pic of me at corcovado (christ) in brazil

Do you want to go to heaven?

Besides the fact Jews get an express pass to heaven, HECK Yes I want to go to heaven! That’s like asking someone do you like fun? No one says no to that. (excuse the double negatives).

How can you learn from this and make your site better? On our new site we had some text stating for people to join and some benefits below. We changed it to list the best benefit on the top and others below. Our conversions jumped 100%, from 10% to now 20% users sign up when they get to that page. Worth it?

Bottom line: Display the ultimate benefits they will receive from your service and test it. Something they can’t say no to.

Bonus Idea: Get 1-2 of your users to rewrite the copy on your site. (Thanks Rachel!) They will have some interesting ways for you to think about the language they prefer to understand.

Can I get an amen?

How to get people to test for you

1- Recruit people for free on Craigslist.com. Get normal people who you think may use your site. You can also message people on facebook or yahoo groups and/or forums related to your topic. Post that you are looking for X (football, shopping, etc..) fans. The main goal is to get ideal users of your site. Asking Silicon Valley friends is relatively useless, unless you are building valleywag.
2- In cafes, go up to people who are on computers or look like a user you may want on your site. I did this and it was a nice way to meet women. Hey, not gonna lie:)
3- Prepare your questions ahead of time so you can compare responses instead of having random stuff from each user. Use surveymonkey.com to create surveys.

Questions to ask ahead of time

a) background – learn about them. what sites do they go to. how do they normally invite friends to things. who do they hear about things from. what do they do for fun. (these ?s are useful in shaping your product/experience)
b) objective based – Figure out what you want to learn from them specifically. Then create questions to make them do ACTIONS on your site. Can you please add a friend? How does someone post a new item?
c) Ask them to speak outloud and tell you what they are thinking or confused about.
d) Follow up. If they didn’t do what you expected, afterwards ask them what they thought about it or what made them do something else.
WARNING: DO NOT TELL THEM WHERE TO CLICK OR SHOW THEM ANYTHING.

How to do the actual testing:

a) Record. Ideally you can record the audio and screen cast of the session. Snapx is a great video capture tool, also techsmith.com has some neat tools. Audacity, for sound. I didn’t pay for these but you can if you want to show / remember what happened. I just took notes on a textpad file.
b) Watch. Adobe has a great free product called acrobat.com where you can use ‘connect’ and do remote user testing for free.
c) Projector. If you have one use it. Nice to see on big screen instead of creepy style and peering over the side of a person.
d) Automated. My mentor showed me this site Usertesting.com which is AWESOME. For $19.95 a person they will get you someone in your target demographic and provide you a screencast of them using your site and show you bugs and other cool stuff.

Rinse wash and repeat. After you implemented the changes that you received from a few people, get fresh new people in and see if they notice the difference. Jakob Nielsen did research and you only need 5 people before you see overall site issues/trends. If you are a small start-up like ours, you don’t have the resources or time to be testing forever. I can say that the ROI on this type of stuff is insane, I know you may not do it or have not read this far in the post but DO it. At least 1 person, if it’s not worth it I will buy you a burrito.

Any other ways that people do user testing?

Improvements:

- Call to Action (CTA): The order button is grey and is semi-transparent. Make it orange, green, yellow. something noticeable! You can’t learn to ride a bike without training wheels.
- Linked. Title logo at top is not linked. I know I always click on that to go home and I am guessing others do as well
- Web 2.0 IT! Okay, semi-kidding. But honestly please let people who bought it get an email asking them to comment on this page. Allow the people who bought it and like it help you sell it to other people
- About page. Whenever I go to buy something from a Google search that’s not Amazon I am very skeptical. So an about page about how long you’ve been in business, a phone # to reach you at and maybe an office photo would help me sleep better at night.

Any other suggestions? If you want me to make some suggestions on your site please leave a comment.

Lately I have been obsessed with analytical marketing. Looking at the numbers to find out interesting ways to optimize what I am working on.

Let’s look at Facebook: Search for ‘noah,’ yes vanity search.

300&rc=6440&rank=0&friends=809124,1203598,500150009,10119073,2258441&
sns=0&t=p&u=http%3A%2F%2Fberkeley.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fq%3Dnoah%
26nstart%3D20%26nskip%3D2%26hash%3Dc4313ecd0d2eec376b87ea9cc74798dd%
26s%3D20%26hash%3D8b23396a1c213e08f22f0e21cca577a9

Wow! That is FREAKING SUPER long, but it makes me hot. Why? It’s really smart and clever what fb, Google and other companies do with your search results.

They make them smarter (self-learning):

a) they see which position you clicked on the person. 1st noah, 2nd noah, etc…
b) how many pages it took you to find the right person
c) where/ how you found the search page
d) learning about which noahs are most popular
e) storing what each person searches for

Take-aways:

a) Watch what you click
b) Figure out what you want to accomplish before you measure
c) Optimize those #s to: show better advertisements, show better results & know more about you.

Bored? Check out my dinner video with Tim Ferriss in AR. He calls me a wussy;)

link to photo

People have routines. They have their 24 hours in a day and know how they are going to use it.

What would it take for you to change your showering routine? What would it take for you to change your daily teeth-brushing (hopefully twice a day)? Probably a WHOLE lot. For me it would be to start showering but for almost everyone else it would be a tough sale to get them to do it a new way. I think the electric toothbrush is a great example of something much better and a similar habit to what people were currently doing.

Why do we want to make things that change people? I think we need to start creating things that adjust to people and build from their current experiences. To actually change someones routine there would need to be a HUGE benefit.

What is something you changed recently?

He was for real! Insane huh. Anyways, I did my good Eagle Scout of the day thing and explained how it works.

Moral of the story. Even though you think your product is self-explanatory there are people who have no idea. Don’t take for granted what people know and make it as easy as possible to understand things.

“Shakespeare was wrong. A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet . . . which is why the single most important decision in the marketing of perfume is the name.”
- Al Ries and Jack Trout

Research from the business world and from the scientific community gives evidence towards the fact that a name of a product is very important. It is important in the decision making process of the consumers.

Framing: Researchers have found that if they take a generic product, and “frame” it towards the positive or the negative by simply changing the words on how they describe the product to the consumer it changed the behavior of the consumer. Based solely on words the consumer chose one over the other. The one that was chose most was framed in a positive way. The consumer felt a sense of gain from this.

Categories: A product name can also invoke the emotions of the consumer. Consumers typically categorize everything internally based on their previous experiences. If your product name has a positive association with it, it will be put into the positive category in the consumers mind. If it carries a negative name, it will automatically be classified in the negative category. Taking the time to test the responses from consumers will give you an idea of how it is categorized by the target consumers.

Color: Color has been found to influence people, consciously and unconsciously. Colors can elicit different moods and affect responses. It has also been found that when a name is generic is it less effective than if it is fancy, such that “mocha colored cake” would be more appealing than “brown cake”.

When you are name your product, it would benefit to test the above factors.

1. Go to a big market place – You can search on Google for companies that will do the work for you or you can hit one of the big marketplaces. Going with Google is not recommended because the provider is spending money before they actually make anything so they have to raise prices just to compete. Going to one of the bigger marketplaces, like Elance.com or RentACoder.com is best because you will have a lot of different providers competing to do your work in a controlled system.
2. Define your project in detail – I like this step because while coming up with a full plan and project scope I am forced to think of all details and variations of the project and crystallize them “on paper”. There’s three critical parts to this: 1 – What you want as the final product 2 – When the final product is to be delivered and the milestones for checking along the way, and 3 – Any variations, including in compensation, delivery times and defaulting. Your goal is to get the entire project covered in detail. I prefer to describe what I’m looking for, how it should be done, within what parameters, what should not be done, etc. I usually include drawings or sketches.
3. Use an escrow or third party for payments – in the initial agreement I usually state that 1/3 of price to get started, 2/3 upon completion and the rest upon any bug fixes, changes or clarifications. Using an escrow service allows you to have the work done before the money is paid out and the provider disappear. Even if you have used a provider many times, I would still prefer to use a third party for larger transactions because in some countries US3K is a millionaire status.
4. Tie production to money – tie a schedule and production to money rewards or punishments. For instance, if the product is late by more than 7 days 10% of price is subtracted. I usually tie money to the schedule, and include a 10% bonus if the product is delivered before deadline and as described in initial agreement.
5. Be available and encourage communication – Somewhere you did not explain what you meant and the provider might assume something that you don’t want if you do not encourage them to ask and get clarifications at such junctures. It is always best to answer a five minute email than to have five hours of work to be redone. I prefer email, but IM and other ways are fine too.
6. Always have an agreement – because of cultural, country and technical-know-how differences, what you think you meant will not mean the same thing to a person around the globe. Having an agreement helps you to clarify what you want and for the provider to understand what you want. It will save you countless of hours of headaches and bickering later on. Declaring such things as the time used in the agreement is Pacific Standard does make a difference if the provider is from India (which is 12hr diff). Tip: If it’s programming, ask for full documentation and you’ll most likely get it without any price increases.
7. Expect to be surprised – All except for one project that I have had done for me ended in a satisfactory or better grade. Some were just amazing. And this is what you should expect. Plan and take care of all the details and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the quality and fast turnaround time you can get from outsourced work.

7 Tips to Outsourcing Technical Work was written by Andre Nosalsky who will be attending CommunityNext in July.

Wal-Mart knows you’ll buy more bananas on Tuesday than any other week, and that selling Crest toothpaste at $2.49 increase sales by 11% than if you they sold it for $2.44.

Why Make a Psychological Profile?

It allows you to make decisions easier. If you know the your visitors come to your website to satisfy three different needs, than you’ll know what to hit on when designing and developing your site.

Getting better results. You will not waste time and resources on activities that get substandard results. You won’t preach mountain biking to geeks or car racing to nerds.

Components of a Psychological Profile

The Psychological Pathway – I learned about the Psychological Pathway when I was studying direct mail advertising. The pioneers in direct mail advertising walked through what a customer thinks when he is dealing with the direct mail that comes in their physical mail box. That is where A|B testing came from and other tricks based on the thinking of people that dealt with direct mail.

You have to write down the thinking processes that occur in your visitor’s heads when they use your site. What are they thinking when they click on this button or that link? You need to know the difference in psychological needs of a Google visitor and a repeat visitor and treat each differently.

Other factors:

Needs – what does the user need in his life that is not being fulfilled, which you can supply, this could be emotional, physical, or psychological
Personality types – Introverts, extraverts, caring, cold, driven, laid back, direct, and indirect.

Surveying ≠ (Truth or Fact)
Surveying is gathering information on the people’s self image and how they view themselves. People always view themselves and answer surveys based on how they view their ideal self. This is usually not how they are in reality. Looking at behavior gives you the true picture of their motivations.

After Action Questionnaire
Asking questions and surveying after a visitor or a customer makes an action is a lot more effective. The answers will allow you to peek into the thought processes of the person and see what lead up to the action. This will allow you to align what the people do, with what they thought they did.

Generalizing
There will always be exceptions to the rules and profiles that you build. Keep that in mind. You think you’ve covered the market that your site appeals to most, but you might find that a different demographic uses your site also.

Summary

Don’t fly with your blinders on. Start with a basic psychological profile of your site visitors and keep that in mind when building and developing your site. As you get more feedback from what works and what doesn’t and from usage and after action questionnaires, you’ll be able to modify this profile and further tone your messages to hit spot on with your target visitors and customers.

More about Andre Nosalsky at his site.

I posted a few weeks ago about my good friends at Saynow.com offering $10,000 smackeroos for a referral of a programmer. Matt Rubens of Jamglue and bad ass site Sketchfu sent me his buddy Ross. Guess who is now working at Saynow? Ross. Woot!

Guess who owes me a burrito?

Action Items:
- There is now a Okdork Jobs tab at the top of the site. If you are hiring someone for product management or marketing feel free to send me your hiring description to jobs@okdork.com. There is no fee and it lasts 15 days or until the job is filled.
- Check out the latest listing from Yahoo for a product manager on their search team.
- If you are looking for a job I can posts resumes as well.