• OPA: Pre-Roll Ads Work, Longer Is Better
  

  “So much for marketers’ presuppositions: The much pooh-poohed 30-second pre-roll online video ad - when coupled with a display ad - is the best way to drive awareness in an online campaign, according to a study by the Online Publisher’s Association (OPA) and Online Testing eXchange (OTX).”

• Persuasive Search Engine Marketing
  

  “…it no longer is enough to fluff up pages organically and hope they’ll grow big and tall in search engine gardens. Universal search offers up images, books, links to maps, business directories and videos mixed into certain search results, rather than split off as sub-paths. This makes alternative routes to the bottom line interesting because there are more options, in one place. The challenge now is to optimize those options and learn to use them to attract clicks, communicate brand and sell your story.”

• Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media
  

  “In an ideal situation you would be able to write a title that fits all three categories but that is rarely the case. There is a marked difference between the different kinds of readers and that’s why you need to market your content to them in different ways.”

• Design Questions
  

  “…the initial direct contact with clients during the discovery meeting is likely the most important moment in the life of a project. While most of my previous reference in this regard has been toward the establishment of designer competence and development of fellowship with the client, there is another vital aspect to this initial meeting: the specific questions asked.”

• Tiny Fonts Trigger Spam Filters
  

  “Our customer really had a nice looking template, and wasn’t trying to hide anything. But spam filters think that tiny fonts are a sign that some spammer is trying to embed a whole bunch of confusing content into their message to throw off their scent.”

• The Eight R’s for Email Marketing Success
  

  “[Requested, Relationship, Reputation, Received, Rendering, Relevance, Reporting, Resources]”

• Four Web Annoyances to Avoid on Your Site
  

  “One of the reasons why I tend to stick strictly to RSS feeds for some sites and have completely abandoned visiting others is that although they have interesting content, it often comes at too annoying a price. So in an effort to educated others to not make the same mistakes as some even well-established sites, I have compiled a list of what I think are the 4 most annoying things you can do on your site (in no particular order).”

• 50 Online Accessibility and Usability Tools
  

  “Usability and accessibility go hand in hand with conversion rates, customer satisfaction, targeted traffic and the list can go on. That’s why we provide a list with 50 online tools to improve your web site usability and accessibility in order to reach the objectives mentioned earlier.”

• Microsoft’s Inductive User Interface
  

  “According to Microsoft, IUI gained traction as a design process as a result of the research they’ve done on actual users performing tasks on their products. In short, they found that a number of important assumptions that are commonly made by User Experience practitioners are incorrect. They found that, contrary to the commonly held notion, most users are unable to successfully perform even basic computer tasks.”

• Web Domains: Tools To Use, Articles To Read
  

  “A thought-out domain name can save you a lot of time and bring you a lot of traffic. Search engines love topic-related domain names and they seem to be an important aspect which is being used to evaluate web-pages. Besides, if you have a popular web-site with enviable reputation, you might be willing to make sure that your visitors don’t get to some surprising web-sites mistyping your site’s URL.”

• Putting Out Fires
• How to Deal With Crisis—and Defend the Brand
• When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users’ Verbal Comments
• Pricing a Project
• Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good
• 12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
• Protect Your Brand and Your Customers
• 8 Tips for a Stronger Call to Action
• Design Questions
• US Privacy Update: Experts Offer 6 Strategies to Build Consumer Trust

• Putting Out Fires
  

  “Fires are an inevitable part of the modern workplace. By fires of course I mean unforeseen projects or tasks that tend to come from nowhere. Fires can sometimes be a destructive force in moral, adds to stress, overwhelming people with seemingly random assignments. But I find there is always a problem that needs solving beneath the flames. While it isn’t always obvious, its usually there. Here are a couple of tips to put out fires before they begin, control them once they are started and avoid getting burnt.”

• How to Deal With Crisis—and Defend the Brand
  

  “How companies deal with negative experiences is just as important as creating positive experiences. […] Reacting immediately and proactively is not an option: It’s the right thing to do from both a humane perspective and from a brand-sustainability perspective.”

• When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users’ Verbal Comments
  

  “A usability test implies, among other things, a relationship between two people—an interviewer and a user. The way an interviewer interacts with users influences the outcome of test sessions greatly. Drawing conclusions from only observation is risky. You must elicit verbal comments from users in a way that enriches your observations and helps you avoid biases. To make the most of your user interviews, convey confidence and empathy, adapt to users’ personalities and rhythms, get users to talk about their own experiences and the reasons behind their comments, explore users’ comments in depth, and follow users’ flow.”

• Pricing a Project
  

  “Today we are going to break an unwritten rule for agencies, we are going to reveal an important page from our playbook on how we price a project. What is somewhat ironic is that we think it’s a pretty bad rule, that one of the last things we think anyone should hide from a potential client is how your pricing works.”

• Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good
  

  “Here’s the problem: You agree that feature X can be done in two hours. But four hours into it, you’re still only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think “but I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent four hours on this!”.”

• 12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
  

  “There are loads of different types of clients out there and chances are at some point you’ll get to meet all of them. So let’s take a look through some typical clients and see if you recognise a few of your own in there!”

• Protect Your Brand and Your Customers
  

  “In the internet age, the stakes are higher than ever. Consumers increasingly form their opinions of a company through its website. But a good-looking, efficient web presence isn’t enough. Companies must protect it or risk losing control over their hard-earned brand to criminal activity.”

• 8 Tips for a Stronger Call to Action
  

  “As a command, “click here” is beautiful in its simplicity, but it falls far short as a call to action – the trigger to launch the customer on the complicated path to conversion – because it doesn’t tell your email readers what you really want them to do.”

• Design Questions
  

  “[…] the initial direct contact with clients during the discovery meeting is likely the most important moment in the life of a project. While most of my previous reference in this regard has been toward the establishment of designer competence and development of fellowship with the client, there is another vital aspect to this initial meeting: the specific questions asked.”

• US Privacy Update: Experts Offer 6 Strategies to Build Consumer Trust
  

  “With 30% of the online population wary of giving out their personal information due to privacy concerns and 51% not trusting search engines to keep their search data secret, it’s an understatement to say that privacy is still a hot-button issue — for consumers and marketers alike. […] We talked to a former Federal Trade Commissioner and a privacy expert about collecting cookie data, ways to build consumer trust and five privacy failures. Plus, three marketers’ policies you should emulate.”

• Market Perception: The Good, The Evil, and Switching Sides
• No More Campaigns | How Google is trying to change the way the marketing industry (and everyone else) thinks
• Love is Alive
• 25 excellent usability/UX articles and resources
• Attention Marketers: You’re not special
• The Four Returns Of Social Media Marketing
• A Simple Four-Step Strategy for Developing Content That Connects
• FREE is not a Benefit
• Is it Worth it to Flash Your Customers?
• Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful

• Market Perception: The Good, The Evil, and Switching Sides
  

  “In the world of social media, is your company good or is it evil? Reputation management, or more specifically market perception management goes hand in hand with successful social media marketing. Which side of the fence will your company fall on?”

• No More Campaigns | How Google is trying to change the way the marketing industry (and everyone else) thinks
  

  “In another era, you ran a campaign around a specific time (say Christmas), but in Google’s world, where you only pay for clicks (aka leads), it’s silly to think that way. A lead in March is worth the same as a lead in December, so why aren’t you running your ads all year long? […] What’s more, since you’re not paying for impressions, there’s no reason not to embrace an endless number of messages (minus cost of producing them, of course). Whereas when you’re running a television commercial you need to chose the one message that will resonate best with your one target, on Google you can use all those other messages that hit the cutting room floor.”

• Love is Alive
  

  “The Consumer Republic is a place of crystal transparency, attention scarcity, digital time travel, extreme collaboration and explosive choice. People today have to make more choices in a single day than a caveman did in a lifetime.”

• 25 excellent usability/UX articles and resources
  

  “Today I thought I’d share some of the most valuable usability and user experience articles and resources I currently know, in a somewhat wild mix. Since there’s presumably enough to read and talk about later, please welcome some great articles and research papers you hopefully enjoy that much as I do…”

• Attention Marketers: You’re not special
  

  “You know who is special? Your fans. Your loyal advocates. Your voluntary evangelists. That’s why they should be treated like rock stars. Sure, you might have to swallow your pride and admit it when they come up with an idea that you could’ve never, ever thought of. But rest in the fact that you’re leading the charge to engage, listen and even act on those conversations.”

• The Four Returns Of Social Media Marketing
  

  “There are essentially four different types of return that you can expect from a successful social media marketing campaign: links, mindshare/branding, sales and consumer interaction.”

• A Simple Four-Step Strategy for Developing Content That Connects
  

  “Here’s a simple formula for creating content that effectively communicates your point, especially if the subject matter is novel or complex. This strategy can also dramatically reduce the time it takes you to put together tutorials, whitepapers, or presentations of any sort.”

• FREE is not a Benefit
  

  “It’s a feature. We think it’s a benefit because we know what we offer has value. It benefits from our experience and it’s designed to get someone to act on something. Yet our prospects and users have not discovered any of that yet.”

• Is it Worth it to Flash Your Customers?
  

  “From just switching the two images, homepage abandonment decreased by 28.57%. The new image was static, displayed more information and was easier to read. Nothing was animated or rotating in Flash.”

• Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful
  

  “The case against breadcrumbs is crumbling. Every year we see more people use breadcrumbs in our studies. Because breadcrumbs are not important enough for a dedicated study, I don’t have an exact number for the current percentage of breadcrumb users. But it’s definitely growing over time.”

• Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site
• How to: Receiving Customer Feedback
• Wireframing With Patterns
• Time Rich or Time Poor?
• Web 3.0: When Web Sites Become Web Services
• Attention Mapping: The 10-Point Exercise
• 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle
• Do These Headlines Work For You?
• 12 ways to pimp your office
• Temporarily pause active applications

• Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site
  

  “Years ago, I would have jumped head-first into a project like this, and started working on detailed mockups from day one. This approach forced me into making several different design decisions about layout, color, typography, etc., all at the same time, and usually would result in design gridlock. For this reason, I now tend to split my design process into somewhat separate phases: wireframing, design exploration, and detailing. In this article, I’ll attempt to detail those phases with some practical examples from the design of the ExpressionEngine.com website, as well as demonstrate what to do if the process encounters snags.”

• How to: Receiving Customer Feedback
  

  “A necessarily numbered list of tips from our experiences… […] Some great examples of smart data collection is Last.fm and DIGG. Both companies have great examples of going against user feedback and opting for using the data to change directions to create a healthier community. For example, DIGG’s removal of the top diggers list was not popular, but did a great deal for balancing the ecosystem. Last.fm’s mining of the attention data has informed their smart feature roll-outs all along.”

• Wireframing With Patterns
  

  “Wireframes can comprise many different patterns, each of which is a discrete element that provides specific functionality and may include instructive copy, images, text fields, buttons, links, etcetera. Together, the patterns create a complete Web page. Of course, when wireframing in patterns, it always helps if there is a pre-existing library of patterns to draw from, but I have found that getting through the first wireframe reveals most of the reusable patterns.”

• Time Rich or Time Poor?
  

  “Broadly speaking, there are two types of internet users, Time Rich and Time Poor. I’d speculate that many of the readers of this blog fall into the Time Poor category, but the vast majority of internet users fall into the Time Rich category. […] its important to know who your audience is, and to make sure that you don’t let your own experience and that of other Time Poor people guide you wrong.”

• Web 3.0: When Web Sites Become Web Services
  

  “Today’s Web has terabytes of information available to humans, but hidden from computers. It is a paradox that information is stuck inside HTML pages, formatted in esoteric ways that are difficult for machines to process. The so called Web 3.0, which is likely to be a pre-cursor of the real semantic web, is going to change this. What we mean by ‘Web 3.0′ is that major web sites are going to be transformed into web services - and will effectively expose their information to the world.”

• Attention Mapping: The 10-Point Exercise
  

  “Your Business Needs an Attention Strategy […] This applies to all marketing efforts—even yours. You might feel that, well, your industry is a little different. People will take their time with it. You don’t need to rush to get to the point. But your industry isn’t different. Your customers are human, and humans have a lot of distractions. Regardless of your line of work, or your medium of communication, it’s essential that you maximize your use of potential customers’ attention.”

• 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle
  

  “Great posts are hard to do consistently on a day-to-day basis. Probloggers really have to work at it. I thought about all the different ways and angles a blogger can approach choosing posting topics. Here are 101 different ideas that I think are great to stimulate your mind and jumpstart your blogging.”

• Do These Headlines Work For You?
  

  “Often the key to great editing is knowing when to keep your hands off, despite the fact that we might have taken a different approach ourselves. Feel free to voice contrary opinions in the comments—I always love to hear suggestions on how to make any headline better.”

• 12 ways to pimp your office (hat tip: Jason Macemore)
  

  “I’m not going to claim that a fancy desk or a weird chair is going to magically improve your creativity and productivity - but I am damn sure, that all that sameness and eternal corporate grayness, does nothing good for your ability to come up with great new ideas.”

• Temporarily pause active applications (for Mac users)
  

  “Every program you’re using on your Mac (obviously) uses some portion of your CPU. And the more you’re asking a given program to do, generally speaking, the more of your CPU it will use. For instance, Safari with one window open isn’t going to load your CPU too heavily. But open seven new windows, put six tabs in each window, and then load up 42 of your favorite web-based Flash games, and you’ll find that Safari is now demanding quite a bit from the CPU.”

• 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
• The Seven Tips for Agency Survival
• Top Bloggers on Communities
• Five Principles to Design By
• Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design
• Innov8 (or Die): What Banks Can Learn from Geek Squad
• The Future of Online Publishing
• Twelve Tips for Conducting Effective Surveys
• Think Outside ‘the’ Web Site for Post-Click Marketing
• Research Is a Method, Not a Methodology

• 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
  

  “Several usability findings lead directly to higher sales and increased customer loyalty. These design tactics should be your first priority when updating your website.”

• The Seven Tips for Agency Survival
  

  “Agencies need to make sure that everyone in the agency’s employ truly update their knowledge on the new media, creative and business landscape. If your people aren’t tinkering with alternative media, branded storytelling, retail and the techniques that really matter, encourage them, force them and if they can’t do it, replace them.”

• Top Bloggers on Communities
  

  “Here is a list of bloggers that focus on community development, management and engagement”

• Five Principles to Design By
  

  “Unlike Art, Design is always contextual. It matters when a design was created because of the context of its use: what problem is it supposed to solve? And for whom? At what point in time? This is why design is so related to technology, because technology changes so quickly, so must our designs. A design that worked ten years ago might not even be worth considering today. History is littered with wonderful designs that are no longer necessary.”

• Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design
  

  “On home pages and story level pages, eye patterns indicated that text that isn’t precise and images that aren’t information-bearing don’t get looks, amounting to wasted space. […] According to Coyne users treat pages with superfluous images like obstacle courses: The images create barriers to content. Moreover, Nielsen and Coyne concluded that images appearing unneeded, at least peripherally, will be erroneously tuned out.”

• Innov8 (or Die): What Banks Can Learn from Geek Squad
  

  “That’s the riddle. We tend to give up too easily and just throw our hands up, saying, “Well, we can’t innovate,” and then complain. But that’s a form of competition because that kind of attitude prevents you from beating your competitors.”

• The Future of Online Publishing
  

  “Media brands matter less than they used to; tools and applications are the new editorial bundles; and agencies must also lead with technology, or die. […] The surest way to succeed, he suggested, is to offer an application that enables consumers to do your marketing for you. […] Greenberg challenged agencies to change immediately to accommodate a new chain of influence that starts with technology and ends with content that has been crafted and delivered to the consumer’s specifications: Technology > Consumer > Advertiser > Agency > Content. […] His grim reminder: “At the end of the life cycle, there is no life,” was coupled with his advice to choose your future and plan for how you will get there.”

• Twelve Tips for Conducting Effective Surveys
  

  “Give your customers a good reason to answer your survey. Offer them a discount or give them a gift certificate. You’re asking them to do you a favor, so show your appreciation. Make sure the incentive is somewhat relevant to the customer’s interests. You wouldn’t give away an extreme-sports vacation to someone who would rather watch them on TV.”

• Think Outside ‘the’ Web Site for Post-Click Marketing
  

  “A Web marketing path starts with a landing page, but instead of trying to cram an entire pitch and offer into one screen, a good path will use that first page to gently segment the respondent. It gives them 2-3 choices of what to click next—a branch in the path—to identify what’s most relevant to them. The second page of the path then delivers on that promise, providing a deeper and more targeted presentation.”

• Research Is a Method, Not a Methodology
  

  “…I want to shift assumptions about research: Namely, stop thinking of it as a necessary approach to design and start thinking of it as just a helpful tool. Saying that research is required for every project would be like saying that all projects need wireframes or content analyses, which just isn’t the case. Yes, research is good for many types of projects (as outlined above), but it isn’t always a necessity.”

• Accessibility matters to…
• Control is Evangelism’s Kryptonite
• Why We Need to Rethink the Way we Look at Customer Service
• Why Employee Satisfaction Is Also Your Business
• The Attention Economy: An Overview
• Using social media sites for reputation management
• Experimentation and Testing Exposed - Optimization Approach #1
• Not trapping users’ data = GOOD
• The Swinging Pendulum of Business Theory
• Offending Experts and Pleasing Everybody

• Accessibility matters to…
  

  “Accessibility, in many people’s eyes, only matters to pernickety web designers/developers. I thought it would be interesting to give some reasons why it matters to many (if not all) people. The list isn’t exhaustive, but a good taster.”

• Control is Evangelism’s Kryptonite
  

  “But the loss of control kills the customer’s enthusiasm for the product and the brand. Which leads to less efficient marketing, as companies have to spend more and more to reach customers that they don’t understand as well as their evangelists do/could.”

• Why We Need to Rethink the Way we Look at Customer Service
  

  “Over the course of my career in marketing, I worked very closely with a number of highly skilled and universally loved customer service reps. […] It never ceases to amaze me how hard it is for organizations to structure their business in a way that will let these people shine while they do what they do best.”

• Why Employee Satisfaction Is Also Your Business
  

  “While there still is a correlation between job satisfaction and compensation (which is also, not coincidentally, correlated with age), employees typically list other factors as a cause of dissatisfaction. As it turns out, much it is simple, good old-fashioned appreciation, which I believe is best demonstrated when a company utilizes an employee’s strengths.”

• The Attention Economy: An Overview
  

  “When information is abundant, the false positives are very costly - they are basically deal breakers. Consumers happily leave sites, knowing there are a ton of alternatives out there. Unfortunately, this becomes a lose-lose situation, because if consumers rarely find satisfying experiences then retailers won’t get consumer dollars. The idea behind the Attention Economy is to create a marketplace where consumers are happy, because if they are shown relevant information - then retailers are happy too, because happy consumers spend money!”

• Using social media sites for reputation management
  

  “You need to be securing the proper usernames and URLs on these sites and you need to do it fast. Just like there are domain squatters there are also squatters for the best profile names on the most popular social media sites. The problem with that is you don’t want someone else using these sites to rank for your brand name or any other phrase that could jeopardize your reputation.”

• Experimentation and Testing Exposed - Optimization Approach #1
  

  “Testing is a “white box” approach that offers confidence and transparency. When done thoughtfully, it gives feedback you can trust about what your consumer actually responds to. […] And frankly, knowing what the customer responds to might be one of the most strategic parts of marketing.”

• Not trapping users’ data = GOOD
  

  “When users get what they want from you quickly and easily, they’re more likely to come back next time. (Shh. Don’t tell anyone else this vital secret.) Part of that is feeling that they aren’t “trapped”–that they can leave you behind if they want.”

• The Swinging Pendulum of Business Theory
  

  “What bothers me about much of the innovation talk is the undertone that you can simply apply certain methods and approaches and voila — you’ve got innovation. […] I’m not advocating against methodologies such as user-centered design — I just don’t think it (or any other approach) succeeds without talent — talent to innovate in a way that is meaningful, not gratuitous.”

• Offending Experts and Pleasing Everybody
  

  “products designed to map closely to the needs of experts are often turn-offs to beginners and intermediates. Users who come across features that reveal not just the complexity but also the specificity that experts need often quickly decide, “This isn’t for me.” Rarely will a beginner find herself delighted as to how well a product has been designed to map to a skillset she doesn’t yet have.”

• The Official CGM Glossary
• 16 Social Media Networking Ideas for Marketers
• Amazon.com’s Social Design
• Mequoda Email Newsletter Scorecard
• Links Are the Grammar of the Web
• Branding is for cattle
• The Rights and Wrongs of Brand Evangelism!
• Landing Pages & the Value of First Impressions
• Banner Blindness
• Advertising on Loading Screens

• The Official CGM Glossary
  

  “

  • CGM: Consumer Generated Media (example: unaided review on message board or blog)
  • CGM2: Consumer Generated Multimedia (example: “I love my iPod video”)
  • CFM: Consumer Fortified Media (example: Dove “Evolution” video spot)
  • CSM: Consumer Solicited Media or “co-creation” (example: “create your own” Super Bowl ads)
  • CCGM: Compensated Consumer Generated Media (benign example: Revver, ugly scenario: PayPerPost meets video)

  ”

• 16 Social Media Networking Ideas for Marketers
  

  “1. Find who is linking and mentioning you: review your stats, create an RSS feed and Google Alerts that include your blog url, blog title and your name.
  9. Extend a discussion on your blog and link to the blogger/s who contributed.
  10. Develop a habit of courtesy linking - acknowledging where ideas are from (see #7, #8, #11).
  13. Interview a blogger.”

• Amazon.com’s Social Design
  

  “Now, we’re not feature counters by any means, but we have seen the features on Amazon provide a tremendous amount of value to users during testing of the site. The product reviews, for example, are a huge advantage Amazon holds over other e-commerce sites…people really trust the reviews there compared to everywhere else.”

• Mequoda Email Newsletter Scorecard
  

  “The Mequoda Email Newsletter Scorecard encourages you to score your email newsletters on each of the 10 Mequoda Best Practice Guidelines, add them together and arrive at a cumulative score. The goal is to emphasize the importance of balanced, usable and effective email newsletters. Your email newsletter should achieve respectable scores in all areas, rather than over-emphasizing a single area or two or omitting other areas completely.”

• Links Are the Grammar of the Web
  

  “Linking is the grammar of the Web. Never say “in the following section” when you can link directly to the exact place people need to get to. Why talk about the launch of your new product, when you can invite customers to see a demo or download a trial version?”

• Branding is for cattle
  

  “Marketers who obsess about brand usually focus on aesthetics over buyers. They are more interested in the color scheme of the Web site than in meeting their buyers’ needs with a content marketing strategy. They care about logos not buyers. They research color schemes instead of the market. Countless marketers got their knickers in a twist about the outward manifestation of an organization’s brand–including logos, image ads, and tchotchkes–all at the expense of buyers and what they need to understand the company — especially the content found on the company’s site. Well, they are flaky wimps if that’s what they do.”

• The Rights and Wrongs of Brand Evangelism!
  

  “Every workday, the Lurker trolls the Internet. He dips into frequent-traveler electronic bulletin boards to check the postings about his employer, Starwood Hotels & Resorts. He ferrets out comments on any of the big hotel chains that operate under Starwood’s corporate umbrella — Westin, Sheraton, St. Regis or W….He dispatches an e-mail to the sender or posts his own message on the electronic bulletin board.”

• Landing Pages & the Value of First Impressions
  

  “The UVP is your site’s first chance to begin a dialogue with its visitors. In very simple language, clearly describe what you do, how it’s unique from your competitors, and how your customers benefit from your products and/or services. Don’t try to figure out the magic of persuasion until you’ve first addressed this one critical–and criminally overlooked–element.”

• Banner Blindness
  

  “A usability study by The Nielsen/Norman Group (June 2006) highlights (literally) the importance of “breaking through the clutter,” or in this case, “content.” The study uncovered a phenomenon called ‘Banner Blindness’ where users focus almost exclusively on the content of a page and ignore the banners.”

• Advertising on Loading Screens
  

  “Why aren’t there any ads or other info snippets on loading screens of Flash-heavy websites? It’s a huge missed opportunity since people actually look at these screens so that they don’t miss the a-ha! moment, but are utterly bored and would be grateful for some entertainment. For an inspiration, play some video games. The Sims and Sim City franchises keep people smiling with cute pseudo-scientific nonsense such as the blurb below informing players that the game is “mitigating time-stream discontinuities”.”

• WSJ: Using a Customer’s Journey to Tell a Compelling Story
• Even if it’s made to be viral, it’s not viral until it goes viral
• 7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization
• 2 Simple Steps to Finding Your Website’s Voice
• 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
• Minimizing Usability Risks in Web Applications
• The Complete Ad-Writer’s 12-Pack
• Color Me Bad? or ‘How Not to Waste Your Time’
• How to kill innovation hype
• swfIR: swf Image Replacement

• WSJ: Using a Customer’s Journey to Tell a Compelling Story
  

  “The WSJ seems to understand that in order to broaden their audience, they have to get away from the stuffy old-boy newspaper reputation that they might have. This campaign, with its real people/real stories, makes the paper seem that much more accessible to a wider range of readers. There may be a lot of people in the world who have kept the WSJ in the money/markets/business box up until now, with no idea how much more “human interest” and cultural perspective the paper covers as well. This campaign helps to subtly change that view.”

• Even if it’s made to be viral, it’s not viral until it goes viral.
  

  “It will never cease to amaze me what videos get picked up and go viral and what doesn’t. I’m not a viral expert, but I don’t think that there is any magic bullet for creating a viral video.”

• 7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization
  

  “This is by no means a definitive look at what matters on landing pages. There are more than seven rules. For additional insight I would direct you to this three-part series on Landing Page Optimization. However, these seven basic elements are ones I’ve used consistently for many years now with great results.”

• 2 Simple Steps to Finding Your Website’s Voice
  

  “Every website visit is a conversation. Think about it. The web is an interactive medium. Every time you click you ask a question. You interact with the company or brand. What kind of answers are you getting? Do you get a sense of whom you are talking to? Do you have any sense of who the company/brand is?”

• 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
  

  “Sometimes it’s just like searching for a needle in a haystack: if you’ve ever googled for free and quality WordPress Themes, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Most designers love to create WordPress themes, so they can demonstrate the quality of their work and add some fresh works to their portfolios.”

• Minimizing Usability Risks in Web Applications
  

  “Desktop applications may seamlessly incorporate content from the Web – and use web conventions such as hyperlinks. Web-based applications provide functionality previously only found on the desktop. As these two worlds converge, new types of usability risks emerge. […] When designing interactions for web applications, think in terms of how you can make a function require less time, less physical effort, and less cognitive effort.”

• The Complete Ad-Writer’s 12-Pack
  

  “Here, in one easy-to-open package, are twelve simple, practical, and hopefully helpful tips to make it easier for you to write better right now.”

• Color Me Bad? or ‘How Not to Waste Your Time’
  

  “Aside from the twin factors of legibility and good taste (based on target demographic), color tests were *never* a big factor in improving conversion rates […] Websites designed to sell are conversion-oriented and task or process-conscious and don’t hide behind unnecessary visual drama. Sure, deeper in the process, some sites throw in a glitzy feature (like a rotating view of a product), but you shouldn’t rely on glitz to reach the goal.”

• How to kill innovation hype
  

  “Today the word innovation is a common placeholder - Instead of saying “we are smart”, “we are good” or “we are willing to try new ideas”, messages that can be examined for truth, the word innovation is thrown down ambiguously, as if it were a replacement for having a message, or stating one clearly.”

• swfIR: swf Image Replacement
  

  “swfIR (swf Image Replacement) is here to solve some of the design limitations of the standard HTML image and its widely-accepted associated CSS values, while still supporting standards-based design concepts. Using the dark arts of JavaScript and Flash, swfIR gives you the ability to apply an assortment of visual effects to any or all images on your website. Through progressive enhancement, it looks through your page and can easily add some new flavor to standard image styling.”

• Image Blocking in Email Clients: Current Conditions and Best Practices
• Designing for Content
• Making Meaning to Customers, Employees
• “If you know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
• One Out of Four Consumers Use Preview Panes; 59% Block Email Images
• Permission starts at home(page)
• Seven steps to remarkable customer service
• Does Your Copy Hold Up To A Quick Glance?
• The Compassionate Creative: Calling for Advertisers to Let Empathy and Insight Drive Design
• Five weeeeeeeeird tips for great meetings
• Are You Ready to Radically Trust Your Consumers?

• Image Blocking in Email Clients: Current Conditions and Best Practices
  

  “Many people, either by email client defaults or personal preference, are blocking images in the HTML-formatted messages they are accepting. And then there are a small number of people who block HTML entirely. As David Greiner points out, according to a study by Epsilon Interactive 30% of your recipients don’t even know that images are disabled. In any case, it’s logical for recipients to block images and good practice for us to prepare for this scenario.”

• Designing for Content
  

  “Even the longest journeys begin with a single step. The redesign of this site is just that—one step. It isn’t meant to be revolutionary or flashy. Instead, it’s meant to enable and focus on the creation of better content.
  ”

• Making Meaning to Customers, Employees
  

  “Below are the fifteen experiences that emerged most often in their research. […] This list may come in handy when you’re developing new products, briefing creative materials, or in an examination of your brand. You should apply this both inside and outside your organization.”

• “If you know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
  

  “… and if in fact you do know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
  -Joseph G. Gavin, Jr., discussing the design of the lunar module that landed NASA astronauts on the moon.
  ”

• One Out of Four Consumers Use Preview Panes; 59% Block Email Images
  

  “If you send email to consumers and/or small businesses, you may want to get with your email designer as soon as you’ve reviewed Sherpa’s new study data. 1,323 online consumers over age 18 just told us how they view their email. Turns out 26.6% use preview panes (instead of look at your whole email) and 59% routinely block images. Here are more details, including four exclusive data charts, five screenshots of how email appears in preview panes and two what-to-do-next hotlinks”

• Permission starts at home(page)
  

  “Your sign up page on your website (or even offline) can answer a lot of questions in the minds of potential subscribers.

  • Why should I sign up for this email?
  • How often will I get emails from you?
  • When will I get the first one?
  • How can I get off the list?
  • What else will you do with my email address?
  • What will it look like?

  ”

• Seven steps to remarkable customer service
  

  “When customers have a problem and you fix it, they’re actually going to be even more satisfied than if they never had a problem in the first place.”

• Does Your Copy Hold Up To A Quick Glance?
  

  “For the purposes of web design, think of your writing as a series of visual cues designed to turn scanners into readers. As a dedicated scanner myself, I can attest to the effectiveness of these methods—some of them I even found myself using whilst searching for information for this article.”

• The Compassionate Creative: Calling for Advertisers to Let Empathy and Insight Drive Design
  

  “We tend to customize our research approach based on how much a client feels they already know about their customers. But we will not skimp on persona development. The persona itself can take many forms, from a single sheet of paper to a video biography to a set of physical artifacts. […] I find that our focus on empathetic research is moving us away from the techniques of traditional marketing (typically focus groups and other consumer panels) and closer to the realm of user-centered design, particularly disciplines like product design and environmental design.”

• Five weeeeeeeeird tips for great meetings
  

  “If we really want fun, positive meetings, where all participants can speak their mind, where new ideas are generated and developed and where the time is used as efficiently as possible, we need to go beyond the usual advice and try something slightly weird. This blogpost presents some ways you can do that.”

• Are You Ready to Radically Trust Your Consumers?
  

  “
  Let me say it again: Consumers have no reason to trust you - particularly in conquest. That we even call it “conquest” should be an indication as to why we’ve never really earned trust in the first place.
  ”

• ‘Automated’ Advertising Systems Another Threat to Agency Infrastructure
• Early and often: How to avoid the design revision death spiral
• Web Misunderstandards
• Don’t be the weakest link (hat tip: Jason Macemore)
• The Village Stew
• Free Newsletter Templates
• Cool 2.0 Ideas Executed With 1.0 Mindset
• Sheepwalking
• Good Headings help, bad Headings hurt (hat tip: Jason Macemore)
• Why Spec Creative Doesn’t Pay

• ‘Automated’ Advertising Systems Another Threat to Agency Infrastructure
  

  “More and more, the advertising business is becoming commoditized with services that make it ever easier for advertisers to circumvent the infrastructure that the industry has built over the last 100 years. Every year, another do-it-yourself service crops up offering companies tools to create their own advertising without the need for an agency. Certainly, these services will not replace ad agencies but they may take a dent out of their revenue stream.”

• Early and often: How to avoid the design revision death spiral
  

  “…it is important to differentiate what I am referring to as a “requirement” from a feature of the product. We often use “need” and “requirement” interchangeably as an abstract description of a product capability. We try not to conflate the need and the solution because doing this can stand in the way of truly creative breakthrough solution.
  ”

• Web Misunderstandards
  

  “If traditional graphic design is 2–dimensional, Web design is 4 or 5–dimensional. Such is the context designers must appreciate in order to understand the benefits and relevance of Web standards and design’s place is in the online environment. Yes, it’s complex. But this is no barrier to accomplishment where human beings are concerned.”

• Don’t be the weakest link (hat tip: Jason Macemore)
  

  “In a world of social participation, AJAX and rich user experience, the humble hypertext link can seem so web 1.0. However, this often-neglected tag is the fundamental building block of every web application and is in the front line for usability. This article seeks to re-evaluate its role and suggest some best practice for its use.”

• The Village Stew
  

  “The politics involved in building a large corporate website always make for an interesting dynamic. Contrary to what one might assume regarding strength in numbers, typically, the more people involved in the process, the more diluted the final product. When I worked for a Fortune 500 company, our web team struggled to convey this message to the multiple layers of middle management, while we pushed for a more agile development strategy. Finally, a delicate way of describing the problem of design by committee dawned on me. I have come to refer to this group-think phenomenon as village stew.”

• Free Newsletter Templates
  

  “ Kekeko.com proudly presents the free newsletter template archive. The templates gathered here have been used to great effect before and are created by professionals. Use them as you see fit, share them with friends and partners. Experiment and enjoy!”

• Cool 2.0 Ideas Executed With 1.0 Mindset
  

  “Great idea? Absolutely. Award winning design? Of Course. Did it test well in front of focus groups? Indupidably. Is it a pain in the ass when you start to try and use it? You bet.”

• Sheepwalking
  

  “I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line.”

• Good Headings help, bad Headings hurt (hat tip: Jason Macemore)
  

  “On paper, the frequency of headings didn’t make much difference. […] But online, the difference is quite obvious. The order is:
  - Medium frequency headings (about every 200 words): the best
  - Low frequency headings (about every 300 words): in the middle
  - High frequency (about every 100 words) and No headings: tied for the worst, with ‘No headings’ slightly ahead.”

• Why Spec Creative Doesn’t Pay
  

  “Unfortunately, a spec campaign has little chance of moving your business forward. Why? Because a spec campaign is typically developed with only the most dangerous input: the preconceived notions, biases and personal experience of the team creating the work. A pitch process doesn’t provide enough time or resources to enable the agency to do the appropriate amount of consumer-insight work. Without proper understanding of the target audience and the marketplace, how can the agency possibly develop an appropriate strategy?”