http://www.useyourweb.com/blog Looking at the web 100 ways at once Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:26:12 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In a traditional company, you'll have product or service to sell. There'll be people making the product, marketing people promoting and creating demand, and sales people completing the sale. In ecommerce, it shouldn't be that different. But it is. This is what I typically see: The person owning the business makes or ... http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=104 I'm lucky to live really close a stretch of shops with awesome food (Ramsay St for those who know Sydney). Every Saturday, there's lines out the door and sometimes around the corner at two of the bakeries. Literally a few doors down is a fresh pasta place. They do absolutely ... http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=103 What gets your visitors motivated to take action? You need to think about providing them with relevant information. If you were trying to motivate a dog, what would work better: the world's tastiest, freshest, best carrot, or any old piece of meat? Be careful you aren't spending too much time making carrots... (inspired ... http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=102 I've been doing a lot of reading recently (as always), and one thing that has come up again and again and again is: you can't trust what people say. Let me give some examples of stuff I've been reading: In a double blind clinical trial for a sleeping tablet, 90% of ... http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=101 From the book "Nudge": You are more likely to agree to an operation if you’re told that 90 out of 100 people who had it are still alive five years later than if you’re told that 10 out of 100 people die from it. Food for thought there. http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=100 No matter how many times I do them, I am always amazed at how much of a difference split testing makes. I had a difference of opinion with a client recently about how a landing page for a fairly large budget campaign should be constructed. We went with a compromise solution, ... http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=99 Recently, I've been dealing with several established ecommerce sites and a few yet-to-be-launched sites at the same time. The difference between them is interesting. The ones that haven't started up yet are generally just talking about design. It's all about the graphic design, the look and feel. The established ones, design is ... http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=98 An interesting post about the power of word of mouth marketing from the folks at FreshChat. One example: Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to new data from Publicis media network ZenithOptimedia. (AdAge, April, 2008) Via Shifted Pixels blog (and got ... http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=97 I've been re-reading Malcolm Gladwell's classic "Blink". It's a great book about how we react to things very quickly, before our brains are aware of it. This is applicable to ecommerce in many ways - what are the unconcious cues we give our visitors which persuade or dissuade them from ... http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=96 I bumped into this oldish post on Wants make the world go ’round … saleswise. You can’t sell the features … you can sell the feeling that will come after the purchase. How true that is. http://www.useyourweb.com/blog/?p=95