Conversion Conference West 2012 San Francisco
Conversion Conference is a two-day professional event focused exclusively on conversion rate optimization. Scheduled for March 5-6 at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, Conversion Conference offers marketers the opportunity to learn the latest strategies for improving the effectiveness of their online campaigns and improve increasing website conversion rates. The San Francisco Conversion Conference will feature four keynote presentations that explore how principles of human psychology can be applied to websites to improve usability and efficiency. Speakers include: • Noted persuasion expert BJ Fogg, Director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University • Neuromarketing missionary Roger Dooley, author of “Brainfluence” and creator of the popular Neuromarketing Blog • Web usability consultant Steve Krug, author of “Don’t Make Me Think,” and “Rocket Surgery Made Easy” • User-centered design expert Jared Spool, the CEO and founder of User Interface Engineering and a highly regarded author, speaker and consultant
January 25, 2012
Grouped: How small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web
The web is undergoing a fundamental change. It is moving away from its current structure of documents and pages linked together, and towards a new structure that is built around people. This is a profound change that will affect how we create business strategy, design, marketing, and advertising. The reason for this shift is simple. For tens of thousands of years we’ve been social animals. The web, which is only 20 years old, is simply catching up with offline life.
December 28, 2011
Making Online Privacy Make Sense

Online privacy is a hassle. People don’t really want to have to manage their digital trails as they go about daily activities, however important it may be. People aren’t excited about managing their privacy online; they’re excited about seeing photos from friends, researching something interesting, and getting things done. As a result, people aren’t clear on what really happens with their data online and become upset when things aren’t as private as they expected, and this is when problems arise for online services.

However, privacy can be turned into a positive. Managed properly, privacy can actually engender trust and a deeper bond with a brand. Importantly, this bond can easily trump factors like ‘lowest cost’ or ‘fastest shipping’, leading to improved customer retention and profitability.

We’re at a turning point for online privacy. If we do privacy right, right now, there is still a lot of opportunity for companies and their customers to benefit from it. Get it wrong, however, and we’ll lose trust from users, and lose the opportunity to build great products based upon user behaviors and data.

August 29, 2011
Ilana Westerman
Social Design Strategy

Great products and services depend on their users having great experiences. But it’s not about what users do or how they do it, but rather why. Why they do what they do, why they keep coming back, and why they tell their friends. And social design aims to explain the why behind great experiences.

I’ll tell you a quick story. Strand Book Store in NYC is apparently very famous, but I had never heard of it (and I’m from the New York area, too) until earlier this year when I was walking around with a friend and she pointed it out to me. She apparently goes all the time and told me I’d like it. And I did. I even bought a new book from an author I like.

That story in and of itself is not a big deal. But the point is this: with technology today, we can get answers to anything factual right away. I could have looked up on my phone how to get to this bookstore. I also could have searched for books by the author. But the value of social is when I don’t even know I’m looking for anything at all.

May 11, 2011
Eric Fisher
Facebook updates its Communication Channels Best Practices

Facebook has updated its Communication Channels Best Practices. A must-read for any developers who want their apps to be "streamlined, clear, and less spammy."

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Communication_Channels_Best_Practices

March 04, 2010
Alex Schleifer
Streams of Content, Limited Attention

In his seminal pop-book, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argued that people are happiest when they can reach a state of "flow." He talks about performers and athletes who are in the height of their profession, the experience they feel as time passes by and everything just clicks. People reach a state where attention appears focused and, simultaneously, not in need of focus at the same time. The world is aligned and everything just feels right.

February 25, 2010
danah boyd
These are your users... read and be horrified

This came to my attention via my friend and colleague Sean Christmann (@seanalltogether) from EffectiveUI, who writes:

February 12, 2010
Jonathan Anderson
Balancing Brands Online: Entertainment Case Study

Website designers face issues of prioritization all the time: which type of site content is most important? What should a site's navigational order be? Wear the black t-shirt today, or save it till Friday?

February 09, 2010
Guild Copeland
Augmented reality virtual dressing room

Ordinarily it's a bad idea to allow the Flash Player access to your webcam if you're standing in front of your computer naked or in your underwear, but we may have found an exception to that rule. Zugara and Rich Relevance have teamed up to create an interesting augmented reality app called Fashionista that lets you try on clothing, virtually. From their press release:

December 14, 2009
Jonathan Anderson
Big Changes Coming to Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg posted an open letter today about some possibly far reaching changes: the phasing out of regional networks. This will affect over half of the 350 million Facebook users. While sites like Twitter seem to be releasing a feature a year, Facebook has been experimenting with different designs and features at what some may consider an alarming pace.

I personally respect a company with such scale taking the risk to improve their product with radical changes. And make no mistake, removing regional networks is quite potentially the biggest change Facebook has made since opening up registration to the world.

December 02, 2009
Alex Schleifer