This article was originally published in Fast Company.

Last Wednesday morning my 12-year-old son and I accidentally climbed a nearby mountain called Sunset Peak. Elan and I meant only to walk up a little way, scouting the thing out for a possible climb on Saturday. But two hours later, we were at the top, thirsty, out of breath, and delighted. What happened? Why did we abandon our plan of a short leisurely stroll in favor of a hard and demanding hike?

We couldn’t stop climbing because of all the immediate positive feedback.

Once we began our ascent, we discovered something: with every step the view improved. At first, the phalanx of 12 huge water tanks that we passed on our way to the trail shrank to Lego size. Then the road we walked up from our house ribboned down the hill and out into the valley. We argued about which was our house (Elan turned out to be right), and gradually rose to a point where we could view the Drakensberg Mountains farther to the south than we had ever seen them before.

By the time we were halfway up, we could see the summit. And although I had skipped breakfast and felt a bit shaky, there was no way I was going to turn back. Elan agreed, and skipped on ahead as I trudged and stumbled my way behind him. When we summited at 11:15, we just sat in wonder for a few minutes at the 360-degree vista and our own accomplishment.

Immediate Positive Feedback Online

So what does this have to do with your website? Plenty, if your website serves a business purpose. You need new visitors to take a certain action as a result of their visit. Depending on your business model, the action might be to purchase online, fill out a lead or request for quote form, like you on Facebook, call you, or print a coupon and drive to your physical location.

Take a second and think of the most desired action on your website. That’s your summit. How can you entice your best prospects to climb all the way to the top?

Case Study: Ring Central

RingCentral.com offers cloud-based telephony to small businesses. Their service is robust and complex, with hundreds of features, many of which require setup on the part of the customer. The Ring Central mountain takes a fair amount of time and effort to climb all the way to the top. So let’s look at how the website chunks the climb into manageable segments, each providing its own immediate positive feedback.

First, the most desired action on the home page is not a purchase, but a free trial. The most prominent feature on the page is the red-orange SIGN UP button, which you see as your follow the man’s gaze past his attractive co-worker.

Just as Elan and I wouldn’t have taken the first step if our only option had been to summit Sunset Peak, my company Vitruvian probably wouldn’t have made the leap to Ring Central without the zero-risk, low-commitment trial.

The five bullets on the left focus not on the ultimate benefits of Ring Central, but rather on the ease of use. Simple pricing, instant activation and free 24/7 live support are all designed to make the mountain seem easy to climb. These are the trail signs at the bottom of the mountain. The first step up the mountain is the “learn more” button just below those bullets.

That button takes you to a page describing the most important features and benefits of Ring Central under two main headings, Making Calls and Receiving Calls.

Clicking the plus sign next to each high-level feature expands the section into three or so detailed sub-features. You’re invited to climb the Ring Central mountain step by step, with each step delivering more value than the effort required.

At any point in the sales process, you can press one of the “Take me to the top” buttons; on the interior pages, the “sign up” button is joined by a “next” button at the bottom of the “request a quote” box on the left.

Notice that the ultimate goal of the website is just the first mountain in a series of ever-higher peaks. Once you sign up for the risk-free trial, Ring Central follows up with email tutorials and customized progress reports that help you set up the key features, so you convert to long-term paying customer. From there, you are presented with a series of logical upsells to bigger, more robust, and more expensive plans.

Implementing Immediate Positive Feedback

Here are four elements that you need to implement immediate positive feedback on your website:

1. Know what your prospect wants when they first arrive at your site.

Too many websites focus entirely on the benefits of the top of the mountain. They ignore the importance of the small first steps. Elan and I just wanted a pleasant walk. Ring Central prospects want a phone system that works right away, with minimal effort and cost.

What do your visitors want at first? Reassurance that they’re in the right place? Confidence in your capabilities and ethics? Answers to their pressing questions? A phone number so they can talk to a live human being? Empathy?

Make a list of the initial requirements of your visitors and design landing pages that acknowledge and deal with those requirements before you start touting the view from the top of your mountain.

2. Be clear what you want your visitor to do.

Ring Central doesn’t try to get prospects to sign multi-year, multi-employee contracts on their first visit. The mountain they want new prospects to climb is the 30-day trial.

What’s the first mountain your visitors must climb before they can do business with you? Is it a sale? Or can you decrease the height and slope of the first mountain by asking for a name and email, or a software download, or a phone call, or some other intermediate step?

Behavioral economists point out that humans will do much more to prevent loss than to achieve gain. The more you can decrease your prospects’ perceived risk and effort, the more likely they are to take you up on your offer to begin climbing.

Determine the smallest mountain you can define that still gives you the ability to follow up with your prospects after their initial visit.

3. Use visual cues.

Once you’ve identified the first mountain, design your site so that every pixel reinforces that action. Ring Central uses color contrast to highlight the action buttons, as well as positioning them in places that already attract eye gravity. Humans follow others’ gaze; the man’s eyes on the home page directs our eyes to the “sign up” button.

On the features page, the “request a quote” box is a darker color than the rest of the page. The plus sign next to each feature is a widely recognized convention for “There’s more here if you’re interested.”

And while the Ring Central site contains a lot of information, the design divides it into manageable chunks, so that each step appears easy to take.

How can you visually identify both the top of the first mountain and the steps visitors need to take to progress toward that peak? How can you use color contrast, white space, and images to help your visitors see the path and want to follow it?

4. Give clear directions.

The trail that Elan and I climbed was well marked with signs at the trail head, at the junctions of other trails, and with blazes along the way. Also, it was well-maintained throughout; we never looked around and wondered which way to go next.

The Ring Central buttons describe where they take you: “sign up,” “learn more,” and “next” all indicate why you should click and where you go once you do. On many websites, too many buttons and hyperlinks are of the Alice in Wonderland “Drink Me” variety: you don’t know where you’re going or why. The default “submit” button sounds more like a call for surrender than an invitation you can’t refuse.

5. Test continually.

These four elements are grounded in empathy; striving to understand what your prospect cares about, desires, and fears. The second half of the equation is curiosity; an eagerness to find out if you’re right.

Online, curiosity is best operationalized by tracking visitor behavior on your site and testing variations to see which one provides the most compelling and simplest path up your mountain.

Here’s the Ring Central home page on March 17, 2010:

While much of the page is identical, the photograph has changed, and there’s more white space. The Mobile and Fax areas are lighter in tone, allowing the “sign up” and “learn more” buttons to stand out more on the page.

Make a list of things you can test on your site. Start with the big ones: headlines, overall design, color schemes, wording of buttons. Next, test the order and number and text of bullets, body copy, and text font and color.

Don’t be formulaic–let your tests derive from curiosity about what makes your mountain easy and appealing to climb.

If you want more people to start climbing your mountain and make it all the way to the top, think like your prospects and make each step immediately worthwhile so they’ll want to take the next one.

Otherwise, they’ll surely take a hike.

One way to differentiate yourself from the competition is to position yourself as a helpful expert. In this short video you’ll discover two easy ways to do this. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da94ySWmF1A

Make sure to leave a comment or question and get involved in the conversation!

The latest round of Google AdWords algorithm changes had me seriously questioning whether it was still possible to advertise eBooks and other information products. 

It seemed like Google was banning every site with a long-form sales letter than sold any kind of digital product.

And we've known for a while how much Google seems to hate sites with Weight Loss or Get Rich themes. 

So when Glenn Livingston told me he sells information in the Weight Loss market using AdWords, and has Quality Scores of 7-10 for his keywords, I had to know more.

This 76-minute webinar bares all. It's brilliant, and it's going to save more than a few online businesses whose value proposition is sharing information that's hard to find anywhere else. That makes me happy.

The audio quality of this webinar, through every fault of my own, sucks. That makes me unhappy.

But it's listenable, although you'll have to work pretty hard once Glenn starts talking. (If you can't make it out, complain in comments and I'll consider getting it transcribed.)

Two things before we get started:

1. Here's the PDF of the presentation. Print it out and have it in front of you during the webinar (4 pages, including cover).

2. If you want to learn more from Glenn – for free, in exchange for your email  address and permission for Glenn to follow up with you – and do it on my sneaky affiliate link, go to UltimateAdWordsResearch.com. 

And now, enjoy (and profit from) the New Landing Page Webinar:

Most of the time, in individual consulting and free public "Scorch-fests," I generally look at landing pages that aren't working well. And I scorch them mercilessly, leaving behind a smoldering frame upon which to build something effective.

Fun, but incomplete. In order to teach effective landing page creation, I have to share positive examples, and not just the usual cautionary tales.

So I've decided to devote some of my teaching time to finding and sharing really good landing pages.

The Good Landing Page Swipe File

Because so few online marketers follow best practices, it's taking a while to build up a library of such pages. Most of them are going straight into the Swipe File of the Landing Page Clinic, for the benefit of my paying customers.

But from time to time I'll share a good role model with the world, for two reasons:

1. I want you to know that I'm not always critical and persnickety.
2. I want you to give the Landing Page Clinic a try, and I'm hoping that this tasty morsel of bait will lure you to the complete product (the Gingerbread House theory of marketing, although I promise not to put you in a birdcage or eat you once you've purchased).

Here's a link to my review of a Really Good Landing Page, complete with 35-second video demo of the page, detailed explanation of what I like (and a tiny critical section; I can't help myself ;), and some homework for you to try on your own.

Enjoy!

Landing Page Clinic: Just $115.11, going up to $187.65 in September. Lifetime free updates. Go here to check it out: http://askhowie.com/lp-clinic

Imagine this:

You wake up and there’s an inch of water on your living room floor, and it’s rising. Discovering a burst pipe in a closet wall, you grab the phone book and call the first plumber who offers emergency service.

Ring ring.

“Hello, this is Oscar and Felix’s Plumbing Service. How may I help you?”

“I’ve got a burst pipe and it’s flooding my house.”

“Oscar and Felix’s Plumbing Service has been operating in your town since 1987. We specialize in custom kitchen plumbing, septic systems, replacing old pipes with copper and PVC, and unclogging stopped drains.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’ve got a busted pipe and my cat is swimming.”

“Would you like us to send you, absolutely free of charge and with no obligation, our Special Report, ‘7 Plumbing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your House’? All you need to do is give me your full name, address, email, and phone number, and you’ll have that report in your email inbox in just 3 minutes.”

Click. Dial tone. You, the hot prospect, are gone, never to return.

Your Landing Page is the Person Who Answers the Phone

And your prospect’s search query is the first thing they say after you pick up.

For example, let’s pretend you sell information on how to use webinars to grow your business. One of your keywords is how to record a webinar.

When someone enters that keyword and clicks your ad, they’ve just called you and said, “Hello, I’d like to know how to record a webinar.”

Your landing page headline is your response. Most advertisers don’t take the time to create different landing pages for different keywords. So their reply to the search query is something like the following headline:

“How to Make Money With Webinars”

But in that case, you’ve totally ignored what your prospect just told you they want RIGHT NOW.

And that feels pretty disrespectful. Like the receptionist at Oscar and Felix’s Plumbing Service ignoring the immediate need of the caller.

Instead, your headline might read:

“How to Record Webinars without Compromising the Quality of the Live Event and Without Needing Expensive Equipment or a Degree in Engineering”

Now does your visitor feel heard and acknowledged? Might they spend a little time on your site, enough perhaps for you to share some value with them in exchange for their contact information, or even their credit card number?

But I Have Hundreds (or Thousands) of Keywords!

You may be thinking, “That’s all very well in theory, but I couldn’t possibly create different landing pages for every single keyword in my account!”

Fair enough.

Here’s where the 80/20 rule comes to the rescue. Don’t try to do everything at once. Bite off a manageable chunk, like this:

Go into your AdWords account and click the Keywords tab.

Next, sort all your keywords, descending, by impressions.

Chances are, you’ll have just a few keywords (fewer than 10, and maybe only 3 or 4) that account for the majority of your traffic.

Can you create a new dedicated landing page for the biggest keyword that doesn’t yet have one?

If you have a decent amount of traffic and low conversions, this is absolutely the best use of your AdWords time.

It’s your choice:

You can mend the weakest point in your sales pipeline now.

Or you can call me when it bursts and you’re up to your ankles in a flood of expensive, unconverted visitors.

“Hello, this is Howie’s AdWords Plumbing Service. How may I help you?”

3-Part Landing Page Clinic

http://askhowie.com/lp-clinic-sale

If you're driving AdWords visitors to a landing page that doesn't produce enough leads or sales…

If you want to discover a simple formula for producing winning landing pages…

If you'd like to get a huge discount, plus not have to wade through a long sales letter… ;)

Here's the thing: I have this product, the Landing Page Clinic, which is really good. Three webinar recordings plus handouts.

I did it live several months ago, and never released it.

I'm working on the sales letter. But I'm exhausted from Camp Checkmate, and backed up on a lot of client work.

I'll get to the sales letter, I really will. 

But in the meantime, if you trust me enough to buy the Landing Page Clinic without it, I'll reward you with special pricing and a zero-risk guarantee:

Special Pricing

Landing Page Clinic will retail for $97.11. If you buy it now, minus the sales letter, you can take $50 off. This offer is good until June 25, 2010.

The 2-Part Zero-Risk Guarantee:

If you want a refund for any reason, at any time, just ask and I'll give you your money back.

If you implement what you learn and don't experience at least a 25% improvement in conversions within 60 days, I insist that you ask for and get your money back.

Get started now: http://askhowie.com/lp-clinic-sale

Wishing you health, happiness, prosperity, and good plumbing,
Howie

In this Camp Checkmate edition of Traffic Tuesday, we played a game of "Landing Page Double Negative," and then turned out critical eyes to three websites:

operacollectors.com
completehomebuyer.co.uk
bluechipwrestling.com

I'll eat my bowler hat if you can't find some nugget to apply to your own website from one of these scorches.

And now a word from our sponsor: Camp Checkmate

Camp Checkmate Chicago, June 10-11, is your one opportunity this year to achieve a guaranteed quantum leap in your marketing.

Not another "scribble notes furiously" seminar.

A full-out, hands-on, masterminding, best-practicing, creativity-exploding, get-it-done-ing two days that will rock your world. 

My guarantee: come away with effective done-for-you ads, landing page copy, headlines, strategies, and guarantees, or I'll write you a check for your entire tuition plus $750 to more than cover your travel expenses – on the spot.

I can only make this guarantee because I'm 100% confident that you will experience a profit-producing breakthrough – or several – on June 10 and 11.

Listen to Joey and Jamey Bridges discuss the aftermath of their 30 minutes of Camp Checkmate – FOUR MONTHS LATER:

And if you want more testimonials, from some of the biggest names in direct and online marketing (Perry Marshall, Drayton Bird, Robert Middleton, Ben Moskel, and others), spend a few minutes here.

Want the full story? Camp Checkmate home page.

Price goes up on June 1 – register now before time slips away.

The most important part of the search-driven sales process is the top of the landing page.

You've got about 7 seconds to prove to your prospect – who may have just cost you $5 if they clicked your ad – that they should stick around and consider doing business with you.

Most landing pages kind of suck at this.

Here are the most common mistakes:

1. No Headline or Irrelevant Headline

Approach: "Prospects have all day, so I'll take my time in revealing why they should do business with me. If I get around to it."

Result: Prospect spends 5 seconds trying to find the "scent trail" to their goal, fail, and go back to Google for another try.

Example: 

2. Overwhelming the visitor with features and jargon

Approach: "I don't know exactly who you are or what's important to you, so I'll hit you hard with everything I've got."

Result: Prospect is overwhelmed, confused, and bored. Leaves so fact you can see skid marks on their monitor.

Example:

3. Rejecting every known principle of user-centered design

Approach: "The more color and bold fonts I use, the more you'll want to read it."

Result: Prospect reaches for Advil and throws away their reading glasses.

Example: 

4. Wasting space on big logos, irrelevant stock photos of happy multi-racial teams and young women wearing headsets, and meaningless marketing pablum

Approach: "I'll impress you with the graphical professionalism of my site."

Result: Prospect can't find anything interesting or unique, yawns, and possibly drools once or twice as they struggle to stay awake long enough to hit the Back button.

Example:

5. Trying to make the sale before establishing the know-like-trust factor

Approach: "If I just get right down to business, your rational mind will obviously see the benefits of choosing me.

Result: Prospect sees the benefits, but doesn't have a good "gut feeling" and so continues searching.

Example: 

How to Create an Effective Landing Page

You must start with the question, "What does my prospect believe I've promised them on this page?" 

The landing page must instantly demonstrate that you didn't "Bait and Switch" them with your ad. 

But beyond that, you need to develop the Know-Like-Trust factor very quickly.

And you have to understand what's most important to your prospect – their current "Point of Pain." And explain quickly and powerfully how your solution can eliminate that pain.

Video is one tool that can quickly build a relationship, hold interest, and highlight the big promise. But most online video is either overproduced and "salesy," or grossly amateurish and visually boring (I plead guilty to the latter).

Video Done Right

Recently I came across a company, Epipheo Studios, that produces some of the smartest, most entertaining, and most effective videos I've seen online. You can check out their video portfolio here.

Yesterday I spoke to Managing Director Ben Crawford about their approach. We spoke for 40 minutes, during which he revealed his formula for distilling a company's entire story into an easy-to-grasp three minute video. The key, Ben says, is to aim to create an epiphany – a moment where someone's beliefs change dramatically.

Once that happens, the prospect knows, likes and trusts you, understands why they should do business with you, and may spread your video virally with others.

The full interview is available for download for members of the Ring of Fire, the AdWords and Online Marketing Coaching Club available at http://askhowie.com/ring. (Try it for as little as $20/month.)

Click the play arrow below to listen to the first 20 minutes, plus a short Ring of Fire promo at the end :)

Hope to see you in the Ring of Fire soon!

A reader wonders:

What’s the relationship between AdWords and the landing page? How should keywords  be used on the web site to achieve consistant quality rankings? Google gives me low quality scores because it says my landing page quality is “Poor.” What can I do?

My reply:

Your landing page has two customers: Google, and the visitor. If you don’t please Google (as represented by a “No Problems” designation), then the visitor doesn’t matter. They won’t ever see your landing page.

So let’s start with Google.

Google-Pleasing Landing Pages

Google grades landing pages on a pass-fail basis. It’s either a problem, or no problem. There’s no middle ground. Like pregnancy. As much as I find duality to be an illusion of consciousness, it’s really in play here.

So when your landing page triggers a “Poor” score (see screen shot below for how you can tell), you have to fix the problem right away.

Most landing page problems fall into two categories: bad or missing content.

Bad Content

Bad content means, as Perry Marshall wrote last month, that some Google rep is responding negatively to the question, “Would I send my grandmother to this site?”

Maybe you sell questionable stuff, in Google’s eyes. Maybe you are (or appear to be) a zero-value-adding reseller (ie affiliate). Maybe you promise something in your ad (free tarot reading) and offer something completely different ($4 tarot reading).

Here’s what Google says (click here for the source):

Website Types to Avoid

The following website types will be penalized with low landing page quality scores. If we receive complaints about ads for websites of this kind, they will not be allowed to continue running.

* Data collection sites that offer free items, etc., in order to collect private information
* Arbitrage sites that are designed for the purpose of showing ads
* Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer

Website Types to Advertise with Caution

The following website types will sometimes merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. If you choose to advertise one of these website types, be particularly careful to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines – especially the rule about offering unique content.

* eBook sites
* ‘Get rich quick’ sites
* Comparison shopping sites
* Travel aggregators
* Affiliates

Missing Content

Google is quite explicit about what it wants to see on your landing page: relevance, originality, transparency, and navigability.

Your landing page must be about the same thing as your keyword and ad. It must not be an exact or close-to-exact copy of information found on some other website (Brad Geddes reassured me that duplicate content penalties don’t occur when identical content lives on the same website – so you can split test within a single domain to your heart’s delight).

You must share information about your business, your privacy policy, and your shipping and refund policies, if applicable. Your site can’t mess around with their computer, installing programs, resizing windows, or making you want to punch your screen (actually, I made that last one up). If you show ads, make sure visitors can tell the difference between the ads and the editorial content.

You must make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for. Here’s Google’s advice:

• Provide a short and easy path for users to purchase or receive the product or offer in your ad.
• Avoid excessive use of pop-ups, pop-unders, and other obtrusive elements throughout your site.
• Make sure that your landing page loads quickly.

Visitor-Friendly Landing Pages

Actually, just follow Google’s advice for the most part, and your pages will be, at the very least, acceptable to your visitors. But if the Google bar is low, the Conversion bar is quite high. Just “not sucking” is good enough for Google, but it won’t make you sales.

Here’s the best landing page advice I can give:

Your landing page fulfills the promise of your ad.

Every ad is a promise. It goes like this: “Click me (and ignore everything else on this page) and you’ll get…”

The “…” is the reason they click your ad. Either you promise it explicitly (“Free download” or “Canon PowerShot SD780 $279 Free Shipping” or “Complete Guide to Garlic-Scented Candles”) or the promise is implicit and must be assumed by the searcher (“Landing Page optimization system. Achieve maximum CTR with science. www.sitespect.com”).

Ask a few friends who don’t know anything about your business to read your ad and tell you what they think they’re being promised.

That’s your landing page.

Start at the Top

Actually, that’s the top of your landing page.

You see, you don’t always have to fulfill the promise on the landing page. Nobody thinks they’re going to read SiteSpect’s landing page and instantly achieve maximum CTR (that’s click through rate, for you AdWords newbies).

But they have to believe they’re in the right place, on the right trail. Ben Hunt talks about the scent trail of search. Like a bloodhound searching for the owner of the sweaty sock, your visitor is also in pursuit of a goal, and will naturally take the path that appears to be the quickest route to that goal.

Most landing pages fail in the first 7 seconds. Something about the header graphic, the headline (or more commonly, lack thereof), and overall design just screams “It ain’t me, Babe, No no no, it ain’t me, Babe, it ain’t me you’re looking for, Babe.”

(If you want to watch a youtube video of me performing this song, leave a comment to that effect. If I get 10 comments, by golly, I’ll do it. 15 comments, I’ll add the harmonica. Of course, you’re also free to beg me not to.)

Mugurdy – a Visual Search Engine

Recently I met Mugurdy, a visual search engine that, instead of showing links, shows actual landing page snapshots side by side. While it currently runs off the Yahoo API, it’s still a fascinating and valuable tool for anyone looking to improve their landing page design and top messaging.

Let’s say you’re advertising for the keyword tarot reading.  Here’s what your user would see if they searched on Yahoo:

Take a minute and pretend you’re looking for a tarot reading – which listing do you choose?

Using Mugurdy, the user decides based on the look of the landing page. So here’s their results for tarot reading:

Now, based on those images, which site would you visit? (I personally lean toward the seventh one, the Tarot Course page with the yellow sidebar. It looks like the one where I’ll learn the most, and I like the look of the page. If I landed on one of the black-background pages, I’d probably bounce back to Yahoo within seconds. But that’s just me.)

Chances are, the winner in visual search won’t be the same as the ad text winner. And if that’s the case, then somebody’s landing page is sub-optimized for this traffic.

Mugurdy hasn’t yet created a visual search engine for AdWords listings, but you can use it to get an instant snapshot of a bunch of competitors’ sites. And you’ll learn a lot about how to make a landing page instantly attractive, based on the promise of the ad.

Traffic Surge

If you want to create landing pages that totally fulfill the promise of the ad, while leading to sales, not just happy browsers, check out the Traffic Surge course that begins October 8, 2009.

Graduates of the last Traffic Surge course have been raving about it (that’s why I’m offering it again). They feel like they’ve unlocked the mystery of AdWords, and can now research and succeed in any market they want.

See their comments here.

There are still a couple of seats left that include a free live Checkmate workshop in Durham in early December ($2000 value). Act quickly to reserve your seat.

The Daily Telegraph of London reports on the results of a psychology study: “The longer a man’s gaze rests on a woman when they meet for the first time, the more interested he is. If it lasts just four seconds, he may not be all that impressed. But if it breaks the 8.2 second barrier, he could already be in love.”

Apparently, the hidden cameras tracking eye movements found a “lock-on” duration of slightly over 8 seconds on a woman the man later described as attractive. (What about women? Read the PS below for the punch line on that one.)

In my experience (which is, of course, limited to online marketing), websites have to do the job in a lot fewer than 8.2 seconds.

Specifically, the landing page has to start to fulfill the promise of the Google ad within about 2 seconds, or the searcher is gone with a screech and skid marks, looking to fall in love with somebody else’s site.

Me Fall into Love with Translate Site on Web

I fell in love with a site recently. I do a lot of corresponding with readers from all over the world, and I like to pretend that I am competent in languages other than English. So when I sign off on an email to someone in Brazil, I’ll Google “Best wishes in Portuguese” and add that to the end of the email. But most translation sites are ugly, confusing, and I don’t trust them all that much. I always worry, what if the site is pulling my leg and instead of “Best wishes” I just said, “I would like to buy your grandmother’s wooden leg.”

Enter www.nicetranslator.com. Gorgeous interface, simple instructions, instant gratification. The thing actually translates as I type – I don’t even have to hit “submit” when I’m done.

Your Web Site is a Rental Car

Think of your landing page as a vehicle that a searcher uses to get to their goal. This metaphor makes it easy to create a hierarchy of function:

The vehicle’s door must open = The landing page must load properly

The vehicle seat must accommodate a driver comfortably = The page must look appropriate for the target market (professionals, parents, kids, heavy metal fans, yuppies on vacation, etc.)

The vehicle controls must be intutive to operate = navigation must be intuitive

The vehicle must be able to traverse the terrain to attain the desired location = the website must lead to the right offer

I could extend the metaphor much further (I’m in Namibia on holiday with my family at the moment, and we’re driving around Southern Africa in a big Toyota Quantum that my wife and kids WILL NOT let me drive (left side of the road, stick shift, etc.)), but I’ll leave that to you. What else is important in a vehicle if someone is going to commit to taking it to their desired destination? Post your metaphorical musings to comments.

PS Women maintained the same amount of eye contact with men, regardless of attractiveness.

PPS But another article in the same issue of the Telegraph reports, “Women more attracted to men in expensive cars.” So don’t feel so superior, ladies ;)

PPPS Here’s a photo of the Quantum, resting by the side of the road between Upington, South Africa and the Namibian border:

I’m really hoping they let me drive next week…

PPPPS This is a sneaky announcement of the pre-release of the AdWords Checkmate Method. Click that link and get a giant head start in writing “Game Over” AdWords ads. Details here (stay tuned for the official announcement when I find a hotel with a decent Internet connetion).