Archive for October, 2008

Every store owner loves testimonials, right?  It gives your new customers the warm and fuzzy feeling that anything they buy from you is going to be shipped to them quickly and the transaction will go smoothly.  So, in most cases, this is something a store owner wants to show their customers right away.  While that’s [...]

Domain Name Expiration Dates. Don’t let your store expire
 
 
Many people buy their domain names for a year. Not realizing that year can fly by, letting their registration expire, then their stores goes down as well. Someone may also come in and grab your domain name before you can re-register it. This causing havoc and certainly [...]

Short and sweet, folks. Today, our own Mike Collins asked if it’s possible to have a  sound play on a client’s home page when a user visits the site.
The short, sweet answer is yes, with these caveats:
One, no one has really agreed on the best way to do so since 1994 until today.
Two, cross browser [...]

If you’ve been watching the news, listening to the radio or reading newspapers during the past couple of weeks, chances are you’ve heard at least one financial adviser warning investors at large that panic is not a sound investment strategy. Of course, it’s not easy to watch your portfolio lose so much of it’s value [...]

Solid Cactus’ Kevin Lynn would be the first to tell you he’s had the opportunity to interview a wide variety of characters in his day. So, do you think he would let the chance to interview Batman and Joker together go to waste? We didn’t either. Mr Lynn took the time out of his “busy” [...]

About a year ago my fearless leader, Matt Kresge, passed along a widget for me to install on my PC. He sent me to http://www.hockeywidgets.com/widgets/cheesesteak.php and I was all over it! Having a widget stare me in the face ALL day letting me know that we are approaching 10 thousand days since the last championship [...]

It was cold last night, as I sat motionless in the shadows, covered in camouflage, waiting for mischievous teenagers to t.p. my house on Mischief Night. At about 11p.m., I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Something big and hairy, about 8 ft tall, was coming at me and it was angry. [...]

I’m talking about the Javascript Framework war! Will it ever end. Well, I sure hope not.
I hope it never ends because I want there to always be competition so the frameworks continue to adapt and become better!
Case in point…. Yesterday I was asked to go and work on a client’s site. In their site they [...]

A Flasher.  A Unicorn.  A crazy cat lady. Superheroes.  Childhood heroes, like Ernie and Freddie K-depending on how demented a child you were (I’m most likely the latter).  A dead-on impersonation of a shall-not-be named local radio host.  A very Christmasy Clark & Ellen Griswold. And lots of other crazy stuff….
It never ceases to amaze [...]

Tags: holiday

Halloween is upon us, the time of the year where the boundary between the living and the dead is dissolved allowing the spirits to wander our mortal world.  This concept of bridging the gap between physical reality and the spirit world is something we as conversion optimization analysts contemplate daily (but instead of actual spirits [...]

Here is a nice article about buttons on forms.
http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article4984.asp
My favorite rule is rule #3.

Google’s at it again! They announce another update coming to their Quality Score metric soon. This update specifically deals with how clickthrough rate (CTR) is calculated into your Quality Score. Google has frequently said this is one of the major metrics in determining how relevant your ads are. This new update will factor in the [...]

In the spirit of Halloween the Solid Cactus design team designed a few mock monster movie posters that referenced a lot the common stress and aggravation that exists in our industry. We had a great time doing it and only wish that Halloween came more than once a year. Have a Happy Halloween [...]

Have you ever noticed that age and computer knowledge seem to be inversely proportionate?  My friend Rhino-boy once predicted that someday there would be a Secretary of the Internet in the President’s cabinet… and that they would be twelve!  (Sorry, Basta, you’re too old now )  With a new administration around the corner, who [...]

I just came across a great article written by Brian Ross (no known relation to “the” Brian Ross) on the new era of data-driven customer centric marketing.
http://www.dmnews.com/How-customer-centric-retailers-ask-deeper-questions-and-get-better-answers/article/120138/
In summary, it breaks down the new vs. old marketing paradigm.  The switch from businesses examining “what” customers are doing to “why” and the importance of data in revealing [...]