Lots of talk about redesigning websites lately. Maybe it’s because summer is ending, and the Holidays are right around the corner (for e-Tailers, that is)?

First, there was Jeff Sexton’s post about asking the right Persuasion Architecture questions before redesigning, which was inspired by a Seth Godin post. Then, Jakob Nielson had some good thoughts from the Usability camp about redesigns and how radical they should be.

Mr. Nielson’s thoughts resonated with me given that our OnTarget product is generally focused on incremental improvement of clients’…

...continue to read "Website Redesign Roundup"

A student at the University of British Columbia Web Analytics course reached out to us via Twitter to ask some questions about creating personas, specifically Persuasion Architecture® Personas and the information is important enough that we thought we’d share our response:

“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…

...continue to read "Dear Confused By Personas"

Long and short are linear terms (they refer to length, right?).  So they work fine to categorize or describe copy found in a sales letters or print advertisements.

But (most) websites aren’t linear because hyperlinks break linearity (aka subvert hierarchy).

People don’t read (most) Websites one full page at a time in a numbered order; they read/scan/move from one link that interests them to the next link that interests them, often entering or starting on something other than page #1 (what bad web…

...continue to read "How to Think About Long vs. Short Copy"

Throughout my career as a conversion analyst, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a large variety of clients in a variety of industries, and in very different circumstances. Some may be getting a large amount of traffic, but having a really difficult time converting their visitors due to a lack of branding or a lack of scent on their site. Others might be getting very low traffic, while some others might have a hard time converting early and middle…

...continue to read "Which of the Three Layers of “Fogg” Are You Stuck In?"

When you ask salespeople about their biggest gripe about marketing, they complain about not enough qualified leads. You can often tell that this is an issue just by looking at a company’s lead forms. What you’ll typically see is that the the forms ask for too much information and that can hinder conversions from visitor to lead.

Marketers are often measured by the number of leads they generate. Sales people are measured by sales. Marketers don’t want to be held accountable…

...continue to read "Increasing “Qualified” Leads From Your Website"

Well sports fans, here we go.  Black Friday.  Soon, Cyber Monday.  (Forgive me for the brief digression, but did you know neither Black Friday nor Cyber Monday typically deliver results, in the form of conversions, er, sales, mainly just delivering traffic   Unsurprisingly, retail numbers thus far have been bleak, to say the least.

Retailers are hopeful however, and doing everything they can to jumpstart the economy and try to turn a profit this holiday season.  …

...continue to read "Black Friday or Bleak Friday?"

As part of my Texas Tech series, I’ve been corresponding with West Texas entrepreneur and football fanatic (sorry for the redundancy), Tom Grimes, who has consistently offered outstanding commentary and feedback on the Texas Tech and Coach Leach phenomenon.

In fact, his last e-mail was so good and applied so well to most lead generation websites that I thought I’d share it with you directly:

“…Leach recruited the BIGGEST OFFENSIVE LINE in college football (bet it’s bigger than most pro teams as…

...continue to read "Texas Tech Tuesday – It Ain’t Just About the Website"

I knew I had to buy a copy as soon as I saw it on the magazine stand: the issue of Time Magazine with Presidential temperament as the front cover story.  They even had four presidential faces on the cover, which, before examining them, made me think of previous explanations of temperament using the Four Presidents on Mt Rushmore:

Dutiful George Washington for Sensing-Judging / Methodicals Philosophical Thomas Jefferson for iNtuitive-Thinking / Competitives Rambunctious Teddy Roosevelt for Sensing-Perceiving / Spontaneous…

...continue to read "Presidential Candidates, Temperament & Website Copy?"

Guess what becomes more important? Yup, conversion.

As online marketers are forced to reign in their spending (along with just about everyone else today), many may be tempted to cut their optimization budgets. After all, optimizing a website is w_o_r_k. It’s far easier to simply buy more traffic, when you need to generate greater profits.

That strategy even works too, on a short enough time horizon, although admittedly more so in bull markets than bear ones. But in recessionary times (or those…

...continue to read "When Consumer Confidence is Low…"

Yesterday Susan Greene wrote this comment to my previous post:

Great video, great message.  Now imagine that the guy in the suit worked for a corporation, and his boss asked him to come up with the words for the beggar’s sign. 
 His sentence would have been made into a paragraph by Corporate, watered down by Legal, and politically corrected by Human Resources.  I’m thinking it would be a completely different message by then. 
 Uh…

...continue to read "Do you share Susan’s Cynicism?"