You have 17 possible ways to improve your website, and very little time, only three employees to devote to the project, and limited funds. Which areas of improvement will bring the best ROI?
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One of my clients e-mailed me this quote the other day. He found it on Adam Kmiec’s blog and thought of me because he knows how much I LOVE RAIN (especially HUGE thunderstorms and puddlejumping with the terrorists) and he felt it summed up a visit I’d had with his team the previous week. The nanosecond our meeting started, his [...]
Valerie Vince-Vaughn writes: “My boss heard you speak and now he is your biggest fan. Personally I think you are way too against social media to be respected. Do you think it’s your age? Your bio says you’ve been doing this for a long time. Maybe you’re just out of touch?” Dear Valerie – Out of touch? I’d say that [...]
Tim Seidel says “We’re a mid-sized e-commerce business ($135 million) that sells both B2B and B2C. 2010 wasn’t a great year for us. In fact, it was terrible. Therefore, we are going to need to cut our already-miniscule marketing budget for 2011. What would you suggest we spend our monies on? Should we spend it on driving traffic or fixing [...]
What does leading-edge look like? How about state of the art? Innovative? How do you see streamlined? Pioneering? Revolutionary? Integrated approach? *** Yesterday I blogged about the old brain (aka the brain that buys) being visually oriented. I got several e-mails (yes, e-mails – I get less than 1% of my response in the comments) defending words and how [...]
Imagine you are an old Iranian man living in a tiny, dilapidated, one room shanty, smaller than the size of an American closet. You are very, very poor and live on little — perhaps a couple of vegetables from your meager, one-row garden and a twice-a-year splurge of canned beans. Your rich uncle comes to town. He has oodles [...]
It drives me crazy when Forrest Gump says that “life is like a box of chocolates, because you never know what you’re going to get.” What in life is as knowable and safe as a box of chocolates? You might not know if the filling will be caramel or a goopy cherry, but you know you’re getting BITE-SIZED CHOCOLATES IN [...]
I tried to place an order from Nordstrom the other day. (I won’t even begin to bore you with the details of how they DUMPED MY FLIPPING CART AFTER LEAVING THE SITE FOR EXACTLY SIX MINUTES.) This is what I got when I attempted to check out. (God only knows who wrote this copy. I thought Solzhenitsyn was dead.) [...]
Beth Kotowski asks: “Why are you so obsessed with exit pages? No other consultants ever talk about them. Are you behind the times or do you see value in them that others don’t?” Good question. I know they are not sexy but exit pages are still one of the very first things I look at before I do a site critique. Why? Because [...]
The other day, while I was debating whether or not to report father-to-be, DJ Waldow, to Child Protective Services for FUTURE neglect*, a funny thing happened. I was standing in a very busy, noisy, 50-floor, city office building, impatiently waiting for one of the two (out of eight) elevators that were working. EVERYONE was on their phones (in fact, most of us [...]
Do you remember the first time you kissed? What about the last time? Ok, now tell me about all the ones in the middle. Yes, you heard me…. Talk to me about every kiss you’ve ever had. Don’t remember them all? Hmmm…. Why? In the past couple months, I have started several speeches and webinars with the “kiss” question. Everyone [...]
