…

...continue to read "Make Your Live Chat Persuasive"

In the broadest sense, persuasion is about one entity (an organization of any stripe) trying to persuade another entity (usually an individual) to do something. Take action. Satisfy the conversion goal of the site.

I get a number of emails pleading, “Grok, would you lay off the retail examples and help us long-suffering [fill in non-retail type] businesses?” To which I always reply, “Retail is an easy way to demonstrate the principles, but those principles apply across the board.” My correspondents…

...continue to read "How Who Why What"

I’ve decided. When it comes to this online stuff, I want to rewrite The Golden Rule. You know, the one that says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I’m definitely not opposed to folks extending themselves for others … I just don’t think folks should always use themselves as the yardstick of doing unto.

So, in the world of online business, what’s a better way to look at The Golden Rule? How about, “Do unto others…

...continue to read "Doing Unto"

Personas help you understand why customers do what they do, so you can predict and persuade more effectively.

It was like Groundhog Day. I had the same conversation over and over and over again. I was at the Shop.org Summit in New York. It was a record breaking crowd, over 2200 attendees. I talked to a whole bunch of those online retailers and everyone was saying basically the same thing …

“I want to know what my customers are doing on my…

...continue to read "Would You Rather Know What Customers Do or Why They Do It?"