I don’t think anyone argues that designing for conversion is important.

But is there more to it than just A/B testing button colors and copywriting?

Great design isn’t just a luxury of high profile websites anymore, in fact it’s more critical.

Good design is now the price of entry, just like having great content. Tweet This

Sound Testing ≠ Good Design

Well tested sites that still have lots of images, tons of plugins dragging down their load times and copying everyone in their field are really just optimizing what is known as their “local maximum” instead of their “true maximum”.

This theory has been exhausted in design circles when talking about the Google example where they used 41 shades of blue to determine which received the most clicks by users.

The reasoning behind what Google is doing is sound, however it is very unlikely that Google is left with the best possible solution.

What Google has instead found is their local maximum. The best possible solution given their current framework.

That is vastly different than the absolute maximum.

It’s easier to understand when you think about the idea of banner blindness and human conditioning.

If you visit the same site over and over, eventually you become desensitized to the ads and the publisher sees a decline in clicks and total revenue.

Change the color? They see another small blip that eventually goes away, and the process continues.

But what happens if a publisher completely changes the structure of their website?

BOOM, they see a huge spike in all the valuable metrics.

Email optins, sales conversions and ad clicks all sky rocket.

Not being afraid to take a design risk

Taking risks is just part of business and really being successful at just about anything.

If you aren’t willing to take risks – then someone who is willing to do so will walk home disproportionately rewarded for their efforts.

Most people are familiar with the advantage of being a first mover into a market because no one else has done it before, but it works for things even more simple than that.

Think I’m crazy? How many photo sharing sites have you seen over the past few years?

Hundreds if not thousands.

But then the primarily female dominated Pinterest came along and shook things up.

Now? They drive more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

They took a design risk and paid off big time.

Creating a lightweight experience

One of the big things people don’t acutely understand is how important load times are for conversion goals.

For instance, Amazon found that for every 100ms in additional load time sales dropped 1% (Kohavi and Longbotham 2007).

To continue with our example above, Google found that going from a 10-results page that loaded in .4 seconds to a 30-results page that loaded in .9 seconds resulted in an ad revenue drop of 20% (Linden 2006). No one can ignore these numbers, but it only means one thing.

You have to cut the fat from your site. Top WordPress design experts like Jason Schuller have done extensive testing on what it takes to make their sites load quickly.

The #1 contributing factor to their slower site? Too many plugins.

If you are running a blog, you need to take a serious look at your plugin list and start cutting the stuff you don’t really need.

Basically all the functions of a plugin can be hard coded in as well, so if it’s something simple like adding Google Analytics find someone who can drop the code in easily or use a framework like Thesis or Genesis to bundle most of that kind of feature set.

I’ve used both of the above frameworks and each has their strengths.

In addition to cutting the functions that happen behind the scenes, there is plenty to cut that is visible to your audience right now.

As Derek Halpern of Social Triggers has been preaching for quite a while, get rid of your search box.

Do you know who uses the search field the most? You do, as the publisher. You have a search built on the backend, so don’t waste valuable engagement space on something that is actually rarely used.

Don’t lose sleep over the idea of people not finding on-site content. Google & Bing are better at helping them find that information anyway.

Action list to improve design

Now on to the awesome stuff, the things you can actually to do.

1. If you have website on WordPress take a serious look at your list of plugins.

Cut what you can, and consider consolidating functionality into Thesis or Genesis if you aren’t a coder and can’t afford to hire one.

2. See what isn’t being used on your site (such as the search box).

This should be treated like backpacking, if you put it in your bag and then never used it. Get rid of it the next time around.

Other culprits to look for are social sharing options that aren’t being used (No one using that LinkedIn Share? dump it). These tools prove to be negative social proof.

3. Take a hard look at the theme or overall design you are using. If it looks exactly like everyone else, do something different.

Does this mean you have to re-invent the wheel? Absolutely not. However, there are enough good themes with flexibility out there that you can infuse your own DNA into the site.

If your business has a consumer facing product, and you sell it based on features alone then you are doing it wrong.

The biggest shift that marketing in our generation is going through isn’t just technological in the sense of the mobile revolution, focus on location aware software, or even about the social fabric that ties everything together. Instead, in order to have a successful consumer product you need to focus on the experiences and tell an interesting story.

Think I’m kidding? Let’s take a look at some of the most effective marketing that has cemented users into a particular ecosystem, regardless of the fact that the competition arguably has more advanced technology. Instead, these companies focused on a user experience that delights their customers coupled with a marketing campaign that makes them feel something and creates an emotional understanding that the competition can’t quite create.

Example #1: Apple iPad

Arguably the master of their craft, Apple has built a culture around creating products with features the mass consumer can actually understand. The iPhone doesn’t just take 8mp f/2.4 photos, it records crystal clear memories. FaceTime isn’t just another web chat application, it’s a seamless way to see the people you love. The list goes on and on, and they have crafted their marketing formula around making technology get out of the way and giving people experiences.

Their recent iPad advertisement entitled “Love” is a great example of how they aren’t marketing just a tablet that is mostly a “nice to have” and is running on 3G networks while their competitors are running on much faster 4G LTE networks. Instead, they give examples of how creatives, curious youth and others can have enriched experiences with their device.

Example #2: The New Twitter

Twitter has long struggled with explaining to most of their 100 million customer base exactly what the heck the value of their service even is. Most people jokingly referred to Twitter as the service that lets everyone know what you had for lunch and how many times you had to go to the bathroom today, but for those of us who are more veteran Twitter users we fully understand the power of serendipity that Twitter can cause – and put simply it feels like magic.

With their latest release however, they also have done a much better job of marketing with the below advertisement by focusing on discovery (and the natural serendipitous nature of if) that shows how users can experience what feels like being a part of something bigger. Whether that something bigger is Egypt overthrowing their dictator or seeing a Tweet from space, it’s a larger than life experience that few other places really offer.

Example #3: Path 2

About a year ago, Path launched is a close network photo sharing application that was clean but didn’t have the magic formula to get any tangible traction. That all changed about a week ago when Path 2 launched as they understood that their niche to fill was not just another photo sharing app that only lets you share with family. Instead it’s a network that focuses on people you really care about (close friends, family etc), but also gives you the ability to broadcast information that you are comfortable sharing to more public networks such as Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook etc.

The video they used to launch Path 2 does a brilliant job of showing how most people only really care about a tight network of people anyway and that it’s not a race to see how many friends you can collect on your network of choice. Instead it was about high quality images, videos and experiences along your “path” of life that you want to share with your closest people. Quality > Quantity.

What can you improve with your own product?

This is the real question, have you been promoting your product service based on it’s differentiated features from your competitors? Or have you been focusing on how their experience will have a spark of magic in it? While most of my close friends are tech savvy, I can say that most consumers are not – but that’s actually a good thing.

By having customers who care about how a product improves their life instead of trying to keep up with the latest acronyms and other industry jargon they can focus on living their lives while you delight them along the way. Think about how you can modify the way you present yourself to focus more on the experience rather than the newest flux capacitor on your widget.

The American dream used to be a white picket fence, 2.5 kids and a Mercedes in the drive way. But things have changed a little bit…

Today, the dream is to own a business. To be an entrepreneur.

It’s a really interesting culture shift when you think about it, sure many people still value what was previously “the dream”, but the idea of not fitting into the corporate mold and instead being your own free agent is much more enticing than being a modestly paid mid-level executive.

Look at the recently idolized American icons like Steve Jobs, who in his passing was labeled as the Einstein of our time (I don’t think that’s far off either in my opinion). But Steve Jobs was a true entrepreneur in every sense of the word, he started several wildly successful ventures and did his biggest act twice.

Being an entrepreneur isn’t just about risk taking though, it’s about satisfying the urge to push innovation forward and really change things. Entrepreneurship is quickly becoming one of America’s favorite past-times because the dream of starting something from nothing in your proverbial garage and turning it into a billion dollar business lights a fire in the soul of so many young aspiring minds.

It is important to note however, that for many it’s not just the money or the fame of being an innovator that drives them to do what they do. Entrepreneurs get into it because they truly think they can change the world – they don’t accept the status quo. Entrepreneurs exist to solve problems both known and foreign to the consumer population.

Ignoring the word “NO”

It’s likely that you know at least one entrepreneur in your life, and they have probably appeared hardheaded at times when they just won’t take no for an answer on anything. It’s not that they are pushy, but that they imagine things in a different way than everyone else. They have a vision of what COULD be, instead of what is.

An interesting example for this way of thinking comes again from Steve Jobs in his insistence to not do market research. He would famously say “I don’t ask people what they want, because I haven’t created it yet.” Unfortunately for many people who work a 9-to-5 job that they hate, even if they re-imagine how things could be they seem to always fall short of taking action.

What’s stopping you?

If you are reading this post or this blog, chances are good that you have an entrepreneurial spirit and are either deep intro entrepreneurship now, or would like to be.

So I pose two questions, one to each type:

1. If you ARE an entrepreneur, what’s stopping you from having the breakaway success and bringing your imagination to reality? There are people like me all over the place that would love to help you.

2. If you WANT to be involved with entrepreneurship, why haven’t you started? Do you blame not having enough time but watch TV? Resources and money but you buy Starbucks?

Life is your canvas, we are all waiting.

We always hear a lot of buzz around mobile, how apps are changing the way of business, and seeing a ton of money move into the mobile sector. But have you ever really thought about how you spend time using your phone?

Here is an infographic from SMS Marketing company Tatango that illustrates exactly how people are using their smart phones:

It’s not uncommon for people to reach out to me and say things like “Internet marketing doesn’t work” or “it’s all a bunch of snake oil.. what gives?”. This is primarily because the term “marketing” has been so watered down by people who can’t articulate well (or don’t want to articulate well) what marketing is because it gives them a perceived upper hand in their relationship with clients.

I absolutely loathe that stance and want to help you cut through the crap.

Marketing, simply put, is the ability to find people who are genuinely interested in your product (because they have a need or an interest) and your product or service solves that need or inner desire.

Seriously folks, it’s that simple to understand.. If you walked into a room and asked everyone “who’s hungry?”, the people who raised there hands would be your interested individuals. If you were then able to either provide actual food, or at least link them to someone who could make the food and fulfill their core need then you were just an effective marketer.

Seems pretty easy right? Now what’s different with internet marketing and why it has such a bad reputation…

What’s Different

Internet marketing is slightly different because the value chain feels less tangible to a lot of people than a traditional business. What I mean by this is that, for many people, understanding the process of acquiring leads and creating customers in a virtual space is daunting, foreign and hard to conceptualize at first. But here are the key differences that should help you relate traditional business models to internet ones:

1. Just like brick and mortar, you need leads to make your business work.

What’s different: Leads come in the form of Names, Emails and/or Phone Numbers instead of literally walking through your door

2. You need something to sell your customer a product or service to make money

What’s different: Customers online have a much lower attention span, as a result of this you need to have a stack of continually higher margin items to offer them immediately after they purchase to maximize your revenue. This is known as an up-sell, or moving them “through the funnel”.

3. Customers want and need information from you to stay interested in being your customer.

What’s different: A brick and mortar business has to try and hire in-person sales people who try and be helpful to your customers while practicing ABC (Always Be Closing). Online you can use different ways of tracking and automated content strategies to tailor the experience of every customer in a way that you can test. This means you can have a known close rate and give your customers a consistently high level of value.

Why It’s Seen As Snake Oil

I’ve worked with some of the biggest names in the Internet Marketing space who have claimed huge numbers and it became apparent pretty quickly that most people at the top stretch their numbers to fit what they think people want to hear.

The messed up part? It works – as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You see, these types of people typically succeed by selling the dream instead of solving any actual problems. They will talk your ear off about how much “value” their customers see in their offerings, but once you understand the industry it doesn’t take long to see that the average customer is more of an info product junkie than a true entrepreneur.

It’s no wonder so many real businesses are turned off by Internet Marketing when that is the lay of the land.

Have you had any poor experiences with Internet Marketing? Let me know – I’d be happy to point you in a quality direction or help answer your questions.

People often ask me how I got started in the world of Internet Marketing and how I came to go from a broke high school smart ass, to making 60k over 2 months (legally), broke again and now living what I truly believe is the new American dream. I work from home as a consultant, blog about the things that interest me most and I am able to spend time with a startup I am truly passionate about. A good friend of mine, Brandon Na of Seattle Organic SEO invited me to tell the story live last night on his radio show so I thought I’d share it with you.

We go over how I hustled more money as a kid, got started early in technology and how you can make the most of your lifestyle situation.

What’s stopping you from building the business you really want to build? Let me know in the comments.

If you are being strategic about your internet marketing, then you are likely engaged or at least aware of all the social networks out there for you to put your brand and attempt to engage with your potential customers. Most of you ask if it’s worth putting in all the effort for so many different profiles and trying to reach your audience all over the place. However, unlike almost all the other networks that Google (or anyone else really) has tried to push out (Google Wave anyone?), Google+ actually makes social networking interesting again. So how did they do this, why does it matter and how to benefit from it?

How They Do It

Google really ramped up their war chest of developers for Google+ and it shows, not only is it an extremely powerful platform but they are constantly pushing new updates to it to make it better all the time. They also took the time to think about how to make the most compelling experience they could by taking what makes Twitter interesting, what makes Facebook dominant and how to make a really unique social experience.

The term “game mechanics” is thrown around far too often in startups, especially if you watch any of the TechCrunch Disrupt conferences “We are going to take game mechanics to badges and FarmVille your friends for profit and lulz”. But Google+ really does take just enough elements of true game mechanics that make the users actually feel good when new people add them to their circles.

Why It Matters

Why does it matter that Google found a way to make game mechanics meaningful in a social network that isn’t a Zynga brainchild? ENGAGEMENT. While Google+ is still invite only (don’t have one? let me know in the comments what your gmail is and I’ll invite you) so it has small, but rabid user base. TechCrunch has Google+ showing up in their top 10 referring sites regardless of the fact that their Google+ presence is 1/10th the size of their Twitter and Facebook connections.

The Benefit (and how to get Google+ users right now)

Besides the obvious perk of more traffic, it’s important to grow your audience in Google+ because people will engage with your content. This extension of your conversation is great for you because when people comment and “+1″ your posts it will resurface the content in your audiences feed so the conversation doesn’t die as easily as it does on Facebook and Twitter.

The important thing to note here however is that you don’t want to put all your eggs in the Google+ basket because you don’t own it like you do your Aweber list, and while Google+ is awesome today – social networks can come and go, but you need to own the rights to your hard work and be able to help them engage across any contemporary platform in the future.

(Pro Tip: Add a P.S. with a link to your Google+ profile in your next email blast and watch your follower count go up)

If you are already on Google+, what are your thoughts? If you aren’t and need an invite just let me know in the comments.

I’m loving my Klout perks lately, from free prescreens of popular movies to alcohol and flavored water they seem to have me covered. Some of it’s great, some of it sucks – but either way, here is a shout out to MetroMint for hooking me up this week!

If you follow the affiliate marketing or blogging space then you know that John Chow is a master at monetizing content and getting paid for the value he creates. After a number of Dot Com Pho’s and then spending the 4th of July at his house (next to Steve Ballmer!) I asked John if he would be willing to do a webinar with me to talk about how to turn your blog into profits and other interesting monetization tips he might have up his sleeve.

The really cool thing about John is that while he obviously wants to get paid like the rest of us, he’s a really awesome guy and actually enjoys helping people get their first steps. From literally installing your WordPress installation for you to giving you awesome tips on how to manager Aweber like a pro – he doesn’t mind dishing out great content.

This is one webinar you aren’t going to want to miss, so register here now!

Details:

July 27th, 2011

4:00pm Pacific Time/7:00pm Eastern Time

Get me on the list

P.S. Even if you can’t make that date and time, make sure you register anyway so I can email you the replay!

Who inspires you in business? It’s likely someone who is a known entity in their field and thinks differently enough to stand out. For me, it’s people like Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk because they have built up influence and an audience within a very difficult vertical.

But like any good entrepreneur you are probably asking “HOW did they get such a strong and passionate following?”

The answer is actually more straight forward than it seems, you see most people believe the influence comes through the ability to persuade people into thinking or doing what you want – or worse yet into just telling them what they want to hear so they do an action that parallels with your goals. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, these personality types are influential because they have provided an enormous value to their prospective audience that resonated well, was shared with their friends and then capitalized in a way that was sticky (read: built their list).

Create killer content

Writing what you want to hear likely won’t get you the results you are looking for, what you want to write is something that resonates with your target audience. For instance, do you think President Obama really had a deep seated passion about every subject he campaigned about leading up to his election? Of course not, it’s just not human to be that personally invested in ALL the issues, but he definitely had an audience, the American public, who across all the segments was deeply invested in every issue.

Love him or hate him, it’s easy to agree upon the fact that his campaign was smooth because it was able to seemingly appeal to so many different audiences that felt like it was personalized, and when he hit that nerve people shared his message – and they shared it quickly.

You see in order to create killer content you must not try and please someone just like you, you need to please someone who wants to be just like you. Think about that for a moment and realize how non-ego centric that statement really is.

Make it sticky

Once you have grouped together your initial base audience and have found a way to inspire them to share your message, your content, your ideas – your brand; you need to find a way to create a sticky community for the new people who come across your content and message in order to inspire and influence them to an even greater community.

Making the experience sticky doesn’t even have to an email list (although in most written work it’s the most effective). For rich media and niche content streams such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook it’s all about bridging the connection to communicate at a later date. That comes by getting users to subscribe to your channel, follow or “like” you – respective of the network you are creating your content on. The most influential people are bringing their audience into the conversation and engagement across every medium possible to help them “spread the gospel” that is your content.

If you are able to find what motivates people, give them a compelling reason to share and then give them a strong call-to-action that connects them with your brand, content and message repeatedly in the future you will be able to create a snowball of influence. Those mechanics are what make the world leaders so effective getting where they want to go, it doesn’t have anything to do with being smarter or even having the best content. They simply know how to constantly leverage their resources to reach an ever expanding audience and strengthen the influence they have with their existing constituents.