While at SXSW in March, I ran into Shannon McKarney from Jaded Pixel, the company behind the popular Shopify hosted e-commerce platform. Shannon asked if she could interview me for the Jaded Pixel blog and I agreed. I’m cross-posting the interview below. The original is here.

What inspired you to write the book?
We were struck by how many of the sites we worked with suffered from the same design and usability problems. But that was really a symptom of the way people think about and manage their sites. So in addition to providing some concrete design guidelines, we wanted to try to change the way people think about web design. Personally, I wanted more people to see the money they’re leaving on the table by not designing their sites well.

How the Book Was Born
I had just finished a presentation on Designing for Conversion at Web Design World in Seattle in July 2006 and was answering some audience questions in front of the stage afterward when a kind but serious-looking gentleman handed me his card and said “I really enjoyed your presentation. How’d you like to write a book about it?” A quick glance at his card identified him as Michael Nolan, Sr. Acquisitions Editor at Peachpit Press/New Riders. After a stunned silence while my mind fixated on the long-held perception that ‘I don’t write so good’, I smiled crookedly at him and said with all the gravitas and certainty I could muster “Ummmmm… Sure?”

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While at the SXSW Interactive Festival last month, Lance and I were interviewed about our book, Web Design for ROI. The interview has been posted to YouTube, but in case you’d like to save yourself a few clicks here it is, in two parts. Our interviewer is fellow New Riders author Charles Wyke-Smith.

Part 1:

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I’m very pleased to announce Closed Loop Marketing’s partnership with Widemile, Inc. Closed Loop Marketing is one of thirteen leading agencies invited to use the beta-release of Widemile’s new multivariate optimization platform.

Designed and developed with partners in mind, Widemile’s new optimization solution will allow Closed Loop Marketing to offer our clients a robust, enterprise-level multivariate testing platform that integrates smoothly with our Paid Search, Conversion Optimization, and SEO services.

As long-time advocates of site testing and optimization, we’ve helped a wide variety of clients improve the effectiveness of their landing pages, sales funnels, and other key site areas. When we combine testing with SEM campaign optimization, the result is a dramatic, end-to-end improvement in quality traffic, conversions, and ROI for our clients.

About Widemile

Based in Seattle, Washington, Widemile is a leading provider of site testing and optimization technologies. Widemile’s third-generation software-as-a-service (SaaS) multivariate optimization system is based on open standards, includes proprietary testing and analytic techniques, and is designed to exceed mission-critical enterprise standards for security, stability, scalability and performance.

And I can also say, having worked with them in the past, that the Widemile team is a group of super-smart, high-quality people. We at CLM are excited to participate in this beta-release, and look forward to a long and rewarding partnership with Widemile.

More information:

• See Widemile’s press release
• Coverage on ClickZ

Some quick stats from the SXSW Interactive Festival, to give you some idea what it was like:

• Verbal NDA’s given, between Lance and myself: 6
• Movie stars seen: at least 5 that we know of
• Tradeshow schwag items gathered, each: about 500,000
• Tradeshow schwag items that were actually cool: 3
• Best - but least effective - tradeshow schwag item: magnetic buzzing balls handed out by a company whose name I can’t remember
• Internet-related company founders, coders, financers, and top executives seen: hundreds
• Best sessions: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, talking openly about how the company reached the success it has; Jared Spool, illustrating with magic tricks the importance of illusion and magic in meeting users’ needs; Guy Kawasaki, moderating a panel discussion on social media.
• Lance’s top memories: meeting Guy Kawasaki; dinner at Vespaio; screening “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”.
• My top memories: Seeing Helen Hunt speak; watching the Zappos.com team appear out of nowhere to hand out hundreds of rain ponchos when the weather turned bad
• Minutes of boredom: 0

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Now that we’ve had a chance to catch our collective breath at CLM, here’s a quick look back at SMX West, the hot new search marketing conference and expo co-chaired by Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman.

SMX West was held Feb. 26-28, and despite the early calendar date was heavily and enthusiastically attended. News had evidently spread about the success of the inaugural SMX conference, SMX Advanced, which was held in Seattle last summer (and is scheduled for June 3-4, 2008).

Day 1: Danny kicked off the event with a rousing and inspiring keynote address on the future of search titled “Web 3.0, 4.0 and Beyond”, followed by breakout sessions. The sessions are generally a combination of short presentations (5 - 15 minutes each presenter) followed by a question & answer / panel discussion period. In the afternoon, our very own Amy Konefal presented on the topic of Avoiding PPC Pitfalls on a panel with Addie Connor from Course Advisor, Inc. and David Szetela from Clix Marketing, moderated by Matt Van Wagner.

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