Yearly Archives: 2006

Internet Marketing

Don’t forget your existing customers and e-mail while you build sales for the holiday season…

Design & Development

Barry sent me a great example of horrifically bad usability: If You Have to Ask the Price You Can’t Afford it? He states the problem quite eloquently. Very briefly: If there’s no price, and no way to find out the price, and no way to buy online, would you pursue the matter any further, or… Read More

Internet Marketing

Do you think Microsoft will deal with negative reviews of the Zune? Online? See this review in the Chicago Sun Times. Hardly a small-time publication. If I were Microsoft I’d: Write a detailed blog post breaking down the article and addressing each concern. Especially the one regarding the failed install. Acknowledge failure, then address it.… Read More

SEO

Gaping Void, best known for hilarious back-of-business-card cartoons, posted an SEO Manifesto. My favorite points: 2. It’s much easier to plan a website than to retrofit it. Understanding fundamentals makes it much more valuable when you hire a consultant or agency. I can’t tell you how many clients of mine have had to rebuild their… Read More

Random

We’ve all had a time when a developer tells us that their code is perfect, and something else is wrong. Right? Question is, how do you know whether they’re correct? Well, if the developer’s answer is on this list, you can call their bluff. Trust me.

Internet Marketing

Neil Patel has a great collection of blogging resources here.

Internet Marketing

Last night my family and I climbed into a Towncar for the ride from Newark Airport to the grandparents’ house. About 15 minutes out, the car’s engine started racing and the ‘check transmission’ light came on. A sure sign that the car’s transmission was about to fall out. The driver, not wanting to lose the… Read More

Internet Marketing

Everyone should know what a click to their website is worth. And everyone should know they’re spending less than that to get those clicks. Yet almost no one does. Which is sort of like landing an airplane when you’re not sure where the ground is. It’s not too hard, trust me. As an experiment, I… Read More

Random

In case you’re wondering: Google gets 44.1% of all searches right now. That’s up 7% over last year. Yahoo gets 28.7%. Down 1%. MSN gets 12.5%, down 3%. AOL gets 5.6%. Ask.com gets another 5.5%. All other search engines on earth fight over the remaining 3.6% of available search traffic. So if anyone ever calls… Read More

Internet Marketing

I just watched Benjamin Zander speak about transformation, creativity and his book, The Art of Possibility. He made one point that really stuck with me: A great concert pianist will often sway and lean with their music. They’re lost to it, taking risks and not worrying, right then, about what the audience will think. As… Read More

Internet Marketing

I’m at a convention for a client of mine right now. They just announced that the internet generated 9000 new customers for them during a 7-month test campaign run by us. Their last national campaign that did anything – a print ad in a perfectly-targeted magazine – generated 300. These customers cost them about $15… Read More

Design & Development

Seattle24x7 just published a piece I wrote about simplifying your web site, and why it matters…

SEO

Imnotadoctor writes that Google still seems to reward link spammers. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, link spammers will build a site and then purchase or otherwise collect thousands of links from other, unrelated web sites, for the sole purpose of improving their search ranking. Google frowns (glowers, actually) on this… Read More

Internet Marketing

A few folks have very astutely asked me whether my test on http://www.mmmzr.com/ generated quality, targeted traffic. The answer is a qualified ‘yes’. So far I’ve received as much traffic in any 24-hour period as I usually get in a week. Average time on the site is down to about 3 minutes from 4 minutes.… Read More

PPC

Just finished an experiment with a client. First, this was the situation: They wanted the #1 position for their biggest keyphrase. But they couldn’t afford it – they received too many clicks in the course of the day. We reviewed their site and sales statistics, and noticed that most of their customers arrived at lunch… Read More