Personas Can Mean Bigger Online Projects

The power of fake people Please Vote Imagine your most important customer, let’s call her Melissa, walking into your meeting room and laying the law down to your manager, telling them exactly what she wants from your Web site. Now imagine that she’s not just your most important customer, but a representative of hundreds or [...]

Relate to Four, Connect with Thousands

You can connect with thousands of visitors to your site by understanding only four of them. Communicating is connecting. If you’re communicating successfully, each of your readers will feel that you are writing directly to them. I’m going to introduce you to a method of writing that will forge strong connections with your readers. You [...]

Zero Steps to Copy That Will Make Visitors Stick

A good writer can create images better than a graphic designer. Whenever we design a Web site, we inevitably ask our graphic designers to give us three comps. Then we, the completely unqualified non-graphic-designers decide which one we “like” best. We might even ask a number of our equally unqualified colleagues to tell us what [...]

The Superstitions That Keep You From E-mail Success

In my somewhat facetious post about The Father of E-mail, I make the statement: If you’re considering investing in a social marketing campaign, and you haven’t nailed your e-mail strategy, you may be investing in the wrong place. I don’t think business owners and marketers are dumb. I think that they’re just superstitious. Like walking [...]

Father of Email Claims His Social Network is the Biggest

AUSTIN, TX – Ray Tomlinson, the man responsible for putting the “@” in our email addresses has apparently gone on the warpath against MySpace, Facebook and other social networks who claim they have the largest memberships. “Zuckerberg Schmuckerberg!” Tomlinson was overheard saying at a social gathering. “My social network has been around since the 70s. [...]

“Evil” Best Buy Develops Personas

Oh no! The secret’s out. Best Buy actually took the time to profile their customers with the intention — GASP — of selling more to them. The Consumerist finds this somehow disingenuous, that one of the biggest consumer electronics retailers on the planet is not interested in selling to customers that aren’t profitable. Maybe it’s [...]

ConversionCast: DallasSummerMusicals.org

Conversion Scientists love their crayons. We’re starting something new here at Conversion Sciences: The ConversionCast. A ConversionCast is a detailed analysis of a page based on two primary scales: The four Modes of Persuasion and visitors’ position in the Sales Process. Learn more about the Modes of Persuasion in the book Waiting for Your Cat [...]