No Guidance, No Interaction, No Sale: Improving Internet Shopping Usability
A good friend recently told me a story about how a company built a web site that needed user instructions to use it. The only page that was allowed to put a link to those instructions was the homepage. Therefore, should a visitor arrive via a search engine to a landing page within the web site, they were out of luck. No guidance, no interaction, no sale. I went Christmas shopping online for a computer armoire. I knew exactly what I wanted because I had done previous research on the...
Read MoreSimple Tips for Selling Womens Gifts Online
With Mother’s Day coming, as well as the April hot weather wake-up call for summer here in the East coast of the USA, where we hit over 90 degree weather, I thought I’d address web sites that sell beauty products and/or target women. Women are big gift givers. Case in point is myself and my recent attempts to surprise a generous friend with a gift for her birthday. She’s inspired me over the years with her energy, humor, ability to pull me out of my shell, and most...
Read MoreA Gift Idea for Web Designers – Web Design for ROI
I’m one of those persons that love books, bookstores, and stores like Office Max and Staples. I love the feel of a glossy paperback book cover, sight of rows of colorful pens, and am perfectly willing to spend 15 minutes figuring out the very best type of manila folders to buy. When I spoke on a Usability panel at SMX New York with Lance Loveday, I discovered he’d written a book called Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers & Prospects into Leads. Of course, I asked for a...
Read MorePersuasive Web Design
If a web site falls in the search engine forest, would anyone hear it? If the web site belonged to Victoria’s Secret, it wouldn’t be missed by a shopper like my young adult daughter. She doesn’t need search engines to find Victoria’s Secret products. Why? Because the company sends her discount cards in the mail every month to lure her with 20% off or Buy One, Get One Free offers. They know she uses them and bribes (begs) me to come to their store so she can talk me...
Read MoreHey Web Site Visitor, I Love to Turn You On
A commercial in the USA may be aimed at the woman inside the woman. A woman with magic, spark and a no regrets sense of who she is and where she’s going. For starters, in the TV spot, she’s in the driver’s seat. I can’t remember the make or model of the automobile. I don’t care who the woman is behind the wheel. What I remember and giggle to myself about is that she asks if your car turns you on. Well, hell yes. Thanks for noticing! I have a friend whose car was...
Read MoreHonk If You Loved Your Web Site Experience
When I decided to teach myself HTML in 1995, I did what many others did back then. We studied source code by copying and dismantling what someone else did. In those days, there was only one background color – gray. Creativity felt limited, but that didn’t last long. Today, there’s no end to what web designers can do. If you can imagine it, someone is inventing a way to do it. The pace is fast. We call it things like Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. What excites me is that the...
Read MoreFirst, Convince Me to Trust You
Holly Buchanan from FutureNow has a fun blog post called Would You Buy A Bra From This Man? I watched it and no, I would not. She’s seeking comments on the video advertisement. I responded with mine. But I’m really curious about ads like this one, where I’m convinced the advertising agencies don’t get away from their desks enough. For starters, hand gestures about a woman’s knockers is something guys do when describing their pick of the hour. It’s not a...
Read MoreDo We Even WANT To Persuade Website Visitors Who Ignore Marketing?
I’ve been working on websites since 1995 and, eleven years later, we are still trying to understand how to build a good one. Nobody agrees on what works best. Nor do they agree on how to make some work better. A gentle discussion has erupted into a serious inspection of persuasive web design, personas, usabilty and marketing in Persuasion Architecture and the Art of Agreement for Website Success. Not everybody is drinking the Eisenberg kool-aid. As we discuss Waiting for Your Cat to...
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