This is worth a read, even on the weekend. It’s Lisa Barone’s live blogging of a webinar with Seth Godin.

To give a taste of what it includes, here are some notes I made but you really need to go and read the whole thing.

• Consumers are starting to expect a lot more direct communication with organisations. The Internet has created channels for this communication and organisations that don’t use these channels will lose customers.
• It’s no longer possible for a company to control their message. Blogging and other avenues have changed the landscape. Now a company better have an authentic story because they won’t be able to hide anything.
• Too few organisations are really embracing the long tail.
• Marketers are obsessed with “how many”. They need to shift their thinking and start focusing on “who” instead.
• The effectiveness of Internet advertsing (ppc) can be measured unlike buying TV ads. That frightens a lot of traditionalists in big companies.
• No-one is forced to read your blog! Blogs need to be a magnet not a microphone.

There is a great thread on cre8asite forums about creating user personas.

The discussion focuses on how to create a better website by thinking about the types of people who might visit the site. The technique is to invent a fictional person or persona for each type and then analyse how that person might interact with the site. The more real or fleshed out the persona, the better able you are to gain insights into what their experience might be on your site. You then use that information to improve the site and better cater for users’ needs.

That’s a quick summary and there are some good explanations and links to other resources in the thread.

Search marketers could benefit from applying this technique. Here are 10 thoughts.

1. People are at different stages in the buying cycle.
2. Each person will probably be doing multiple searches to find what they want. With each search they may learn something that has an influence on the next search.
3. People notice brand names familiar to them.
4. Some people are looking for aggregators first to make their task easier.
5. Often people get the comparison information they want from the aggregators and then seek more information from individual suppliers.
6. Some people ignore anything that they recognise as an ad.
7. Some people go straight to the ads particularly if they have previously found them more relevant to their needs than the organic results.
8. People trust authoritative sounding sites.
9. Some people will select video or images over text.
10. Some people are looking for free information and have no intention to buy.

Marketing Experiments is an excellent website. I’ve been reading their research and case studies for about 18 months and recommend a subscription (it’s free!).

This is a synopsis of their latest study

“We examine how reducing customer anxiety by matching your site’s appearance to prospects’ preconceptions and expectations increases conversion to sale.”

They then outline 8 ways to reduce customer anxiety and increase conversions.

1. Testimonials (they have good advice on how best to incorporate these)
2. Language and Tone
3. Credibility indicators especially 3^rd party ones
4. Site Ratings
5. Guarantee
6. Other anxiety reducing features such as “about us” and customer support information
7. Page design so that the important elements are along the primary eye path
8. Colours and Themes in keeping with the product and the target market

The full report with details of the case studies used to test each element is here. In the two case studies, the first one yielded a 12.7% higher conversion rate after changes were implemented. The second one had a 70.5% higher conversion rate.

If you’ve never subscribed to a website before there’s some really good information on what it’s all about in this post by web strategist, Jeremiah Owyang.

The post is also useful if you have a company website that may benefit from offering feeds such as RSS.

You can start by subscribing to my blog if you’ve never been through the process before. You need a feedreader. I like netvibes and it’s quick, easy and free to set up an account with them. Then all you do is click the subscribe link on the left, or above, and select netvibes or any other reader. When you look at your netvibes page my blog feed will be there.

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