Future Now's GrokDotCom / Marketing Optimization BlogMarketing blog focused on marketing optimization, improving website conversion rates, search engine marketing, web analytics, word of mouth, etc.iPhone 3G Shows How to Use Online Video to Sell Products- June 12, 2008 There are a lot of innovative ways to use video to sell products online. After sharing a few examples I recently found with colleagues, we agreed that the video for the new Apple iPhone 3G was one of the most persuasive uses of rich media on a website we&8217;d ever seen. But before we discuss how ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/12/iphone-3g-online-video/ Superhero Copywriting Tips: Holy Persuasion, Batman!- June 11, 2008 Do you have unique, untapped talents to show the world but find your efforts frustrated, either because you&8217;re an outsider or because your own internal resistance gets in the way Would it surprise you to realize that most people self-identify with that description At some level, all of us feel alienated &8212; from others, from ourselves, or ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/11/superhero-copywriting-tips/ Green Marketing Save Some for the Fishes- June 11, 2008 Here&8217;s a great opportunity: The oceans are dying. Seriously, the oceans are in horrible shape, and it&8217;s your fault. You did it, Supply, Demand, Pollution and Overfishing. And if we don&8217;t take ownership now, our brands, our children, and our collective appetite for seafood may never forgive us. I&8217;m not trying to bum you out, but the ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/11/green-marketing-blue-marketing/ The Impact of Site Outages- June 9, 2008 Last week, the online world was jolted with something we all thought was impossible: Amazon.com went down. Outages happen all the time, but there is a scale at which this becomes amazingly rare and the amount of time of the outage was surprising. 30 minutes to two hours doesn&8217;t sound like a lot of time, but ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/09/amazon-website-outage/ The New Borders- June 6, 2008 June 1 marked the official launch of the new Borders.com. Prior to then, Borders had partnered with Amazon, using the e-commerce site to handle the heavy lifting and delivering Borders customers mostly an Amazon experience for about seven years. Now that Borders has total command of its site and controls its customers&8217; online experiences, I have ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/06/borders_redesign/ What You Never Noticed About Googles Homepage- June 5, 2008 We all take the Google homepage for granted. It&8217;s so remarkably simple that (unless you&8217;re, say, a blogger for a website optimization firm) it&8217;s unremarkable; just a text box, two call to action buttons, and a few links that most humans don&8217;t even look at, let alone use. That&8217;s all. But why Why is it that the ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/05/google-homepage-split-testing/ This Fits Just Right- June 4, 2008 The folks from CafePress.com have always impressed us. Many of our long time readers should remember the case study (we reprinted it in Call to Action) of how we helped CafePress reduce an already incredibly low shopping cart abandonment rate of 35% down to just 15%. That&8217;s right, 85 of 100 people who added something to ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/04/this-fits-just-right/ It Takes More Than Words to Out-Karaoke Microsoft- June 2, 2008 Not long ago, Microsoft showed just how bad a corporate motivational video can be with an utterly painful Bruce Springsteen adaptation that proved a fitting soundtrack the equally lackluster Vista operating system. (So much for the &8220;Start Me Up&8221; days of the Windows &8216;95 release.) As a former music journalist and current karaoke champion in my ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/02/bazaarvoice-more-than-words-video/ Give Yourself a Winning Chance with Testing- June 2, 2008 Bryan Eisenberg did a fabulous post on how to get buy-in for conversion rate optimization. It&8217;s a must read for anyone who is trying to get their company or client to do optimization testing. I&8217;ve heard from some folks who got initial buy-in, but whose companies quickly lost the stomach for testing. They ran ...http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/06/02/website-conversion-optimzation-testing/ |