There’s a rule in creative writing that you should always show rather than tell. So you wouldn’t write: “The tall man felt bad when he saw the blonde woman crying on a bench. She reminded him of his mother, who’d abandoned him as a child because she wanted to pursue acting.” That’s telling. That’s bad […]

In this post, Joanna and I want to know what YOU think about 5 SEO agency sites – by giving you a chance to rate how strongly they make a case over their competition… Part of outperforming your competition involves telling your site visitors exactly why they should choose you over any other available options. […]

My first startup was a realtor rating site called What Customers Say. On the home page for What Customers Say, we had to speak to two groups: 1) realtors and 2) home buyers and sellers. Naturally, the value + benefits associated with using the rating site were very different for realtors than for home buyers […]

None of your competitors are converting 100% of their traffic. And none of the sites or the businesses you look up to are converting 100% of their traffic. Not even one-fifth of that. Nobody is doing it 100% right. So if you go out and copy what the other guys are doing with their websites… […]

NOTE: This post is grounded in what you’ve shared with us in the persistent poll on Copyhackers.com. Based on 273 responses to our question about the types of copy that challenge you most, 61% of you told us that THIS topic is top of mind for you. (Oh, and in case there’s any confusion about […]

NOTE: Case study with test results included below. When I was doing my MA thesis on persuading users in ecommerce environments, I focused on converting in online “catalogs” (by which I mean any page that lists your products, services, packages or plans). As is required for any thesis, you have to read everything anyone has […]

5 Types of Tone in Writing: Updated June 8, 2023 Your message is what you’re trying to communicate. Your tone of voice is how you communicate it. Tone takes a statement and either breathes life into it… or sucks the life out of it. It goes without saying, I think, that the tone you should […]

It’s easy to hate email marketing. It’s easy to look at your inbox, scroll through 100s of messages from companies that are probably just trying to sell you stuff, and add to your list of startup ideas “Banish Email Marketing from the World’s Inboxes”. But, as I’m sure you know, just because you don’t like […]

Here’s a lie that feels like the truth: “A mother is a person who, on seeing only 4 pieces of pie for 5 people, promptly declares, ‘I never did care much for pie.’” That’s a lie that turns moms into martyrs, which is not what moms are supposed to be. It’s one of many lies […]

This week, the front page of Hacker News was filled to the brim with stories* about how much cold, hard cash startups have been earning: Nathan Barry’s $26,679 in 24 hours: Stats from my latest book launch Patrick McKenzie’s Bingo Card Creator (and other stuff) Year in Review 2012 Brennan Dunn’s Why I Gave Up […]

We all wish we could spend $50,000 to hire an awesome design agency for every new idea we have. But for early stage startups – especially bootstrappers – that isn’t always a sound investment. True, a high quality, custom-built brand and website is going to make all the difference someday – and it’s great that […]

Here’s what we’ve all allowed ourselves to believe: selling is tacky. If you have brains and a great product or service, you really shouldn’t have to ask people to buy your stuff, should you? Great products sell themselves! And, hell, you didn’t go to college just to end up hocking your wares like some sad-sack […]

Running split tests is addictive. You develop a theory about something that’s not working as hard as it could be on your website, and that becomes your new test idea. You develop the creative – a copy improvement, a usability fix, or perhaps a product repositioning – and then you launch your experiment. The excitement […]

Eliminating Friction Words From Your Button Copy Button copy is the site of conversion and deserves attention The words you choose for your buttons matter High friction words suggest the user has to give up something Low friction words make work feel less like work In my Mixergy course, I spoke briefly about something called […]

As we move into the holiday season (and as I realize, with that opening, that this post is not going to be shared after Dec 25), everyone’s going to be talking about how to squeeze more sales out of shoppers. I’m not going to talk about that… …I wrote about it last year, though, so […]

Stripe Review from a Non-Developer Responsive customer support Easy to implement Stripe is for non-technical biz owners too This is the abridged story of a business owner who went from not accepting credit cards, to Stripe, to a traditional merchant services provider, and back to Stripe again… Stripe is missing the boat on its home […]

If you watched the vice presidential debate last week, you may remember our dearly beloved Moderator Martha grilling the candidates when they didn’t directly answer her questions. She tacked this important, revealing phrase onto the end of almost every primary question she asked: “Be specific.” Why’d she say that? Because when people have a question, […]

I hear this question being asked all the time — even from seasoned marketers who know how to run an A/B testing program. I see people blogging about what to test, which can be helpful, but it overlooks the most important aspect of testing: learning about the test subject (your visitor, prospect, or customer!). Your […]

That is the look of disappointment. Disappointment at what your testing tool is reporting — versus what you’re actually seeing in your business metrics. Neil Patel wrote a useful post yesterday on lessons he’d learned after dropping $252K on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). It’s a very worthwhile read (whether you have that kind of coin […]

Save Time and Money: People Want One or the Other You’ve heard me bitch a lot about the most overused, meaningless marketing message of all time: “Save Time & Money” I go on and on about that damn phrase. My ebook readers have heard it. My email subscribers have. My students have heard it. And […]