Category: Digital

Some interesting stats on the effects of live chat:

Roughly 10 percent of customers who use a "click to chat" button on a product page go on to buy something, he said, and more than 20 percent of people who are solicited for a chat go on to make a purchase.

And on the troubleshooting end, LoCascio said, fewer than 15 percent of people who click on the chat button while in the midst of checkout problems complete their purchases, compared with more than 25 percent of those whom the retailer has approached.

LivePerson, based in New York, has benefited from the trend. Largely from the sales of its chat service, Timpani, the company's revenue will most likely surpass $30 million this year, LoCascio said, up from about $22 million last year.

Full article: 'Live chat' gives push to buying

No anyone who could use a nudge in picking their career? Check out this quiz: Quiz Farm - What is your Perfect Major?

Probably not too scientific (given the few questions asked) but still worth a shot.

Google has published a nice, concise guide to help you optimize your site for Google Search:

Following these guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose not to implement any of these suggestions, we strongly encourage you to pay very close attention to the "Quality Guidelines," which outline some of the illicit practices that may lead to a site being removed entirely from the Google index.

A must read for considering your SEO strategy. Read full article: Webmaster Guidelines

Bloglines introduces hotkeys; most helpful to me is the smooth scrolling when you use 'j' and 'k'.

See all hotkeys at Bloglines | News

GIMP is a full featured Photoshop competitors. Even better, it is cross-platform (Mac, Windows, Linux) and FREE! Explore books and tutorials on GIMP. There is even a portable version that runs on a USB stick.
Already an experienced Photoshop user, and you don't want to re-learn another tool? No worries, enter GIMPshop:

If you’ve never used Photoshop before, you may not appreciate my GIMPshop hack. What I’ve done is renamed and reorganized GIMP’s tools, options, windows, and menus to closely resemble Adobe Photoshop’s menu structure and naming conventions. Many of the menu options and even whole menus were recreated to faithfully reproduce a Photoshop-like experience. After running my GIMPshop hack, you’ll find that Photoshop and the GIMP are strikingly similar.

Longtime Photoshop users should feel very comfortable using GIMPshop.

Read more about GIMPshop.

Measurement of key elements on the page containing an in-bound link which, in combination, influence the link reputation for the target of the link. (Read more on this topic at SEMLogic)

I ran across this nice summary explaining the differences between A/B and Multivariate Testing:

A/B testing is trying 2 (or more) versions of a page component like a headline, image, button, etc. and seeing which one leads to the best increase in desired visitor behavior.

Multivariate testing is trying 2 (or more) versions of multiple page components at the same time - e.g. 2 headlines 3 images 5 buttons, etc. It's like running multiple A/B tests simultaneously.

A/B testing is a good way to have a simple "bake off" to decide which version is more effective towards a visitor goal like a purchase/conversion, lead submittal, registration, etc. It's also a good way to get started with testing before advancing to more complicated methods (and it's far better than not doing any testing at all!)

Multivariate testing tells you not only which versions of each component are "best", but reveals which components are more or less influencial towards one or more visitor goal. It tells you, for example, that a range of versions of the homepage image accounts for /- 30% in click-through to the next page, whereas the range of versions of headline accounts for only /- 4% in click-throughs (Why do you care? Next test you run you shouldn't bother with the headline... just focus on the image since it is more influential!)

You can roll your own A/B testing using homegrown software, and there are also several free/low cost PHP/ASP scripts that can do the job and get you up & running.

Tools and services that allow you to do A/B and Multivariate testing include:

• http://www.offermatica.com
• http://www.vertster.com
• http://www.sitelab.com
• http://www.memetrics.com
• http://www.sitespect.com
• http://www.widemile.com
• http://www.optimost.com

Read more about this topic at this forum discussion.

Search engines have different algorithms to determine search results. New research from Fortune Interactive explains some of the logic behind these Web page rankings.

Google's algorithm:

At Google, inbound links rank in the following order: quality, relevance, title keyword, anchor keyword, quantity. Further down the list, site factors such as title keyword, anchor keyword, body keyword, content relevance and title content weigh into the equation.

Yahoo's algorithm:

Yahoo places the most importance on inbound link quality. To a lesser degree than Google, it looks at inbound links for relevance, anchor keyword, title keyword and quantity. Further down in organic results priority are general site characteristics like title content, title keyword, anchor keyword, body keyword and content relevance.

MSN's algorithm:

Inbound links rank at the top of MSN's equation as well, but are ordered differently. Inbound links are looked at for quality, anchor keyword, relevance, and title keyword. Inbound link quantity is weighted, but not quite as heavily. The search engine then looks at title keyword, body keyword, anchor keyword, content relevance, and title content.

Read full article: To Each Search Engine Its Own Algorithms

This great article on user interface design highlights many of the design considerations one must consider when building an optimized web site. These principles are particularly applicable to landing page design, where the page layout is critical to driving conversion rates. Here is a table summary Digital Web Magazine's writeup of design tradeoffs one must consider.

Read article at Digital Web Magazine

I've always found it annoying that you can auto-hide the dock on the Mac, but not the menu bar. This new software does just that. Why use it?

Probably because it gives you extra space (it may not look like much, but it matters) and it looks so cool.. so minimalistic. Also if you're like me and don't use the spotlight menu item enough to justify the space it takes up in your menubar, menufela lets you get rid of it.

In addition to autohiding the menu, you can specify a hotkey to toggle the menubar on or off.

Get it at ninja kitten (what a name!).