Do you remember the movie where an ad executive played by Billy Crystal takes time off to go on a cattle drive and he befriends an old cowboy, Curly, played by Jack Palance? While they are out, Billy’s character, who is in search of the secret of life, is told by Curly, as he lifts his index finger, that the secret of life is “Just one thing.” Sometimes I feel like that old cowboy. Being a pioneer in marketing optimization…
There were some excellent responses last week’s CRO challenge post on a NetFlix ad and landing page mismatch. Thank you all! Today’s challenge is to explain how you would improve and optimize the form below . While the page looks polished and professional, it is creating cognitive friction for visitors. You can be certain that where there is friction there is opportunity for optimization. Please be sure to click on the image to enlarge it and then provide a short list of your suggestions as…
It was Dr Ed Chi, a Xerox Palo Alto Researcher, as early as 2001, who indicated that humans track information in a similar fashion to the way animals follow a scent. According to an article on the study: People… engage in what [Dr. Ed Chi] calls “hub-and-spoke” surfing: They begin at the center, and they follow a trail based on its information scent…. If the scent is sufficiently strong, the surfer will continue to go on that trail. But if…
Last week, I published my first Conversion Optimization 101 post and asked you if you could look at a particular screenshot and also to tell me: What’s wrong with this picture? How would you fix it? Here is the image: There were some very good suggestions on what you would do to improve this picture: Dennis Moons said: The three buttons: Previous, Process and Cancel all have the same colour and visual weight. I would change the Cancel & Previous buttons…
It’s not often I get to leave the confines of my screens, where I always see the world through the eyes of a marketer, but I have been in the real world for the past couple of weeks on a well-deserved vacation in New York City, my hometown. I moved to Austin, TX this January so I got a new perspective on things I saw and virtually ignored or took for granted my entire life. We are staying in an…
In my recent column, “E-Commerce Moneyball: Chasing the Market Leader,” I briefly discussed how Amazon built tools for its own use that leverage the big data available to it. Let’s explore the types of tools that are available for you to leverage big data today. There are many reasons one can point to as to why Amazon.com has become such a dominant e-commerce player. Here are a few to highlight: It leveraged social commerce and the voice of the customer…
A couple of weeks ago, I had the honor to speak at the exclusive Acceller Summit in Miami. Some readers may remember Acceller from the case study I wrote about them and their CEO Steve McKean in my book Always Be Testing. Steve is the CEO who explained: “A culture of testing and optimization cannot happen in a vacuum, nor can it be mandated. You need a team that understands and believes in the principles. You need to communicate a…
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is not at all like a Ronco Grill! If you just set it and forget it you can also kiss your money goodbye. We have been telling clients this for the last several years. So I was fascinated by the research my friend Larry Kim, founder of WordStream, shared with me from the data his free AdWords Performance Grader had accumulated. The key findings that WordStream is seeing through thousands of accounts grading profiles are very low…