You only get one chance to make a first impression. Get it wrong and you’ll never be able to completely shake it off. At best you’ll be the person who walked on stage with toilet paper stuck to his shoe who actually gave a good presentation. But year’s later you’ll still be remembered as the toilet paper guy. If my … Read More
Perfect Website Equilibrium (looking good isn’t enough)
Finding the right company to design or radically overhaul a website is incredibly difficult. It shouldn’t be, but it somehow is. In theory you just need to find someone who can produce what you want for a reasonable price. But all too often you’ll find companies who don’t reply to emails, don’t read the brief you send them, can’t follow … Read More
Five mistakes your website is making
Mistakes on your website result in lost sales and lost customers. Your website is making at least four out of five of these mistakes right now.
Five ways to distract your visitors
AdWords, SEO, press releases, social networking, time-limited discounts – all have the potential to pull in large volumes of targeted traffic to your website. Once they get there, here are five of my personal favourite ways to distract them. 1 – Interesting external links. Prominent testimonials are all fine and well, but if they’re linked and look a little too … Read More
Yes but can I trust you?
You probably know the feeling. You like the product and would like to buy it, but don’t know whether you should trust the company behind the website. If I order a product online and it never arrives, I can email the company and try to call them. But what if they simply don’t reply? There’s always some degree of risk. … Read More
How do you compete with free? Quickly!
Napster and Spotify have an uphill battle because of their competition. They compete with your radio, your MP3 collection, your CDs, your dusty record collection, internet radio, illegal downloads, the music collection of your friends, apathy and more. So how do they persuade people to part with their cash? They do it quickly. Their website main pages are classic examples … Read More
Lack of clarity = confusion
After a recent (horrible) virus experience, I’ve taken all reasonable steps to protect my system. I use Google Chrome, and use the excellent NotScripts to protect my web browsing. One of the useful features of NotScripts is that when I get to a website, I have to allow scripts to run, and if I’m not sure about a domain, I … Read More
Google Analytics is not free
In September 2007 I wrote an article for our Competitive Edge newsletter on What Price Google Analytics. The article generated a fair amount of debate, yet despite the large number of people who were quite vocal with their disagreement, many also agreed. The point of the article wasn’t that Google Analytics is bad. The point was that Google Analytics isn’t … Read More
Website users ignore pointless pictures – how very odd?
From Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: “Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to “jazz up” Web pages.“ And he can prove it. Like many of Jakob Nielsen’s statements, it sounds absurdly obvious. So why do so many websites get it wrong? How many times have you seen websites using a … Read More
1 + 1 doesn’t have to be 2
We’re short of time, so I’m going to try to keep this quick and simple. Website X gets 20,000 visitors a day. 8,000 of the visitors remain on the website and click at least one link. 40%. 500 of them spend a significant amount of time on the website and engage with the content. 6.25%. 20 of them sign up. 4.0%. Website … Read More