A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect

Internet Killed the Radio Star?

Contrary to popular belief radio is not dying.  It is, however, changing drastically.  What we are witnessing is the medium of 'audio broadcasting' being molded and morphed at the hands of a populice in more control of their choices.

Radio isn't radio anymore, it is now 'terrestrial' radio and it sharing more of it's audience (and revenue) with it's offsping; internet radio, podcasting, and satellite radio. 

Even as the populice is having influence on the radio universe many broadcasting sites remain irrelevant and downright yucky.  And of course 'terrestrial' radio is struggling to remain viable.  The answer to this? 

From Audiographics.com

Today, consider a few terms that will help; radio personas, predictive modeling, and persuasion architecture. Combining the three allow stations to build an online presence that delivers better results.

Building a radio persona will let you create predictive marketing that gives clues to how you should build your web site with persuasion architecture. Read the entire article.

  Interestingly enough, this conclusion came as a result of Bryan Eisenberg's 2 part rant over at ClickZ about the state of satellite radio's online efforts.  Read part one, then part two.

Barking Cats in Time Square

Thought you had travel far and wide, wait in long lines at Barnes & Noble book signings, or spend 6 figures in consulting fees to have breakfast with the Brothers Eisenberg?  Think again... or rather, just pop on over to the Crowne Plaza in Times Square NYC next Thursday @ 7 AM.  Bagels are on us (and our good friends at WebSideStory and Responsys too) but seats around the table are limited, so please do register in advance at: http://www.websidestory.com/promotions/eisenberg/register.html

For those of you outside of NYC, I guess I lied (sue me ;) you do have to travel far and wide... unless of course we're coming to a neighborhood nearby.

Paid Search Vs. Organic, which converts better?

According to a recent article over at Internet Retailer paid search has a slight advantage.  But before you start increasing your paid search budget, our CTO(Chief Thinking Officer) John Quarto-vonTivadar chimes in with his questions about these numbers and their implications...

Imagine that, if you will: given the tremendous amounts of money spent on paid search (huge! And costs are actually going up!), all it manages to do is achieve a Scrooge-ish +9% bump over organic search. On a dollar-for-dollar basis, you may well get a bigger conversion bang for the buck by investing in an organically planned architecture of scent, relevance and persuasion — which is what ends up scoring so well in organic search anyway — than in "buying" traffic for an otherwise cow-pathed site.

Hmmmmmmmmmm, very interesting.

Get into John's scientific head for yourself and read his entire post.

Is Your Service In The Toilet?

Seth Godin took a couple of pictures that tell a bigger story about customer service, customer expectations and customer experience. Read his post and think about how you can improve your customer's experience.

Creating A Customer Experience - The Online Advantage

I just ran across this article at USA Today.

Retailers know how you'll approach a store, where you'll hesitate, how to affect your mood, how to pique your desires, how to play to your aspirations. Everything in a store, from lighting to floor color to music to how goods are displayed, is meant in some way to get you to not just shop, but spend.

"It's like a Broadway musical," says Deborah Mitchell, a marketing expert at the University of Wisconsin. "Nothing was put into that musical that wasn't thought through. It's the same in a highly orchestrated retail environment." Read the entire article.

Here is a cold harsh reality: The most beautifully designed website, the most stunning 2D visual product photos or otherwise simply look weak compared to to a well orchestrated onslaught of your 5 senses at a brick and mortar retail outlet.  Online your visitors can't experience depth, texture, lighting, smells, noise ambience, and the list goes on.

Now don't take this as me telling you not to use images and pretty graphics, I am simply stating that focusing heavily on design may not deliver the conversions you hope for.

JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, even flash presentations are still only 2d, flat, and when compared with a broadway musical, they are boring.

So why do so many spend so much time debating, and hand wringing about their site's visuals and graphics?  Maybe they haven't heard.

Your biggest advantage online is your ability to create atom-splitting mental images.

How?  With WORDS.

How much time are you spending with design vs. relevant copy?

What mental images are you building about your products/services in the mind of your visitors?  Are you using a series of planned mental images to create an online customer experience not bound by a physical reality? 

Novelists do it everyday,and the methodology exsists to plan this online.

What are you waiting for?

Bryan Eisenberg on the Twist Image Podcast

Our very own warm, fuzzy, and lovable Bryan Eisenberg was recently interviewed on the Twist Image Podcast - Six Pixels of Separation

Mitch Joel interviews Bryan about the book, and Bryan shares some recent insights on current events as well as today's morphing marketing biosphere. The interview is 35 minutes of savory goodness in MP3 format. Find it here.

What Does Green Mean?

I posted a rant over on my own site today regarding the illogical use of 'green' by a petroleum company. It got me thinking about web sites.

There's a great chapter in Call to Action about the use of color on your site and Jeffrey and Bryan are always talking about people using the wrong color for the right message. For example, which of the following statements delivers conflicting information because of the color and which delivers confirming information?

     This item is in stock and is ready to ship!

     This item is in stock and is ready to ship!

What other inconsistent or downright conflicting messages have you found on your own site? Those are the easiest to fix and not fixing them could be costing you a lot of money.