We’ve got some particularly good finds this week, with several great user experience-related items. Check ’em out, add your own!
If you are an engineer, friction is your enemy. That’s even more true if you are a web marketer trying to convert browsers into buyers or leads. Jeremy Smith (@jeremysaid) shows you How to Win the War Against Conversion Friction – and it’s a war worth fighting. Reducing friction on your site is almost always cheaper than trying to boost conversion by increasing visitor motivation to act.
Want to get up to speed on the psychology of user experience? Check out UX Crash Course: User Psychology. There are 31 lessons in Joel Marsh’s (@HipperElement) exploration of this important topic.
Do you clearly state your Unique Value Proposition on your landing page? Do you even have a UVP? Rich Page (@richpage) explains how to convert better by establishing why you are different from your competitors in Why Your Unique Value Proposition is Killing Your Landing Page Conversions and How to Fix It.
How much time do you spend on the content of your marketing emails vs. ensuring they actually get read? If you focus mainly on content and tack on a clever headline, your brilliant prose is probably not getting seen at all by many recipients. 3 Tactics You Can Implement Today for Higher Email Open Rates by George Mathew (@George_defo) offers clever advice to boost open rates.
OK, this one is an infographic… ugh, right? But, if you are talking about why symbols and graphics are important, the medium can be the message. Laura Montini (@lmmontini) tells us Why Your Brain Loves Visual Content.
In Why Do First Impressions Matter? Dr. Nick Morgan (@DrNickMorgan) shares great insights on how gesture, posture, and voice create immediate and powerful unconscious impressions. And, in the awesome news category, Nick will be the next guest on The Brainfluence Podcast (find it on iTunes). Subscribe now to hear our chat as soon as it’s published! (And look over the archives for great episodes on web psychology, addictive apps, freaky entrepreneurs, and more!)
Today’s marketer needs a different skill set. Just a few years ago, who would have put “mobile marketing” in a list of important skills? Jack Loechner (@jackloechner) reports on survey results that show which skills are in demand today and will be tomorrow in Future Marketing Skills Required For Success.
Which buzzword is hotter, “content marketing” or “growth hacking?” You don’t have to decide! Garett Moon combines the two in 9 Content Marketing Growth Hacks to Drive Traffic and Conversions.
Do you ever get to the end of the day and find you didn’t get done half of what you expected? (Yep, me too!) We all know how important a schedule is. Eric Barker (@bakadesuyo) tells us how to do that right in Here’s The Schedule Very Successful People Follow Every Day.
My Stuff
If you are a writer of online content, the odds are good that at least in some venues your well-crafted, intelligent prose is followed by comments of somewhat lower intellectual quality. The bad news is that those comments by others actually affect how readers perceive YOUR content. I explore the data in Dumb Comments by Others Make YOU Look Dumb.
In my latest podcast episode, we talk about the dark side of online persuasion – design tricks that manipulate visitors into various behaviors. User experience expert Chris Nodder (@uxgrump) discusses some of these methods and his book, Evil by Design. It’s all in Ep #10: Psychology of Usability Design with Chris Nodder. Full text transcript, too!
Do you make decisions using data, or based on your gut feeling? Nine out of ten executives say they use data, which isn’t a surprise. What IS a surprise is how many choose to ignore that data if it contradicts their intuition. Get the scoop in my Forbes post, Are You The One Out Of Ten Executives Who Isn’t Clueless?
And, don’t miss last week’s Dominate Social Media, the 5-Second Conversion Window, & More. From social media copywriting to web psychology-based A/B tests, it’s all good. There’s even an interesting face-off between two important persuasion principles, social proof and authority!
Weird and/or Wonderful
Would you be more likely to evacuate your home if threatened by a hurricane name Arthur than one named Alice? Why It’s Dangerous to Give a Hurricane a Female Name reveals a surprising correlation with hurricane gender. Is this purely coincidence? Dr. Jeremy Dean (@psyblog) explains.
Have you been watching Orange is the New Black or House of Cards? Did you watch multiple episodes at once or savor each one separately? David DiSalvo (@Neuronarrative) expresses a possible negative side effect to binge-watching in How Netflix Is Changing Our Brains, And Why That May Not Be All Good.
Neuromarketing Classic
The classic post that got the most activity this week talks about the common thread in Apple’s successful marketing strategy. Written before the death of the firm’s iconic founder and CEO, Revealed: How Steve Jobs Turns Customers into Fanatics shows how the psychological concept of social identity helped build loyalty and turned customers into evangelists.
Hope you find a few of these useful, and, of course, feel free to share your own great find in a comment!
