Summary: Reduce the cognitive load on your customers by personalizing content and interfaces to their needs. There’s an old book on website design titled Don’t Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. It’s a good book, and if you’re involved in design, you should read it. But that basic concept applies to…
Summary: Three steps to make better estimates: (1) break down complicated tasks into components; (2) compare tasks with prior experience; (3) make three estimates — pessimistic, realistic, and optimistic. We’re all bad at estimating the time, cost, and risks associated with a task, and we usually overestimate the benefits. The problem increases with the complexity…
Summary: Transitioning readers from print to digital is challenging due to the distinct moods each medium invokes. Still, some publishers are seeing new uses for print. The Economist found that a print package for their welcome series improved engagement. Publishers take note: print remains a valuable tool, particularly when digital methods are oversaturated. It has…
Summary: It’s not enough to know all the clever business sayings. You have to do them. A friend likes to say, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Every day is filled with hundreds of lessons that fly by our inattentive eyes and ears. There’s so much we could learn if we only…
From time to time a publisher will ask me how they can improve their business. I’m first and foremost an operations / tech guy, but I also have ideas about growth and business development. To help a publisher figure out where they can grow, it’s first necessary to find out what they’re doing — good…
Summary: When selling a subscription service, are you trying to sell an honest product, or are you trying to trick people into paying you? If you want to be an honest merchant, follow the consumer-friendly subscription best practices in this article. There’s a reason why people don’t like subscriptions, and I ran into it this…
Summary: To establish trust with your audience, your content strategy should focus on these five pillars: transparency, credibility, habitual product, relevant language, and specificity. At Omeda’s OX7 meeting in Chicago, Adam Ryan from Workweek gave a talk on 5 pillars of trust. They are … Transparency Credibility Habitual product Relevant language Specificity My notes from…
Summary: When evaluating a new technology, you’ll have lots of preconceptions about how it should work, and what key terms mean. You need to shed those preconceptions and ask lots and lots of detailed questions. Last week I was working on an article for Martech.org on customer data platforms and their close kin – that…
Summary: Goals and objectives should be planned ahead of time. Methods and operations should be documented afterwards. Many years ago I did a workshop on how to get marketing to work with IT. I’ve noticed that when IT says, “I need a requirements document,” marketing often hears that as “go away, kid, you bother me.”…
Summary: Publishers have been telling the world that online content is free. Now they’re reaping the consequences. This morning I was walking the granddog in the neighborhood park and was serenaded to the sound of “Come here, Sky! Come back, Sky! Heel, Sky!” You’ll find it as no surprise that Sky – a lovely German…
Summary: It’s important to know your customer. Know their needs, their wants, their values, their habits, and their preferences. But don’t call into the branding trap of believing they need to be your buddy. Bo Sacks distributed an article by James Evelegh with a rather long title that starts “An even closer union. How close…
Summary: This popular headline format works because it pushes some of the right psychological buttons, but the damage to the brand might not be worth it. I’m sure you’ve seen headlines like this. “I’m a bartender. Please stop mixing bourbon with Italian bitters.” Or “I’m a swim coach, please stop kicking from your knees.” That…
Summary: Here are 10 things for content creators to avoid: Poor Quality, Overly Promotional, Irrelevant or Off-Topic, Inconsistent, Inauthentic, Insensitive or Controversial, Poor User Experience, Lack of Engagement, Repetitive, and Ideologically biased content. Bo Sacks recently distributed an article by Dave Morgan called “It’s NOT About The Content.” His argument is that the point of…
Summary: One type of efficiency often leads to inefficiency in other areas. It’s important to maintain a balanced perspective on different types of efficiency and to relate them to your overall goals. Dishwashers frequently have an efficiency label on them. Those labels irritate me because they imply there’s only one kind of efficiency that matters…
Summary: Micropayments are a good idea in principle, but they haven’t caught on. Why? This article identifies three top reasons: (1) The hassle of lots of little charges. (2) The hassle of signing up. (3) The lack of a clear industry leader. Amazon could solve this. I don’t like platforms, but this seems like the…