What if you could persuade the world to start protecting child brides? Or you could persuade your visitors to sign up for your newsletter? Both are goals that rely on persuasion. Learn 8 persuasion hacks here – and use them to win friends and influence people.

Consumers are naturally curious – which is why the concept of the “curiosity gap” works so well in marketing. But how can you use that curiosity on your website… and how shouldn’t you? In this case study, we’ll show you how the curiosity gap led to a 927% lift that didn’t grow the biz at all.

You can uncover hugely valuable data about your site experience and UX thanks to usability testing. The creators of our much-beloved UserTesting.com have now launched Peek, a faster usability testing service. We tried it. Would we recommend it?

There’s a fine line between marketing and creating propaganda. In this short post, see similarities between wartime propaganda posters and negative opt-out messaging. Plus, we dissect oil company marketing messages. Read it now!

A bullet list is the go-to formatting “style” for scannable web copy. But all bullets lists are not created the same, as this A/B test on Precision Nutrition shows. Click to see what happened – and what you should be testing next.

Beating a bad page is pretty easy… but how do you push your copy and design further to outperform a proven winning page… by 13%? Check out this case study to see.

If you’re thinking of hosting a webinar (or five) this year, you’re not alone. Make your webinar invitation emails stand out vs the competition. Read and bookmark this post for informed tips on From names, subject lines, email copy and plotting your webinar email campaign.

No matter where you stand on the debate, it’s clear to us that when done well, pop-ups can drive conversions without pissing people off. But as usual, the devil’s in the details. Take a look at the scuzziest pop-up boxes we’ve seen – and weigh in on the good and bad sides of interruptive marketing.

Let us show you what conversion copywriting hacks to do each month in the first half of 2014 – starting right now. These are totally easy hacks that you can simply roll out or – if 2014’s the year you get real about CRO – split-test on your site. Includes email drip option (for monthly reminders).

Vote for your fave A/B test of 2013. We’ve hand-selected 13 of our faves. Plus, best comment wins 3 awesome biz books published in 2013.

Some copywriters swear by ’em… and others effing hate ’em. Swear words. Curse words. Bad words. Studies show that people perceive swearing to be something only ‘the lower class’ does… but if 99% of us are in said class, can a case be made for swearing in your marketing?

Adword Crash Course Manage your expectations and set your budget Buy some clicks to learn about your market Build exact match ad groups + negative keyword lists Track your conversions Always optimize Editor’s note: This insanely info-packed guest post by our friend Iain Dooley may take more than 1 read. Suggest bookmarking it. Cyber Monday […]

You got the sale. Yay! …But that’s actually just the beginning. Funny, and here you thought getting a conversion was the only goal! Well, maybe you don’t think that… But judging by the number of stunningly free-of-thought thank-you pages we’ve seen this year – and we’ve got a swipe file of at least 50 of […]

Nobody wants a losing A/B test… But some of the most interesting tests are the “losers” – the ones where everything you thought gets thrown into question. The assumptions you made prove to be, at least for the tested website, wrong. It’s with the losing tests that we often learn the most.* Today’s example is […]

We put stickers on them. We buy special cases for them. We attach dongles to them. We play on them. We have special pockets sewn into our running jackets to hold them. We press them to our cheeks. We cradle them in one hand while tickling their little bellies with the other. We keep them […]

LAST UPDATED MAY 11, 2020 You’ve probably heard enough from us about why you should always be testing your copy, images, page layouts, and site functionality. “Yes, Joanna & Lance, we get it. We should always be testing. What else do you have for us today?” Actually – despite your skepticism 🙂 – we have […]

This week, Google confirmed that the party’s over. Now, sure, I don’t know that the ability to identify the keywords bringing traffic to my site ever qualified as a party, but, in comparison to a life of “(not provided)”, the old way was the better way. For small bizzes like ours, at least. (Is it […]

How long is a piece of string? When we’re talking about how long your landing page should be, we’re often asking essentially that question: how long is a piece of string? Answer: as long as it needs to be. Now, in matters of tying things up with string – whether you’re a hog-tier or Christian […]

The single greatest question a marketer can ask is this: What’s the headline? You’d think that a marketer should be most focused on the higher-level questions. Like, “Are we growing?” or “How did our campaigns perform?” or “What’s our net profit?” or “What did they say about us?” Those are all good questions. But they’re […]

A few months ago, a perfectly nice fellow named Michael wrote to me with a problem… He was launching an online outlet for furniture, and, with 100s of products lined up and more arriving regularly, he was challenged by how many product detail pages he’d have to write. After all, every single product needed a […]