Article Much Ado About Twitter published on November 5, 2013 If you’ve been near a business section this week, you know Twitter’s IPO is imminent, and that it will set a valuation for the micro-blogging company of approximately $12 billion. I don’t pretend to understand how the company can support that number, but I did learn that Pope Francis just celebrated reaching his 10 millionth follower, and how the pontiff is now more popular than the New York Times yet still less tweet-able than Kanye West... Read Now About
Article Email Marketing Sample Automated Marketing Programs – part 2 published on November 4, 2013 Nurturing new email subscribers is a big task to do manually, but with marketing automation, we can follow-up with those subscribers and encourage them to take further action and hopefully turn into a good new business lead. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Button Usability and the Bagel Shop Conundrum published on October 30, 2013 Your users look at a lot of websites, and are really familiar with most of the standard conventions out there already. Fight cognitive dissonance and usability problems in your designs by using all of the knowledge and experience your users already have. Present your calls-to-action in a way that doesn't confuse or send mixed messages. Read Now About
Article “Months Would Be Nice” by Christopher Butler on October 28, 2013 “Months would be nice.” That’s what Andrew Slavitt replied when asked how much time would have been necessary to properly test the Affordable Care Act website before launching it earlier this month. As it turned out, they were only given two weeks... Read Now About
Article Email Marketing Sample Automated Marketing Programs – part 1 published on October 28, 2013 A great automated program for those just starting out with marketing automation is one that sends a series of emails to new clients/customers, helping answer common questions and giving them the opportunity to provide feedback via a survey or testimonial. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design You, the Other Kind of Business Leader by Christopher Butler on October 20, 2013 This past Saturday I had the honor of closing out this year's Entrepreneur Mindshare at my alma mater, the Rhode Island School of Design. It was a true pleasure to be a part of this event, which included brilliant minds, lots of ideas, and some beautiful enthusiasm. To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive of my involvement, because I've never really thought of myself as an entrepreneur. But as I've explored the idea, I have come to realize that entrepreneurship isn't just about ownership — of ideas, of companies, or anything else, for that matter — but about enacting change. When it comes down to it, entrepreneurs want to enact change and have an impact, which is something that can be done by starting something completely new, or by revitalizing something that already exists. My experience has certainly been in the latter. Here are my thoughts on that... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Clean Up on Aisle 7 published on October 15, 2013 With iOS 7, Apple introduced a lot of usability missteps in favor of visual design. They cleaned the interface up, rather than organized it carefully. Don't fall into that trap! Here's how to focus on the usability issues that get forgotten during the design process. Read Now About
Article A Philosophy of Failure by Justin Kerr on October 14, 2013 I volunteer for a non-profit organization that is attempting to turn a philosophy of work and learning into a catch phrase: "Do it. Try it. Fix it." This is the mantra heard frequently in conversations among leadership and staff, specifically when organizing and executing a new initiative. And it's starting to bother me. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Don’t Make Me Search by Christopher Butler on October 11, 2013 We've misunderstood search for a long time. That's what Chris Butler thinks is holding us back right now. In this month's article, he makes a compelling argument for designing systems that support better outbound marketing programs, rather than ones that are solely reliant upon inbound strategies… Read Now About
Article Content Strategy Ideas by Christopher Butler on October 8, 2013 Have you ever stopped to consider the value of an idea? Maybe you haven't — at least not specifically — but I bet you have a sense for that value, and I bet that sense is inflated. Or, in other words, your ideas are probably not as valuable as you think they are. They're certainly not as unique... Read Now About