Category: Design

  • Mind The Gap – Consumers 1 v Marketers 0

    We live in a fast-changing world. Which means the longer you’ve held an opinion, the greater the chances your views may have fallen behind the times. The latest fast.MAP Marketing Gap study (the 9th annual edition) shows once again how disconnected some marketers’ views are from those of their customers. Let’s take a look at…

  • Back To School – Time to Update Your Social Media Cover Photos

    With the kids heading back to school in the UK today or very soon, now is the perfect time to polish up your social media profile pictures and cover photos. But knowing what size your images need to be has always been a time-consuming exercise. But not anymore, thanks to this nifty guide from the…

  • When Privacy Policies Go Bad and How to Fix Them

    Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about the importance of carefully selecting your positive and negative keywords, I’ve some remarkable online test insights to share from ContentVerve.com’s Michael Aargaard. Michael wanted to find out what impact adding a privacy statement alongside a registration form would have on sign-up rates. I think you’ll agree, the…

  • Myth-busting: Calls-to-action Must Be Above The Fold

    The longer you work in any specialist field the more susceptible you become to placing trust in tried-and-tested rules and principles. Take the well-known fact that content placed on a website above the fold (that is in the top portion of the screen,  visible to all when the page loads) performs better than stuff below…

  • Colour and Brands Through The Ages

    (see what I did there?!) In the UK we call it ‘colour’ while our American cousins prefer ‘color’. However you write it, having an appreciation of how seeing different colours affects our mood is a great skill for every marketer. With a hat tip to my former Microsoft colleague Steve Clayton, here’s a delightful little…

  • The Little Changes That Make All The Difference

    I’m indebted to ContentVerve.com for just publishing an outstanding collection of ten user interface design case studies that illustrate how the smallest changes can sometimes result in the biggest improvements. In one A/B test, simply changing one word on a call to action on a PPC landing page resulted in a 90% increase in conversion.…

  • The web changes everything, even how you design your CV

    I’ve always been a great believer in the power of good design. And in a digital world filled with endless infographics and stylised images, the humble CV has been long due a thorough reinvention. That’s why I’m impressed by a new service out of the US of A that promises to help your CV standout…

  • Become a site usability guru with Usabilityhub

    I’ve been playing with fivesecondtest on Usabilityhub.com today, a free tool that allows web designers and site managers to test different design options free of charge. It’s a neat service; by signing up and taking a few tests you earn “karma points” that eventually allow you to commission your own test. Of course, if you…

  • Site Design: How Removing Choice can Double Conversion Rates

    Having an insatiable appetite to test, retest, and test again is an essential quality for any digital marketer. Because it’s only through testing your ideas, hunches and, sometimes, gut instinct that you can truly understand what works for your business and your customers. The team at VisualWebsiteOptimizer has shared details of a fascinating test they…

  • Wake up Adobe: Free Shipping is not an offer

    Most companies have moved on from expensive direct mail shots, realising that more precisely targeted and immediate digital marketing efforts often yield better results. Adobe, however, seems stubbornly committed to posting dead trees to its customers. One on level, this is perhaps understandable seeing as Adobe’s  design software is widely used to create printed materials…