These are all worthy causes. I’m going to suggest to you however that they aren’t the most fruitful pursuits. I’m going to suggest to you that we often bypass the quick-wins in favor of sexier options that we’re more familiar with.
If your email marketing program is entirely focused on determining that right moment to send [...]

The not to-do list is often as important as the to-do list. As you begin planning your web strategy for 2010, consider making these new year’s anti-resolutions:

Stop relying on discounts: Pretend that for the next year your business had to survive selling only full price products or services. Would you survive? What does your answer [...]

Many would consider their industry expertise to be a competitive advantage. What if I were to suggest that your knowledge about your products and services can be the greatest hindrance to the success of your website?
Tappers and Listeners
Consider this fascinating study, highlighted in the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
A group of [...]

Website redesigns are expensive, time-consuming, and hugely popular. Why? Because unlike website optimization, they’re tangible and exciting. You clearly see the end result. In my observation, companies redesign their website’s quite frequently, typically following a predictable pattern:
The Website Redesign Cycle

Company creates website
Company grows tired of website, and realizes it doesn’t meet all of their needs
Company [...]

For the last several years, I’ve had the privilege of directing the e-commerce site for C28, an online Christian clothing store. In the last 3 1/2 years, we’ve been fortunate to experience a 1600% increase in sales.
I’ve recently been reflecting on lessons I’ve learned through this exciting but tumultuous experience. What follows is a list [...]

WARNING: Website optimization testing is extremely addictive. Sitting behind the scenes, pulling the strings, and seeing the effect of positive change is overwhelmingly rewarding.
So now you’ve committed to testing your website. Where do you start? What do you test? While you’ll ultimately have to answer these questions for yourself, below are 7 Do’s and Don’ts [...]

What goes through a visitors’ mind in the first 5 seconds after they land on your site? After all, that just might be all the time you’ve got until they reach for the back button. Let’s speculate on what happens at each moment…
Second 1 – Impressions: First impressions are forming. What loads first? Your header [...]

It’s staggering to consider how many marketing failures are the result of broken promises.
We rarely think of it this way, but every button, every subject line, every headline on our website is a promise. Whether or not that promise is kept determines whether we win the trust of our visitors, or lose them for good.
To [...]

Nearly every business collects feedback from their customers, and rightfully so. Yet something has always bothered me about the way most online businesses elicit customer suggestions and criticism: they usually get it from their best customers.
In other words, the people most likely to give feedback are the people who spend the most money. So [...]

“Who Are You and What Do You Do?” – Is this possibly the last thought your prospect has right before they leave your website?
Too many websites have identity issues. That is, it’s too hard to figure out what the heck the site does, or what sets them apart from the crowd. Simply put, if prospects [...]