OK, a little background: Sandra and I did a webinar for Aquent last month, and had over 2000 people register to attend. We thought that was pretty great. They also mentioned they were going to also put our slides up on SlideShare, but we didn’t think too much about that at the time.

In a follow-up post from the Aquent blog, Matt Grant noted that SlideShare had featured our presentation on the home page at one point, and that over 8000 people had viewed it so far. Wow. As Sandra said, we’d have spent more time on those slides if we knew they were going to get that kind of play. Anyhow, I went over to SlideShare to check it out and halfheartedly thought “I wonder if we’re on the Most Viewed list.” But we weren’t… Wait, that only shows the current day’s most viewed. What if I click This Week? Bingo:

That’s 8595 views for our presentation vs. 7354 views for Ms. Jolie.

As it’s taken me two weeks to complete this post due to a blog platform issue, my fifteen minutes of fame are long gone now. But still… to have our presentation get more views than something titled “Angelina Jolie Pictures” feels like a pretty major accomplishment. Especially with such unalluring title slide.

And now we’re the 6th Most Viewed for the month, still just ahead of Angelina. See it for yourself, before we roll off.

Maybe there’s a market for this whole Web Design for ROI thing after all…

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?”

(Read the full article…)

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:

(Read the full article…)

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

(Read the full article…)

Lance Loveday, the founder and CEO of Closed Loop Marketing is speaking December 10th, 11th, and 12th at Web Design World in Boston. Lance is a regular speaker at Web Design World and this trip he will present “Web Design for ROI,” which is also the title of his new book. Later he will present “Pleasing Users and Search Engines Alike: Balancing Design, Usability, and SEO.” Lance will also be on the “Deconstructing You” panel.

Lance’s first presentation, “Designing for ROI,” addresses how to prioritize your design efforts by identifying the elements with the greatest impact on Web page effectiveness. Lance discusses the most important concepts and elements to address for effective landing pages, home pages, category pages, product pages, forms, shopping carts, and the checkout process. He will share guidelines, show case studies, and look at current examples to illustrate what works and why.

In the later presentation, “Pleasing Users and Search Engines Alike: Balancing Design, Usability, and SEO,” Lance discusses how traditionally Web designers were taught to focus on aesthetics. More recently their scope has expanded to include usability and search engine optimization (SEO). Conventional wisdom says focusing on one detracts from the others. Designers often feel like they compromise - and end up with a mediocre design. Lance will explore, “What if you could do it all?”

Finally, Lance will co-host the panel, “Deconstructing…You!” In this discussion, top Web designers will join Conference Chair Jim Heid in critically evaluating several of the attendees’ sites. This should be a very valuable and popular wrap-up session.

We wish Lance the best for his current and upcoming presentations. For information on upcoming presentations please visit the Closed Loop Marketing home page.