Given that my chosen profession is a Persuasion Analyst, you would expect that I’m a bit of a data-geek, and that staring at web analytics screens and Excel spreadsheets is my idea of fun.  Guilty as charged.

Ultimately, seeing our clients get positive results is what gets me out of bed in the morning.  Once in a while, I get to see a conversion rate trend line that takes a sudden turn for the better, and heads up towards the…

...continue to read "Un-sexy Trend Lines Turn This Analyst On"

…With any one person that you think could help your business, who would it be? Why? What would you discuss? What would you hope would come out of that meeting?

I can think of many people who I would enjoy spending the day with, but the person I would choose may be a bit obscure for most people. I would like to spend the day with Scott Cook. For those of you who don’t know who he is, Cook is the…

...continue to read "If You Could Spend the Day…"

How would you like to get business advice from Seth Godin? I did. But then again so did you. Let me explain:

On Independence Day, July 4th, 2008, Seth Godin wrote a post titled “Two Simple Web Businesses” where he declared the world’s need for “fixed-price web podiatrists.”

Podiatrist? Hmmm…OK, well I don’t have a foot fetish, but I do have a fetish for helping businesses make more money from their website by improving their conversion rate.

Seth explained:

“So, a pretty…

...continue to read "Seth Godin’s Two Simple Web Businesses Rolled Into One"

As a self-professed tool junkie, I’m a sucker for shiny new tools. I love tools of any kind — Web tools, software tools, and on a Sunday morning you might even find me in the Brooklyn Home Depot wiping the drool from my mug as admire this fine kosher beef grilling tool.

No doubt, these are exciting times if you love Web tools. For the many folks who are dizzy trying to sort out conversion optimization tool choices, it might be…

...continue to read "How to Use Any Tool to Optimize Better"

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…

...continue to read "PayPal Should Go Undercover"

It is amazing, the length advertisers and marketers may be willing to go just to put ads in our faces.

InformationWeek chronicles a software patent filed by Big Brother, er, I mean Microsoft….

Overall, the software is like adware that figures out what ads to display based on files on the hard drive and what’s being displayed on the screen at a given moment. The advertising software, which could be part of the operating system, a standalone app, or an application feature, would…

...continue to read "Advertising Framework or Big Brother?"

TechSmith, the folks behind some of my favorite applications — SnagIt, Camtasia, Morae and UserVue — just released a new “project.” All I can say is I’m blown away by it. Ever since moving to the the Mac, TechSmith’s products were the only ones I truly missed. Not anymore. Jing is available to capture images, movies and more; and in a way that’s just so sweet.

Go ahead and download it now: Mac – PC. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.

(Betsy, I want more!!!)

...continue to read "The Bling on Jing"

Is mind mapping for you? If so, then this is our favorite software!

And now for something completely different.

We do a lot of brainstorming … projects, problems, reports, how to communicate a difficult idea. And we’re pretty visual folks around here; we work best when we can “see” how our thoughts relate.

A while back, I wrote an article about the top ten application toolsthat consistently made our day. MindJet’s MindManagerwas (and still is) on the list. It’s the tool that lets…

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Ten business tools we wouldn’t be without!

Let me first swear up and down: nobody bribed me to write this and nobody is planning to pop my picture on their “packaging” (although I am receptive to offers!). We were just sitting around the offices one day feeling really happy. The source of that happiness? Folks out there had developed a particular application that helped us accomplish some task with a minimum of fuss and bother.

And that got us thinking about those…

...continue to read "Tools of the Trade"