Archive for October, 2007
Designing Above the Fold: Does it Matter?
Above the fold design can give you up to a 5% lift, but only if you don’t bend other quality design principles. Below the fold, size doesn’t matter — users will scroll if they are engaged. A scrolling page with clear messaging is better than “squeezing” content above the fold.
The Truth About Page Download Time
A site’s download time doesn’t seem to impact it’s usability. Sites that are easy to use, fun and professional are perceived as being fast, whereas time stretches out like taffy when you have a painful customer experience. Source
Quick Enter a Google Calendar Event
A cool tip I’ve overlooked until recently. While you’re in GCal, press the q key to summon a single field to enter an event. Best of all, GCal understands natural language like “tomorrow at 2PM.” Not using Google Calendar? Get it at Google Calendar
5 Factors for High Performing Landing Pages
Marketing Experiments Journal has made a number of A/B tests on landing pages (the pages people land on after clicking ads or search result links).They found that landing page performance can be improved by the following principles.
Google Fights Paid Links With Pagerank Penalty
In a long anticipated move, Google is now taking action to web sites who provide paid links. Google doesn’t penalize the relevancy of the site in search, but rather, hits the sites in their pocketbook by penalizing their page rank. If the site has low page rank, which is generally a requirement of paid link services like PayPerPost.com, then the site starts to lose out on advertising dollars.
Managing Downtime to Avoid Customer Disappointments
Downtime and outages are two things that — if planned for — can make or break a customer’s respect for your company. I was on the Blockbuster site yesterday, and behold the message I got — a generic Weblogic server error. Did this give me confidence in Blockbuster’s ability to manage my account and provide the service I’m paying for? Hardly.
Using Persuasion to Avoid Pogo-Sticking Customers
Retailers working to optimize their shopping cart process are often focused on how many visitors abandon their shopping carts. Bryan Eisenberg argues in a nice article on optimizing customer experience that persuasion, not shopping cart abandonment, is the real issue.
The Big Three (Or Four) Dominating Search Engines
The top four search engines combined — Google, Yahoo Search, MSN (and its new Live search) and Ask.com — account for 98.3% of all searches in the U.S. Sourc
Vovici Provides Enterprise Feedback Management
There are many low-end online survey software, but many are cheesy and lack the professionalism and high-end features needed by Fortune 500 companies. Vovici goes beyond simple survey forms to gather feedback geared to deliver “actionable insights.”
Google Optimization As A Service
Startup software company Yield will soon release an SEO-as-a-service offering. Currently it is in early testing by a few
companies and will probably be generally available in early 2008. Yield’s service is really three services in one.
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About Stan Shinn
Stan Shinn is a high impact player in the web marketing field, writing prolifically on various internet technology topics, web marketing techniques, and business innovation. A voracious reader, Shinn is the author of Web Project Survival Guide.
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