Category: Managed Services

July Fourth is the celebration of our freedom and independence in America.  Sure, we’ll go see our fireworks, light our sparklers, grill that ribeye or burger at the pool or beach, maybe hit up a local parade.

Atlantic BT has much to celebrate during this holiday.    Our Raleigh-based office, swarming with innovators and visionary leadership, is the reason we’re now a 60+ person firm, and growing.  we’ve evolved beyond a company that builds great websites, to offering expertise in  Design, User Experience, Software Development, Business & Marketing Strategy, and most recently, Mobile.  Combine our comprehensive approach with our culture and we stand out (we hope) in a good way!

Atlantic BT Celebrates Innovation

As innovators and community-minded people,  we decided to kick-off a first:   A grant contest open to any US-based nonprofit with a chance to win a $25,000 Atlantic BT grant to be used for mobile strategy, technology and marketing services.

Atlantic BT “Gives Back” Finalists Emerge

On this July 4th holiday, we’d like to celebrate with the 4 passionate nonprofits whose hard work and energy awarded them one of  the finalist spots!  41 entries, 9 semi-finalist videos  and 11, 697 voters later, we announce the nonprofits moving on for a shot at the $25,000 Mobile Grant Grand Prize:

Two finalists are Triangle-based nonprofits, Passage Home and Cornucopia Cancer Support Center , while the remaining two, Cat Adoption Team and California Coalition for Youth, hail from the west coast.

Please join us in congratulating these forward thinking organizations!

But only one nonprofit will be awarded the $25,000 Grant.  Who will it be?  It all comes down to next Thursday, July 12th, live in Raleigh or via live feed on Google+ Hangouts.

Keynote: Power Selling: Tips To Move Visitors To Action

Amy Africa on Twitter @amyafrica

Peronal Site: http://amyafrica.com/

Company Site: http://www.eightbyeight.com/

VERY IMPORTANT STUFF!!!!!

Amy Africa Presentation Notes

Going to talk about Power Selling. My specialty is usability (UX). Way we do usability now has changed from how we used to do it. Now we bring people in and give people money ($10,000) then ask people to do whatever they want for the next three hours. They can do whatever they want to do. If you don’t spend the money you don’t take it home. Whatever isn’t spent is given to test subjects. Eyetracking, EKG and look at nonverbal communication and figure out exactly what you are doing.

Then we see if we can manipulate your behavior. Last year they tested mood drugs to see if they could stop cart abandonment. “What I say is going to be different than what you heard yesterday,” Amy Africa. You’ve learned to be a poker player with your face. But you may not have learned to control your feet. 94% of people who check out move their feet into the “Flight or Fight” mode, defensive posture. People are scared. Our brains are meant to protect us from death, so when buyers go into defensive posture then what does it say about the Internet. It is not as simple as we THINK, it is SIMPLER.

Car Studies
Give away cars up to $80,000. On any given day a quarter to a third of the people in the test leave with nothing due to paradox of choice freezing people from being able to make a choice. There was a lot of information yesterday that said ecommerce and lead gen were the same, but it is not.

1. SOLID NAVIGATION

40% to 60% of your success online is due to navigation. Navigation has to be user centered. Users go to the upper right hand quad when they move into a site for the first time. Then they go to the middle. Go to the left if need help. Go to the right when we are about to leave. Right hand column is the “Save” column.

After people look at the second page they only look down the middle. Top navigation is where users spend the most time especially areas in top center. Left hand navigation helps users refine decisions, makes it easier. YES YES YES. ********** About 15% of people search from bottom up especially if B2B lead gen. No rollovers on bottom and forms are bad on the bottom.

Lose about 2/3 of people on search. People who use search have 2nd highest chance to buy and very high exit chance after 2 to 3 pages. Include navigational taxonomy. Problem solution navigation if done well can make up for about 25% of problems online. No such thing as right hand navigation. Right hand navigation is horrible idea.

2. CAN’T UNDERESTIMATE THE WORD CONNECT (ScentTrail) IN NAVIGATION.

The word connect = scenttrail (is CRITICAL), must have this or lose 60% of the people (and that number is conservative). Take top 10 words people search in Google and is there a connect on your navigation. Rocket Clicks = good PPC and word connect is essential to PPC.

Most important thing you can have people do online is get them to take some positive action. Internet is a numbers game. Many people into funnel you squeeze more out.

3. TEXT SEARCH (internal site search)
If the navigation is good your users shouldn’t use text search. Look at words people are using in search. The bigger the search box the better. Big box = people will type big things. If you know users are bad at searching split box like Amazon. Search should be in middle. If your search sucks put it left. If your search is excellent put in middle at top and mimic at bottom. Tracking successful and unsuccessful searches. Keep in mind finding stuff isn’t a conversion. Over half of “successful” searches meaning users got something but we (site owners) didn’t.

Think about buying a tent. 1. water proof and 2. easy to breathe inside. If you put bad tents in first two slots you still will sell the best tents. Position outweighs ALL. Careful in way you present search results. Success! Great word to use. Success we’ve found 100 tents. Users will only look at 6 results. Must make sure results are in #1 BEST #2 Next Best and so on. Bet your house on #1. If you can’t use anything else for your search use refinements (price, color, availability should be done on the left). We tend to use lots of facets. If you have more than 5 facets YOU KILL conversion.

Offer generic recommendations for NO FINDS DO NOT DEADEND PAGES. There should be some visual in the middle at all times. The brain is looking for the visual not the text. 80% will scan text instead of reading it, so VISUALS are key.

4. THE MORE YOU ASK THE MORE YOU GET
Every page must have action directives. Do people scroll? 84% of attention is always at top view. Majority of brainpower is on the first view (i.e. make sure there is a CART on every page). Persistent cart is key. A cart in top right and bottom middle. Ecommerce should have 2 to 4 carts on every page. This mimics having a cart in a store.

If you are B2B ask for than one way. Ask 8 times for every view!!!! Ask for more ways to get the lead!!!! Amy gets 6500 emails a day. I would rather get shot than sign up for another email subscription, BUT there may be other ways. Amy might do an Ask The Expert, a review a poll so these can be ways to ask for the order. If you aren’t asking for more ways to give baby steps you lose.

5. LOGICAL PROCESS – slow like dating.
Collect mobile phone numbers. They are the best way to profile. You will love mobile profiling. Look for all the ways you can start a dialogue. Don’t let it distract, but make sure you have it. Are you asking for enough stuff? Are you being fair.

6. BIG ORANGE ACTION BUTTONS – especially true on mobile because typing is so hard.
What are your action directives (button keywords). Tell people what they are supposed to do. Get your free no obligation quote now. Adding NOW get more clicks because we obey command. Buy buttons are near the reptile brain. Easiest to control and must be simple because reptile brain needs it simple.

7. Deadlines
2 or 3 weeks are too long from a web perspective. I recommend that deadlines online is 3 days MAXIMUM. Best deadlines happen in 24 hours. Shorter deadlines and use the DATE. Don’t subscribe to moving banners SUCKING. If your moving banners don’t work it is because your creative sucks. Amy believes moving heroes can work with great creative. The brain only remembers things that are important: beginnings, middles maybe and end. Deadlines help brain focus. It moves me from visit to buy mode.

Deadlines are critical for B2B lead gen too because of the impact on the brain. Body goes into fight or flight mode when action mode.

8. PERFECT CHECKOUT
People love SPEED especially in mobile. We MUST go to making things FAST again. Search, checkout and lead forms must be fast. 22% people bail if slow. Carts should never expire. You want to know someone had something in their basket due to segmentation. Guest checkouts = 1/3 of people will use because they think it is faster.

The first page on any checkout is to gather email. The other first step is guest checkout or no. Make sure there are no irrelevant questions. Where did you hear about us is not a relevant question. Anything that is not relevant should be avoided. CLEAR action directives on every view. View cart pages aren’t for everyone and should be tested. TEMPERATURE BARS ARE FOR EVERYONE. Shopping bag does not work as well as shopping cart. Temperature bars sets process and expectations. Keeps progress (sometimes called a progress bar).

Users need perpetual carts and pop carts. 40% of women over 40 abandon because they forget something was in their cart. CART = STORE, no cart = library. Should have a phone number at top on right, bottom too. 20 – 30% of people will call. Checkout = DUMP NAVIGATION, don’t release bird in hand. Take away distractions. Have alternative ways to order (phone) and express checkouts.

B2B Leadforms = FAST and prefill information when possible. Like 1 page lead form. Progress bar if more than one page. City, State, Zip should be on separate lines. Don’t change order (always City, State, Zip Country). If you don’t need something like title then don’t ask for it. Don’t ask for things like Date of Birth in B2B. Be really aggressive and tight. Simple form, large CTAs and little else. Always capture email first. Email at top so you can use it if they don’t finish.

Need a benefits reminder (picture of a white paper). This is what I’m going to get is KEY. Very solid on the forms is key (and forms SUCK).

9. WORK YOUR REPEATS
If you don’t see 55% repeats then you are not getting enough people to come back. If you are not getting repeats it is because you didn’t ask for people to come back. Personalization is critical when repeat. Repeat traffic is where money is made. Use your BOP or Be Back. If you get someone to the site, the bop is the thing that says “we know who you are and here is where you can start over”. If you read the cookie and they were close then BOP them through the process.

Make sure your visual changes. Anytime we see new information we ask 6 questions.

eat

eat me

sex

sex with me

seen it and safe

never seen it (proceed or proceed with caution)

DON’T CHANGE core elements because we don’t want returns visitors to re-process if it is ok to be here. We are cavemen in our behavior.

10. CONTENT THAT CONVERTS
Visuals are the KEY. Big visual and 3 to 5 alternate visuals. PEOPLE = with eyes straight on. Have to figure out what you want to do. People pictures increase user session. PEOPLE = TRUST. Not reading body copy. Review people look at stars, only 10% look at reviews. Reviews must be weighted. One good review and one medium review (the brain loves contrast) and click for more reviews. Don’t overwhelm with reviews. Caption is really important and most sites don’t use them. BUY NOW = better conversion if you have abandoned cart over ADD TO CART.

We are lazy when it comes to sites. Knowing when they will get it is important, should be near prices. In Stock will ship today is important, as important as money.

I only look at 10 metrics

Active average user session (divide page views by time on )

20 to 30 seconds is right time on most pages.

11. VIDEO
Not always good for conversion. Good video exmples list on Amy’s blog. Rolling telephone number on bottom.

12. EVIDENCE

FAST, DIY, RESEARCH
social media is not evidence. Reviews are great for evidence. Best Sellers List. Testimonials. User Reviews the LIKE ME thing again. Look at dynamic. We will look back in 3 years and laugh at the lack of personalization. Try to show something you know about them that will influence their buying behavior. Recently viewed items = helpful for scenttrail. Should be getting 15% to 30% of sales in cross sales. You don’t get it if you don’t ask for it.

Pops on exit and Pops on entrance. Pattern interrupters. Cart hoppers are good. Cart hoppers tell you we are going to take you to the right place. Triggers for followup. If you have a good process you sell more on backend than frontend. 60% abandon and 65% abandon lead forms. After they abandon look for how to market in a series. Business is made by triggers. You abandoned our search, leadform or welcome, reactivation emails, things that get people to come back. Use instigated chat. Find out where your users are struggling then you can save 60% of the people. You start an live chat cased on what you see, are you having a problem kinds of chats.

Remarketing is all about the creative and creative fatigues quickly. Remarketing is not set it and forget it.

*** AMAZING. I could have made many more millions as a Director of Ecommerce with 3 of the 20 tips Amy shared here today. My favorites were:

1. Work Your Repeats (money is in the backend)
2. Deadlines (boy do I know the truth of this statement, made millions ending stuff on Monday also liked her 3 day rule)
3. Importance of ScentTrial (I named my blog ScentTrail because I saw it as the issue of our ecommerce times and Amy’s research verifies that stance).

To say Amy is smart would be to vastly understate. She speaks rapid fire, I almost couldn’t keep up, and every other thing either confirmed my Ecommerce experience or made me think I missed something BIG (several somethings actually :). Great presentation. I will be working more with this data as soon as possible.  Unbelievably amazing presentation. Marty.

Social Persuasion: Selling More Through Influence & Authority

John Lawson, on Twitter @ColderICE

John is discussing, in a rambling kind of a way, the important social concept of reciprocity. Mutual obligation is a key concept in ecommerce and B2B. Give it up to get something creates a relationship where you, as receiver, feel like you owe me. Be the first one to give is a good advice. Also like his call for easy UGC (user generated content). UGC is about to explode in some meaningful way and we don’t do it well now.

Now John is discussing the habituation principles. We like consistency in our deeds and words. This touches on the cognitive dissonance created by disparity. We like consistency because it is safe, we don’t have to think and we are habit animals. I’ve seen the impact of dissonance when we sound or do one thing and present another and no one buys in that condition. Small commitments can lead to larger ones.

That too is good advice. Build on small to get more and more, but, as Amy said, it is like dating. Go slow, with care and share, share and share some more. Every Monday John puts up a Monday Morning Infographic and traffic spikes due to his consistency. He creates trust with the regular interval idea. Angry birds are monetizing with STUFF now after giving away the game (and boy is that stuff going viral saw 10 Angry Birds shirts and stuff o people at the mall this weekend).

Mobile Commerce – give them something for free first. Brand new requires FREE, FREE and FREE. John is noting how the web, when it started, was replete with FREE. Less so now because shopping online isn’t new. Free moved to the phone. Start with FREE to reduce stress and commitment.

Social Proof
Every club has a line. It is the Sudio54 syndrome. Lines = GOOD. We are creatures who want to follow the flock. The LIKE ME idea is a key one that keeps coming up at Conversion Conference. Stop writing content to convert people. Write content toward the people who are already in harmony, the LIKE ME, then you will resonate and it will “feel so good”. When you are in rhythm. Marketing is more cost effective when you stop trying to convert people.

Don’t be selfish. It isn’t all about YOU. Think from the customers (receivers) experience. It (social) is about THE PEOPLE. Not about our brands, but about how people interact with our brands. People love to see what other people are doing with your product.

Make Me Feel Special With Social Proof
I have 50K followers. People follow me because I have 50K followers (self fulfilling prophecy). This idea of TRIBE is coming up as much as LIKE ME. Social Proof is HUGE and about to get BIGGER. If you can grab the pictures of friends of mine who’ve done whatever I’m looking at your chances to convert me go up sharply.

Liking
People buy from who they like. In a land of infinite choice being LIKED is an increasingly important part of buying decisions. John is noting that social is most valuable when people are actually using your products (conversion in other words). Need a CONVERTING tribe. Only good when actually buying something. John would rather have 10 buyers than 10,000 followers who don’t do anything.

PICTURES, PICTURES AND PICTURES
Why John likes Pinterest.

No one buys on Social. No one trusts social media. No one will give their CC on Facebook. A little too early. John doesn’t agree with shuttering social, but he agrees it is too early. Why do things on Facebook when your site is better with selection and there is a cart there. Popele who like you do spend more, but you got to move them to the cart. Interesting chart on the perception gap with social media. 61% look for discounts but that is not what we do on social creating dissonance and dissonance = NOT BUYING.

SMART PLAY – John put a page on Facebook to convert his site + coupon search. Interesting solution to a common problem (cart abandonment due to no coupon or going out to the web to look for coupons). I think I would prefer a Pop Down keeping customers on the cart, but interesting solution he says is working is to drive them away, arm them with a coupon and then bring them back. Lots of steps, but those coupon people are different.

Another good idea – Find the influencer and empower them. Empower your cheerleaders. Arm your brand advocates, keep them close because they will spread your influence.

What do we like:
* Physical attractiveness
* LIKE ME similarity
* Praise
* Familiar
* Association

Authority
* Knowledge, wisdom, power
* Parents, teachers, bosses
* Titles, Uniform, badges

You can “ask with authority” (WOW that is a great idea). John likes Folica.com for its VIP section as example of velvet ropes. Best thing you can do in social media is listen. Join in instead of pushing and creating first. Best way is ask questions and listen to response. John believes the iPhone killed Second Life. We got a second life thanks to the iPhone. We are creating our own avatars in real time.

15 minutes of fame is dead. You can be a star on social forever.

Using Psychology To Increase Conversion At PayPal

Time Perception
Thayer & Schiff, 1975 (happy beats angry)
Cahoon & Edmonds, 1980 (time passed slowly when pot was being watched, time passed slowly when waiting for some non-determined thing)
Important to think about the end users perception of time is more important. If something feels fast it is fast. Happy faces made it feel like time passed more quickly. How can we apply the happy vs. angry idea. Again this is about the site’s nonverbals. It it appears hard it is. If it appears hard then so is your company.

This is why progress bars are so important in checkout.

Interruption
Mark, Gudith & Klocke, 2008
Interruption = stress. Why you eliminate nav in the checkout after first page. Make sure that carts reflect the NO INTERRUPTIONS policy as any interruption, or different task, creates stress.

Interruption is not always bad. Interruption does not always create stress.

Hudson, Christensen, Kellogg & Erickson, 2002 – Are there good interruptions.
Interruptions that are relevant aren’t as bad. Best sites can ask for account creation at the right time.

Likes Scottevest.com as getting the timing right in the cart.

Typically letting you skip the checkout flow by using PayPal can help conversion. PayPal found they didn’t increase conversion with their mention early. Moving the PayPal to latter, after the process was concluded in a flower site, then conversions went up because people felt they could complete their task.

Information Filtering
We have so much information coming in at any given time we selectively filter. Neisser & Becklen, 1975. Brain can focus and shut out other pieces. Best websites are designed to filter for you,  Walmart beats TiggerDirect because the site focuses the brain. Best sites FILTER information for their customers.

Cherry, 1953 = Cocktail Party Effect
Relevance cuts through information filtering. Your name is a good example of an information filtering device. Showing an example now how PayPal people look at a page. They SEE their information. FACES CUT THROUGH INFORMATION FILTER, BUT…..

A cute kid destroyed PP conversion.

HAVE FACES LOOK AT CTA. We follow the eye lines of the faces on the page. If pretty woman stares at me I stare back and that is all that happens. If pretty woman looks at  something then I look at what she is looking at. Great example of how where people are looking is where faces are looking. Use faces in an intelligent way because they are powerful.

Breakfast Meeting

Aviation Interviews

Mike & Brian Peters, Founders

Great conversation at breakfast with Brian and Mike Peters. Mike and his brother Brian have created THE site for pilots, flight attendants and ground personnel. Their site is a study in how to create a successful web business:

• Organic growth.
• Love (Mike was a pilot for Continental)
• Serve your niche.
• What converts is what is true (we aren’t artists Brian told me).
• Keywords In URL.
• Keep it simple.
• Follow Your Customers (when flight attendants asked what about us they added a section to the site)

Great guys who are really smart about their Internet marketing. How do they make money? They sell subscriptions. “It is kind of a Freemium model, they get a lot and then can upgrade,” Mike shared. Want to see what a great ecommerce machine website looks like, stop by Brian and Mike’s Aviation Interviews site. If you are a pilot or flight attendant I’m betting you already know about it. Kudos to the brothers from Madison, WI.

Marty

Conversion Conference Live Blog AM Session Notes

Moving The Needle: Test What Matters

Keith Hagen, Conversion IQ

@eMatador

Big corporate background meant Keith got to play with lots of traffic and cool tools paid for by others. ConversionIQ focuses on the site not campaign tuning.

Orkin.com

Tauck.com

FarmandFleet.com

4th goes here

Insights are what drive business.

Most people start to optimize their website with analytics not people. Testing is about PEOPLE. Testing focuses on making money. Tests that help gain insights are helpful. Great places to gain insight, from people:

• Sales conferences
• Talk to drivers or delivery people
• Customer Service people
• Heat maps (so people indirectly)
• Analytiics ** Aside People don’t want to give their address **
• User Testing
• Feedback tool
• Session Recorder (Keith doesn’t like screen recording because it lacks context)

Insights is the REASON to test. Test without knowing WHAT to test is cart before horse. Mechanics can be tested, but better to test based on insights (what you want, what you are). Don’t test stupid stuff.

Testing online now are complex, so time and effort to set up tests is significant. Can’t afford to test dumb things. Test the things that matter not the things that can be tested.

Helmet City being used as an example. 184% bump because insight showed people couldn’t find what they wanted so confidence was lost by the time they got to the cart.

#1 Rule of Selling = CLARITY, persuasion comes after clarity.

**** Keith agrees 90% of rotation banners are bad. There can be an example of a good rotation such as Lens.com.  User testing showed people didn’t trust Lens.com. Keith decided to put the most important information on the second slide (2nd slide is most important in slider). That is where Keith put the Safe and Secure message to see 71% gain.

Get a Free Estimate BEAT Schedule Service Now for Orkin.com.

Tauck.com got 15% increase in leads by changing form to Mrs.

Radical Golf Carts saw Free Shipping $49 BEAT $99. Keith discovered that people expected to spend $80 so the higher commitment earlier pushed people out the door.

Comcast.com 284% lift Show Offers beat Check Availability in their CTA button.

RealGoodsSolar.com 84% lift when changed Get Started Now. Keith tested 4 different buttons. Get A No Obligation Quote Now won and produced an 84% lift. Based on a poll that said people’s main objection when filling out the form was they didn’t want people to come to their house (yet), so button change eliminated the stress and increased conversion.

Ask if something is WORTH testing. Test because you have insight, something raised a good question.

CLARITY must be there before PERSUASION.

End-To-End Conversion:
From Acquisition to repeat customer

Ben Hunt

@Thebenhunt

Conversion Conference Bio

WebDesignFromScratch.com

Also by Ben:

Ben applied direct marketing techniques to websites. Going to talk about traffic and content marketing in relation to conversion.

HOW TO MAKE CONTENT SELL!

Ben is going to share a model to get more conversions. Conversion is what matters. Conversions comes from TRAFFIC x CONVERSION RATE.

TRAFFIC is an essential part of conversion. Traffic also impacts testing (more traffic quicker the test). Quality of traffic is essential. Bad traffic can’t help. Ben’s Ten Best Designed Websites has been viewed 300,000 times. PPC click for best designed websites is $3.00. The market value means that page is owrith $71K traffic at Google adwords rate. Ben has received $1.4 million in traffic for that post. He did no SEO. About 5,000 a month searches for Best Designed Web Sites.

#1 Listing = 33% and #2 16% (of clicks). Got to be in top 10 for something **** KEY IDEA HERE **** MUST MUST MUST BE IN TOP 10 SEO FOR TERMS (Long tail or not). #1 Listings On Something BEAT 1,000 listings on anything.

Best Designed Websites generate semantic search on many terms that are widely related to  Ben’s Best Designed Websites

Most traffic comes from semantic web long tail terms. Ben’s 4 hours work has generated pageviews worth $1M. Ben believes in keyword research. He is building a tool to do key word research better.

The answer to SEO = GREAT CONTENT.

Best way to get Google to award you AUTHORITY status is LINKS. What matters is what other people think of your page. Published BEST and MOST RELEVANT CONTENT.

6 pages account for 50% of Ben’s traffic on his 300 page site.
SNOWBALL EFFECT OR POSITIVE VIRTUAL CYCLE
Be sympathetic to Google’s mission to deliver relevant content and you get more visits that lead to more shares and visits and so on to infinity. Produce great content and then let the web’s natural forces to do the rest of the work. The easiest way to get LINKS is to write great content. Most link building is artificial. Link building is black hat.

THE MISSION OF THE SEARCH ENGINES IS TO PUT SEO OUT OF BUSINESS AND I THINK WE ARE AT A TIPPING POINT RIGHT NOW AND GOOGLE IS WINNING.

Black Hat link building. Ben just said something near and ear to me:

BEST SEO IS NO SEO (on Prezi)

Best SEO is No Seo on ScentTrail Marketing (the first article)

I think we are stuck in a pre-Internet mindset. We think advertising is expensive and that has set our minds. Publishing web pages is not expensive. We should be publishing really good stuff. The downside is it takes SKILL, TIME and EFFORT. Ben admitted he

HIRE PEOPLE WHO CAN WRITE AND PAY THE TO WRITE.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now.

Publish great content and let Google do its job.

Why do we think SAME works for everyone? Imagine you have an ice cream cart. You read a book about conversion. You do a test. You ask favorite flavors of those visiting your cart. Survey says only sell Vanilla, but that is wrong.

IT IS NOT AN EITHER OR WORLD IT IS BOTH AND!

Can we get the best of both worlds (Marketing sites and content sites). Great ladder of the problem. **** Put slide here tonight ****

Ben has found the rub between PEOPLE and Marketing sites. He suggests taking your content and creating a trunk, a trunk of a tree. On top of the trunk is a canopy.

What are all the questions people ask for which we are the solution? THIS is the key journey, the key to discover the right content to write. BEN is pitching my favorite topic – THE POWER OF Q&A CONTENT.

Noting how About.com can win organic even though they have crap. Focus on WHAT ARE PEOPLE ASKING is better. Ben’s pages are ANSWERS to questions like How you can leave college debt free. He varies the pitch and ANSWER in order to address different segments.

SEGMENTS = HOW TO ANSWER THE QUESTION.

CONTINUE = STRONG CTA ESPECIALLY IF ONLY ONE OPTION

**** put Ben’s flow diagram of how he segmented How To Learn Web Design Here tonight ***

What should you do next?

Conversion is not joined up. It is not end-to-end. Why optimize pages WHEN the key idea is to create an engine to publish great content and let Google do its job. Everything starts with traffic and appreciating the tapestry of what we have to do to be GREAT!!!

Ben is closing the doors of his agency. Ben built a $250,000 business by himself in a year. Closing his consulting business and take on 10 clients only.

Top 10 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People

Susan Weinschenk, User Experience Institute

@Thebrainlady

Other Books: Neuro WebDesign
100 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People

Susan’s Top 10 Favorite Engagement and Persuasion Facts From her books. Susan is conducting an experiment with many pennies. Only one is correct. People guess other non-correct answers.

10. MOST MENTAL PROCESSING OCCURS UNCONSCIOUSLY

Reason we can’t distinguish between bad pennies is because we only pay attention to salient characteristics. Your unconscious brain knows what to pay attention to and what not to. So most mental processing is unconscious.

9. CHOICE paradox = want lots of choices but we convert on less.

People like a lot of choices Art of Choosing book reference. Another related book is Paradox of Choice by Schwartz.

8. Fusiform Facial Area (FFA) makes us pay attention to human faces. Visual cortex is largest so we are “visual animals”. But we have another portion of the brain dedicated to recognizing people’s faces. This part of the brain is in the emotional part of the brain. Resides in amygdale.

Faces on websites = GRAB ATTENTION and CONVEY emotional attention. BEST = Looking out right at visitor. FFA is active in 6 hour old newborn they prefer to look at faces.

FACES = be careful. Can get creepy fast.

[ Susan is giving us a test showing letters jumbled up]

7. Human Memory Fallible And Smal – Susan is testing PROXIMITY by using cross talk. She said numbers while we were trying to remember. Susan is noting the acronym paradox. Same letters that are separated are hard to remember. Once they become an acronym they are easier to remember.

We ask people to remember too much in the products we design. Susan is myth busting the idea people can only remember 7 +/1  two. The real number is THREE TO FOUR. MORE THAN 3 TO 4 items people won’t deal with it. Chunk data in 3 to 4.

6. Speaker and Listener Brains Sync
Susan is going to talk about why online VIDEO is such a powerful medium. Stevens compared brain activity of speaker and listeners synced. Means when people are listening to audio they process that in a deeper way than if they are reading text. Our brains are not synced. Part of the reason VIDEO so powerful has to do with the syncing created by the audio.

VideoGenie
Susan is talking about Video Genie. Testimonials and Ratings are POWERFUL. Video testimonials even more powerful due to the syncing.

5. Central vs. Peripheral vision.
Peripheral vision is more accurate and fast than central vision. Larson, Adam and Loschky 2009. Peripheral vision is the source of scenttrail. Am I in the right place. Peripheral vision picks up FEAR faster.

Susan is not a big fan of eye tracking studies. If you are using eye tracking Susan warns BE CAREFUL. EYE TRACKING CAN BE VERY MISLEADING BECAUSE IT IS ONLY CENTRAL VISION. Doesn’t tell you if someone actually SAW.

4. Song, H. & Schwarz (2008) Research on Fonts
Fonts communicate how hard things are by how it is presented. This is the “nonverbal” communication idea that is a favorite of mine. Websites communicate in overt and covert ways. Font does matter. LARGE enough and not hard to read.

[Susan is conducting another experiment asking how we can get warm water out of a facet showing old time HOT and COLD faucet handles]

3. People have mental models about how things work. What YOU think is not what WE think – We see the world through our eyes and experience. There is a fair amount of variability. This is the MADE TO STICK think. Using things with context makes anything new easier. Take advantage of the mental model, but mental models may vary by population.

People imprint on technology around the age of 8 and 12. Susan finds it typical that people who do design fall in the 30 and 50. We all know the boomer generation is a huge group of people. The millenials are a larger demographic than boomers. The in between group 30 to 50 are doing most of the design and it is dangerous because things that makes sense to the smallest cohort (the in between group) can make it hard if the product is being used by boomers and millenials.

Boomers = TV

Millenials = Desktop

This generation = tablets

These imprints effect, for the rest of your life, the expectations we have for technology. Boomers won’t customize. They won’t be interested in customizing. They will wonder why something doesn’t

2. There are Weak Ties and Strong Ties
Robin Dunbar. What is the optimal size for tribes? 150 = optimal size for a social community assuming it is a STRONG tie community. Weak ties just means we don’t understand all the connections. People are using social communities as a STRONG tie community, some as WEAK. If you are designing community need to think about if it is STRONG or WEAK. The types of interactions are different. Google is trying to address with circles (feels STRONG as opposed to weak).

1. People Expect Technology To Follow Human-To-Human Interaction Rules.
We have unconscious expectations about how people interact and we want machines and technology to conform to those rules. We do a lousy job at this. Sometimes we spend so much time at the large level that we don’t pay attention to the mico-interactions yet that is where we decide if our technology is following human to human interactions.

Susan has a pet peeve with error messages. People expect tech to interact like people.

Next Steps
Read more (Susan’s books good place to start). Susan also suggests taking a look at your site from a psychology / human point of view.

Tim Ash General Session – Landing Page Review
Tim reviews landing pages making notes about what can get better.

Lemonadediet.com

I don’t think you have a call to action. Eye tends to fall below the stripe at the top (the menu bar). Hero is also not looking out at the audience.

MagnetStreet

Tim says move navigation into the body of the page instead of a giant rotating hero. Too many menu bars. Too much cognitive load. Too complex (5 menus). No one cares. Lazy, impatient and wants clear choices. This doesn’t work for reptile brain.

Tim Ash – Rotating banner ads SUCK.

• Large File Sizes = slow site.
• Reptile brain can’t process.
• Calls Away From CTAs
• Abdicate curation of hierarchy because throw it out and ask visitors to figure it out.

Hancock.it
Great CTA, but greedy marketer syndrome because NO idea about what we are signing up for. Where is the trust, the explanation. Email signature software doesn’t exist. How does it work. Why do I need it. Who is buying it. Sign Up Now is way to immature. Good stuff below the fold that answers these questions.

Tim suggests a Tagline (email signature management). **** This is a favorite tactic of mine too since that space below the name is HOT and a great place to put an elevator pitch.

Production quality is decent, but there is nothing else that makes me TRUST YOU. There isn’t enough TRUST here to create trust. Tim suggests trade associations, seals, badges and press coverage to make this new idea and company more trust worthy.

Blue Man Group Landing Page
This is an example of graphic designers run amuck. The giant head is distracting. “Do you need the giant head if you have the little head (chuckles). Boy I walked into that one,” Tim Ash. No button above the fold. Can’t break the gaze because that dude means me harm. Fight or flight engaged in lizard brain.

7Zip.tv
Lacks social proof. 30,000 downloads would be Tim’s lead.

imaginatik.com
Have large brands but don’t mention those brands on their landing page. “You have Coke as a client and you don’t want to tell me about it,” said Tim.

You have to establish trust on the landing page. Need 1. Social Proof 2. Testimonials especially from trusted sources 3. Trust is the anti-bounce. Tim grey’s his trust marks out so they are present but not clickable.

Reviews
Testimonials
Press

Anything that creates TRUST (i.e. not you talking about you to you).

Avg.com
Rolling banner kills the page. CTA was clear and above the fold. Would like to more trust stuff. They have more than 100M users. Why is that not on the page? Lack of social proof and trust is a common problem. Tim is asking, “who do you want to be when you grow up,” of this grab bag of a page with the TIGER that makes the lizard brain want to RUN.

Tabs are low contrast and rarely clicked. Better to have three smaller sections with less detail. Running into the LESS IS MORE rule too.

Teva.com
Take rolling banners OFF landing pages. Tim is asking the room to commit. The Teva homepage looks like a branding site. Not showing full range of stuff Teva sells. Breaking ecommerce convention here is NOT a good thing. The product manager wants real estate on the page doesn’t make it right. The main part of the page needs to be your categories.

FREE SHIPPING is #1 requested promotion followed by FREE RETURNS.

Shop Men, Women, Kids are good segments. Better example is their SHOP page where categorization is better, but time insists the images are too dominant. I don’t want your email I want specials and promotions. Remember to talk to ME.

Much harder to read ALL CAPS and avoid scripty fonts. Fonts that are hard to read send the we are hard to work with message.

Dr. Sinatra
Motion of Free Shipping draw eye (for better or worse). Is Dr. Sinatra known? Not really. Where is Dr. Sinatra? If he is a big authority where is his picture + testimonials. Picture doesn’t have to be large but some presence of Dr. Sinatra (in a white coat) would be a good idea. Offers require too much math. Not easy to compare because the options aren’t in a good table. Options pushes add to cart button out of the pictures. Proof badges would help create legitimacy.

Tim suggests education as a middle step. 7 Best Omega Attributes or How To Buy Omega.

DCSNext
Form below graphic is good but too spread out. Better if there was a CTA Free Ebook, pull the form up, make the image smaller. Reduce the ask on the form (fewer is always better). Every field you add to a form lowers the conversion rate. What is the minimal information needed to download an ebook? NOTHING!

Is this information necessary to complete the current transaction. Seth Godin in Permission Marketing said ASK FOR LITTLE, GIVE A LOT.

Non Required fields get better results. If they are required why tell me? PEOPLE DON’T READ. Reduce the text. Testimonials must have full credit. Also, must have the “changed my life” moment in testimonials.

FEAR or GREED = 7 Biggest Mistakes When Doing DCS Migration.
7 Deadly Sins = FEAR and you want to know all 7 (the power of numbers as any woman’s magazine proves monthly).

BuyHappier.com
Tim hates the grey on grey navigation. Don’t just decorate with pictures. Pictures can pull you away from CTA. Reverse text is a Tim Ash pet peeve. MAKE FREE SHIPPING PROMINENT.

ADD TO CART – Tim sees the PayPal Buttons below the main CTA as dangerous.

Tim Ash, Conversion Conference Keynote

I know Tim Ash from my tenure as a Director of Ecommerce. I never actually met Tim, but we spoke on the phone and we came very close to a deal to hand our site over to Tim. Forget why we didn’t do that deal, but it was probably money (lol). Tim’s revised Landing Page Optimization book is out and highly recommend. Few know more about how to create the best landing pages than Tim.

Landing Pages – The Heart of It All
Saw an interesting stat the other day and don’t remember where. Sites with 100 or more landing pages did 10x better than those with 10 or less. That stat seems TRUE to my experience as an Internet marketer. Landing pages, particularly ones created for PPC are highly optimized environments.

Every web page should be a “highly optimized environment”, but they aren’t. Nothing like paying $5 a click (or more) to instill best practices (smiling as I wrote that). Here are my landing page “rules”, the ones I try to live by:

• Keep it SIMPLE (noise distracts from conversion).
• Your home page is NOT a landing page!!
• There is a reason most landing pages look similar, that hero left, short paragraph with bullets and form right format works.
• Test, Test and Test some more.
• Steal, Steal and Steal some more (if you don’t have time or money to test).
• Establish KPIs (know what success looks like).
• B2B = establish immediate and near term objectives.
• B2C = live in the NOW baby (lol).

I’ve come around to think Web 3.0 may be a series of landing pages tagged and tied. The structure of home page as hub with navigation out to spokes seems over. Web 3.0 is going to open our sites up like a can opener and that means INTERNAL SEARCH is going to be IMPORTANT. It also means your best friend needs to be your information architect, the person setting your navigational taxonomy and your 2nd best friend needs to be your graphic designer because if this new thing doesn’t look cool AND at the same time be easy to follow forget about it. I will shut up now in anticipation of Tim Ash’s Keynote. Let’s see what the master of Landing Pages has to add.

Conversion Conference Keynote: SiteTuners CEO Tim Ash

First Midwest Conversion Conference (SF is done and Fort Lauderdale next). Young show, but deep history. About a third of the audience has “conversion” in their job title. Tim estimates that in a year 75% will have conversion in their title because the future is about conversion. Tim is asking people from countries around the world to raise their hand. People are here from more than 12 countries.Had more Germans at first Hamburg conference than at the San Francisco conference. “Germans are crazy for conversion,” Tim said.

Gamification
Tim is using two interesting forms of gamification. They have a passport that, once all badges are earned by stopping by the sponsors, your passport goes into a drawing. Good idea that should be stolen for your next conference as it makes sponsorship more palatable. The other idea is to send a survey and attach access to today’s slides to filling out that survey. Intelligent gamification (don’t forget to read my Gamification White Paper For Fun and Profit.

Online Persuasion: Leveraging the Brain’s Need for Novelty & Shortcuts
@Tim_Ash

Part I: Tale of 3 Brains
Neo-cortex, Limbic System, Brain Stem (the three brains).

• Neo-cortex = reason (Spock-like), really good stuff. Most of our brain is dedicated to reason.
• Limbic = emotional and memory center. We love or hate here and memories are most strongly formed when there are multiple senses. Strong emotions inform how you react. Important to have strong emotional reactions. The mid-brain is all about feelings.
• Brain Stem = reaction and survival. All the other feeling and thinking doesn’t matter if you are dead. Primitive brain stem response happens in all animals. We don’t think about automatic things like breathing and walking.

95% of decisions are made pre-conscious. What does the conscious mind do? So the real sales funnel is Brain Stem, Limbic System and finally Neo-cortex. Anything that will reach the “brain” has to work through the emotional state of the stem, the limbic system and then finally the analytical.

Understand the reptile brain is in charge and the Brain Stem is a TOUGH bouncer.

Part II: Feeding The Lizard (the Reptile Brain)
Lazy, brain stem doesn’t want to spend a lot of effort on anything. Makes me think of Don’t Make Me Think by Krug .

KEEP IT SIMPLE.

Impatient, because in 1/20th of a second we’ve formed our first impressions of a website. We must make snap decisions to survive. 5 seconds to load your web page = NOT OK. The brain stem does things automatically. Same stimulus = same response because the brain stem is not reasoning. The S – R is repetition because it helps our survival. These are not “teachable” or “Trainable” they are more triggers, more auto-response patterns than reasoned response.

Definition of insanity – doing same things and expecting different results.

Change = Scariest Sign to brain stem.

Our first question is it dangerous. Is it novel or new? Yes to both of those questions then exploration may begin, passing from trigger to higher portions of the brain. Need to keep the brain stem in mind when creating landing pages and Call To Actions (CTAs).

Fight, Flight, Feed or Fornicate
What do we value in America? Competition and fighting is something we value. On the flipside of FIGHT is FLIGHT, run away. If we can’t fight or don’t need to run away can we feed, can we supersize it? Finally we have a drive to reproduce. Brain stem cares about being here or, if I’m not here, my offspring are here via reproduction.

Part III The Eyes Have It
Majority of brain devoted to processing visual stimuli. Eyes are a miracle. Two types of vision – rods and cones. Blue cones, green cones and red cones and rods. Rods don’t see color. Rods see grey fuzzy. The process of seeing is really a patchwork of Seurat like dots or pieces that finally become a whole. How can we know what the eye is seeing and when:

• Eye Tracking to create heatmaps usually wearing some kind of laser headgear
• Mouse movement (some people’s mouse follows their eyes, so enough people mouse movement = tracking paths).
• Predictive Analytics via software algorithms (Attention Wizard is SiteTuners version)

Tim is showing a “fixation plot” a chart showing where eyes rest and for how long. Combine this with the “Talk out loud” protocol to know what a person is looking at and for how long.

Example from SiteTuners showing large button:

Really important NOT to mess with motion. Just say MOTION because it triggers the lizard brain to determine if there is a danger. Motion hurts conversion because it takes people out of their thinking brain and returns them to their lizard brain.
BABIES RULE = so can be a form of distraction away from CTAs.

Faces care a lot of information. We need special hardware to process them. Faces can be good or evil. Use them carefully.

Best practice for video is a simple > button where users get to play for themselves, no image just the video player button.

First Impressions Matter
Make a good first impression = dress nice. Dress nice and people will follow you. Cabrillo Yacht Sale = bad first impression.

Cultural Tribes – The LIKE ME thing
Match your presentation to the tribe you WANT to buy your products. Everything must support the idea that these people, the ones I’m about to buy from, are “like me”. We want to be where other people are. Great emotional shortcut because following means we don’t need to think. Things like FireFox’s real time counter showing 500K downloads = WOW there are a lot of people out there who like this, so it must be good.

Social Share / Social Shopping = power of social context. Bring the tribe in and you are more likely to make a decision. If others you know and trust like it it must be good. It is “like me”.

Tim is showing a graphic making there is nothing new under the sun point. The last frontier is what is inside our minds. Neuromarketing, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People  Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Beat The Back Button: Optimize For Engagement

Dan Siroker, Optimizely

@dsiroker

Dan used to be head of Obama Campaign as Director of Analytics. We are watching a clip of Obama before he was president saying he likes facts and reason and this is why Dan left his job. Dan created the New Media Analytics team. Mission was to use data they had in campaign to make better decision. Goal is engage and conversion from the Obama website.

Lessons Learned

Lesson #1: Define quantifiable success metrics.

What are you optimizing for? Four Tools:

Mixpanel

Google Analytics

Omniture Site Catlalyst

Mixpanel

Google Analytics Tricks & Teting
Visitors flow is highly useful. Get a sense of where you bottlenecks are so you can prioritize what you should be optimizing for. Dan saw a dropoff between visitors and conversion (donors to Obama, key was getting their email address because then they would contribute). Wanted to improve conversions using Multivariate test.

Dan is showing several versions of a pages and asking us to select our “winners”

Learn More button and family image video were the winners in the campaign. The room DID NOT choose the winners. Dan said the HIPPO syndrome (highest paid person opinion wins) was able to be thrown out with DATA. Conversion was improved 40%. Increased emails by 2.5M. Raise an extra $57M from people who were captured by this winning page.

Lesson 2: Explore Before You Refine
Don’t just limit to refinement of what is there EXPLORE a huge potential of ideas and concepts and let the DATA tell you what is the optimal solution.

ABC Family

Discovered that most people were typing names of shows. After seeing that trend tested a new idea. Disney’s change increased engagement 600%.

Lesson 3: Less Is More REDUCE CHOICES

SeeClickFix

OneKingsLane (Optimizely customer) increased conversion by reducing options in the signup form.

Lesson 4: WORDS MATTER
Buttons when never signed up was Donate and Get A Gift, already signed up then Please Donate did the best. Previous donate Contribute worked. So words matter and should be shaped to the visitor.

If you want someone to do something, tell them to do it. Words should be mapped to what customers want. ABC Family example “full episodes” beat “watch episodes” because that is what people were looking for.

Submit lost to Support Haiti and incremental million bucks because of it.

Lesson 5: Fail Fast
Testing shows things that will hurt performance as much as winners, so STOP stuff that is hurting quickly.

Lesson 6: Start Today

Omniture Test and Target

Optimizely (wanted to test without IT involvement)

Dan is going through a live demonstration of a test using Optimizely. UI is good and easy to use. Dan is showing reports from “experiments”.

With A/B testing you never know WHY, and why is somewhat moot. Things you want to test are infinite, so success is start with average ideas and make them better. 100 years from now we will look back and think how stupid we were then (now). The future is personalization. Start building a culture of testing. Obama campaigned optimized using cookies planting a cookie for returning, donors, etc…

**** MARTY NOTE
This idea that WHY is moot is a key testing concept and very hard to get used to. We humans want to KNOW the why of things. As Internet marketers we want to create optimal experiences. If we think back to Tim Ash’s keynote and agree that we need to grab our customers in some emotionally relevant way since that is the only way to capture the attention of the lizard brain then we can either 1. do what the data tells us or 2. spend a lot of time and resources chasing WHY. I’m in the first camp after training myself out of the knee-jerk WHY response (and that was NOT easy). Thinking like an Internet marketer means un-learning some very human tendencies (lol).

I’m not saying don’t have empathy, but don’t chase the dragon. The dragon is thinking in someway other than what the data suggests. This can sound like I’m saying SELL OUT your values. The opposite is true. Your values are what got you in the game in the first place, they are the bedrock of your marketing.

The presentation layer of how those values are shared with others DOESN’T change your principles (even a little bit). Most companies have a, “do the right thing,” cause, so listening to what works best for your customers is consistent with that value. This is another way of saying, LISTEN and learn to understand what “Do the right thing” means online. This is yet another example of where Internet marketing is different than LIFE.

In Internet marketing NOW is constant. Life has a past and may have a future. The only truth that will ever make you money in Internet marketing is how your A beats your B NOW. Anything else is FUTURE or HISTORY and neither can help you make more money NOW. I write, “suspend judgment” knowing how hard it was to actually DO.

Do I backslide? Sure, but, after extensive Zen-like training, I’m about half way home, half way to NOT walking down useless WHY paths. Queue up another test instead to create another NOW, another more profitable NOW.

Small Screens, Big Conversions: Insights on Mobile Behavior

Ian Everdell, Mediative

On Twitter @Mediativelan

@IanEverdell

19% = adults in US who own tablets, almost doubled year-over-year (holiday season).

13% of all searches are now on a mobile devices (billions and more than 100% increase year over year)

Mobile is growing “really quickly and you need to be thinking about it now.”

Ref: Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski

Smart Phones

• 83% at Home
• 87% in a store
• 86% Watching TV
• 59% in line or waiting
• 48% while eating
• 39% use smart phone in bathroom
• 43% use smart phone when traveling

Great comScore data showing when people use WHAT and WHEN; Tablets start and finish the day. Desktop computers are during the day. Phones at lunch and pretty flat lined.

Mobile Searches are different than desktop searches. Mobile = LONGER. People search differently on mobile. 70% of mobile searches will complete that task within an hour (smart phone) or a week (tablet). People are looking things up and going to the store to buy.

CTR
Smart phone and tablet = more clicks and you pay less for them? Makes sense to have a mobile campaign to supplement other campaigns because more for less money.

Golden Triangle
Tablet attention is left justified. Put a lot of work into meta (title and description, live within Google’s guidelines). Mobile only PPC perform 11% better. INCLUDE words like iPhone and Android into mobile ads. Misspellings more prevalent on mobile so be sure to spread misspellings into campaigns.

Paid ads on mobile devices take up much more screen real estate so you can do things that can more competitors off the screen.

PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY TO OPEN YOUR EMAILS ON A MOBILE DEVICE.

Desktops = open on Monday and then no desktop on weekends. Mobile is inversely related. Mobile opens later in the week (Tuesday) and stays strong through the weekend.  Mobile heat maps of emails there is a strong bias to the left side of the list. May want several lines of description to be more engaging.

Have to combine WHAT we present and TIME we present it. We can also use tricks to think about how to make our messages look best on mobile devices. Including images be sure to use alt text especially when CTA is a button. No alt-text with buttons is dangerous.

People expect mobile to be faster than website. Actually mobile loads slower. Mobile can butcher landing pages, must be optimized for mobile. Key idea is people’s mobile behavior is more concentrate left, so must take advantage.

Tips on Mobile Landing Pages

• Prioritize Content
• Compress Images
• Avoid Flash
• Contrast: Dark on light
• Text Size: Minimal 15

Fitts Law

Think about design based on how device will be used. Smart Phones CTAs should be low because they can be hard to tap. Create plenty of space around the CTA. Tablets the top corners are easy spots to swipe. Put things that change display at bottom of tablet because hand covers it when it is being used if at top.

Shopping Cart Abandonment is 97% on Smart Phones and tablets. iPad is a conversion MACHINE. Mobile converts better in general. iPads 30% higher conversion than desktop. High end (Moon Audio) need to be optimized for mobile and iPads in particular.

FORMS = Labels ABOVE Fields  because you can see what you are doing better. You can still see the label as you type. Showed an example of how slow it is when form fields are NOT above the field.

Use HTML5 Input Types to Help with different kinds of keypads on mobile devices also degrade gracefully so if you don’t have a smart phone then it still looks good.

Kayak Mobile = good form example.

Call me biased, but what’s happening with Atlantic BT’s “Gives Back” $25,000 Mobile Grant Contest is too exciting to keep under wraps.
What started with an idea to elevate the discussion of mobile technology and the role it can play in bettering people’s lives has evolved into excellent examples  on the multitude of ways mobile technology, strategy and marketing can enhance outcomes.

Whether it be through delivering vital medical services to the under-served of  New York City, mobilizing advocates in support of childhood hunger issues, delivering educational and spiritual resources to those in rural areas affected by cancer or increasing fundraising capacity to bring more support to families affected by Autism – the mobile channel has the capacity to help  any organization become more efficient and more successful.

And then there were nine

UNICEF
No Kid Hungry
Autism Society of North Carolina
Project Renewal
Cornucopia Cancer Support Center
Ounce of Prevention Fund
Cat Adoption Team
Passage Home
California Coalition for Youth

Over 4,000 people have voted for 1 of 9 charity semi-finalists  from across the Country. These nonprofits each created a video showing how the Atlantic BT $25,000 mobile technology and marketing grant would help further their mission.  What we got just blew our minds!.

Road to the Final Four – Who will win the $25,000 Grant?

Atlantic BT will host a live pitch session and Google+ Hangout on July 12th.
Think “Shark Tank” meets TED Talks.  Fun, inspiring & quirky!

Care to attend?  Shoot me a line at Tonia(dot)Zampieri(at)AtlanticBT(dot)com

Take a couple moments to visit the voting page and poke around and share!  We promise you won’t be disappointed.

Atlantic BT hosted the inaugural Crop Meetup, featuring our very own. This is a meetup about everything design presented by professional designers. The format is broken down into two segments. The first portion features an overall design theme and the second showcases a cool method or new technology related to design.

Crop is about sharing methods and techniques. We want to give designers a platform to showcase their skills and learn about the latest and greatest. If you love design, love to collaborate then we want you at the next Crop meetup.

The first topic presented by Corey Brinkmann, Senior Designer @atlanticbt, highlighted some tips and techniques on creating your own custom textures. He bounced back and forth between Photoshop and Illustrator. He showed the engaging audience how to create your own vector brushes using simple sketch scans. Then he asked us to “channel our inner image” by highlighting some ways to alter the channels to create depth and layer our own textures from secondary images.

The second portion was a continuation where Mark Riggan, Senior Designer / Front-End Developer @atlanticbt, repurposed some of Corey’s final comps to introduce a “resolutionary” method for making “the beautifully well-crafted textured images translate properly on higher density screens like Apple’s Retina Display.”

The audience of 55ish talented designers, photographers, developers asked great relevant questions. Overall we felt the inaugural Crop meetup was a huge success and hope to keep it going on a monthly basis. Crop is designed to be a place where we can all learn and get better. In short it’s By Designers, For Designers. If you are interested in collaborating and learning from some talented “crop” of designers, then make sure to check out next month’s topic, Creating Custom Color Palettes. Details to be announced soon.

Social Love

Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/designcrop/
Twitter: @Crop_Meetup
Google+: nicecrop@gmail.com