According to copywriting legend Eugene Schwartz, a headline’s main job isn’t to sell; it’s to gain the readers attention and compel them to read the ad.  And this is sound advice, but the Internet also requires one other thing in today’s web 2.0 copy world… Step 1. Scent: Web copy add...

I guess it was professional curiosity, but I actually clicked one of those facelift-in-a-bottle ads while visiting some blog.  And hell if I wasn’t intrigued by the landing page’s sleaze-bag persuasive techniques. Take a look at the screen shot I took of the landing page.  What do you thin...

As a young teen I heard Mark Knopfler sing about “money for nothing and chicks for free” and I remember fantasizing about how good that sounded but even then I knew that it was too good to be true. I’ve noticed from many of my marketing colleagues that money for nothing is the orde...

How would you like to get business advice from Seth Godin? I did. But then again so did you. Let me explain: On Independence Day, July 4th, 2008, Seth Godin wrote a post titled “Two Simple Web Businesses” where he declared the world’s need for “fixed-price web podiatrists....

That’s my standard response when asked about Social Media.  That’s not to say technology is unimportant, but that technology never really changes how people behave, think, and feel.  Human nature drives that; technology only changes the constraints previously placed on human preferences. If yo...

“There’s no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you’ll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?â€� - Elaine in the movie Airplane Does looking at an instrumentation panel like this (picture on the left) create feelings of infor...

Our friends over at FormArmor have asked us to take their survey on ‘The Hidden Cost of Web Form Abuse.’ Web Form Abuse is an important topic due to the following: Form abuse continues to plague site operators and marketers, big and small Anti-spam measures, like CAPTCHAs, don’t se...

Click here to view the embedded video. Get Elastic’s recent post on reducing friction kicks butt - providing incredibly clear explanations of too-common Website flaws along with great examples of how to do it right.  I wish I wrote it.  Not only did the article reduced me to green-faced envy...

When asking, “Do I really need this� about a product, no one thinks, “Nah, I’ll just make my own sunglasses [or whatever] instead�  - yet prospects do think exactly that about (many) services. And the less knowledge your potential client has in your field, the harder it is for them to gau...

Have you ever received great advice from a consultant but couldn’t implement it? A recommendation is just advice, no matter how excellent, until you implement. It’s only when you implement a recommendation that you reap the rewards. Even when you know the advice is great you can get cons...