I was just recently married and moved to a new state not too long after the wedding.  Thankfully, rather than receiving gifts from friends and family, my husband and I received a slew of gift cards, the majority of which were to Target.com.  After moving in to a relatively bare apartment, we happily went to our local Target store in order to cash in.  Already familiar with the Target brand, and having a pretty good idea of…

...continue to read "We Converted Online, But Only Because It Was Free"

We get questions all the time from visitors, clients, and blog readers about what to do: How do I improve my conversion rate?  What’s the best analytics program?  Who should I hire to build my new site?  When is the best time to optimize? And much of the inspiration for our blog posts come from these very questions.

Monday, I got a call from my colleague, Marijayne Bushey, who told me about a great question she got via our…

...continue to read "How To Find the Root Causes of Low Conversion Rate"

Figure 1

The Holiday (online) gift shopping saga continues!  First, I was buying water bottles, and now I’m shopping for a gift card to send to some relatives.

Instead of taking you through the somewhat exhausting 11-step purchase process I went through for the sake of “convenience,” this post will just call out a few of the interesting high points and low points (with suggested optimizations) on the emotional roller coaster that is online shopping.  While the theme is a…

...continue to read "The Highs and Lows of a Holiday Gift Card Conversion"

This is a story about Christmas shopping of the worst kind a male can possibly imagine: buying a ‘teen heart-throb’ gift for a younger, female family member.  Well, I guess it could be worse, this gift could have been requested by my wife

I have a certain younger sister-in-law who is a freak for the actor who plays “Edward” in the Twilight movie saga.  I undertook the mission to buy the “Edward” water bottle that was sold through…

...continue to read "Twilight New Moon Online Persuasion Examined"

Well, Grokkers, the Holiday Season is officially upon us–Happy Black Friday! Most of FutureNow’s good advice about optimizing for the Holidays has already been given, and hopefully you’ve been busy acting on it.  Many merchants are about to lock their sites down so no major code changes will put their Holiday transactions at risk.

Staying in a mediocre hotel in Albany, NY (with mediocre WiFi) got me thinking about another optimization tactic that we forgot to post about this year: SITE PERFORMANCE.

[Note:…

...continue to read "Who Is REALLY Ready for the Online Black Friday?"

Early this morning, I was woken up by a constant pinging sound coming from my Blackberry.  Yes, I know I could turn it to silent or even off, but what can I say, I’m attached (they don’t call them “crackberries” for nothing).  After a few more hours of tossing and turning, I woke up to review the 47 new emails I’d been receiving since 4:30am.  I didn’t find a note from Grammy, or a funny story from…

...continue to read "Email Feng Shui: The Unsubscribe Option"

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"

Sorry about the headline – the 80s flashbacks are getting to me.  Still, I really do “play stupid” as a Website optimizer and online copywriter.  Or at least I play ignorant.

Why?  Because all those terms and concepts you think everyone understands about your business and what you’re selling – well, you’re wrong about them!  Wrong about both the terms themselves and your potential audience.  If you think I’m mistaken, go back and watch the video…

...continue to read "I’m not an idiot, but I play one online – and so should you!"

We at FutureNow sometimes wonder why more companies aren’t busy optimizing their websites and online marketing, or why those who are “on board” with the concept don’t always commit the right amount of resources towards the effort.

I’m not a mind-reader, but I think it’s due in part to an all-or-nothing mentality where nothing short of a full optimization ‘project’ is worth putting effort into.  Most companies are more interested in redesigning their websites all at once instead of incrementally, even though…

...continue to read "For Every Optimization, There’s a Pyramid, So Get Started"

About a year ago, Bryan Eisenberg gave an interview talking about Maybe The Best $100 You’ve Ever Spent, essentially raving over the ridiculously cheep rates charged by UserTesting.com.  The always-astute Patrick Sullivan, Jr. of Edit Weapon picked up on this and decided to give UserTesting.com his own personal test and blog post/review.

Now, as a usability expert himself and a usability testing veteran, Edit Weapon’s initial reaction to UserTesting.com was:

“Well this will either put me out of business, cause me to…

...continue to read "Top 6 User Testing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them"