Easy to get turned around these crazy Internet marketing days. Change is happening faster and faster. Each day brings a new tool and new claims. There is so much noise it is hard to THINK. I’ve been an Internet marketer since learning HTML and Photoshop to create FoundObjects.com in 1999 (now RIP). Noise does as noise will, but great Internet marketing hasn’t changed all that much.

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The Top Converting Websites

Here is a list of Practical Ecommerce’s Top 10 converting websites (together with their conversion rates):

1. Schwan’s Foods 41.7%.
2. ProFlowers 26.5%.
3. Vitacost.com 24%.
4. Woman Within 22.4%.
5. Blair 20.5%.
6. Land’s End 19.5%.
7. Doctors Foster and Smith (pets) 18.6%.
8. Office Depot 18.4%.
9. Roman’s (clothing) 18.4%.
10. QVC 18.3%.

As you can see, these websites put the more typical 4% to 6% conversion to shame.  Most of these websites share Direct Marketing (DM) roots. I worked for direct marketers for seven years as a Director of Ecommerce, and Direct marketers focus marketing on results, on ROI, as should we all.

The Practical Ecommerce article notes how many top websites flout website design and SEO convention. Top converting websites carts have too many steps, SEO isn’t terrific and Google PageRank is low. This is NOT to say these companies don’t care about those metrics. They care about dollars to the bank MORE.

Ecommerce sites such as Schwan’s and Land’s End bring sizable customer lists to their web marketing teams. I used to sell NutraSweet to Schwan’s Foods. One day I even caught a ride in a tiny airplane over thunderstorms up to Marshal, Minnesota with Marvin Schwan (amazed I lived to share that story, lol).

Since the days when Marvin put the family’s failing dairy on the back of a truck, restarting the home delivery business, Schwan’s cares about three things:

• Product Quality.
• Customer Relationships.
• Team.

A company started to serve hard working farm families now delivers to people all over. When I sold NutraSweet to Schwan’s, the company was worth a billion dollars. My guess is it is worth many times that now. But looking at the Schwan’s website, you might be unimpressed.

You would be dead wrong.

Some things that make Schwan’s the #1 converting website with more than 15 points on its nearest rival, such as its power in email marketing and home delivery prowess, are a little hidden, but there is much to learn from Schwan’s homepage. Lessons from Schwan’s homepage include:

• Loyalty program is LARGE and IN CHARGE on the home page with a big GREEN Call to Action (“Learn More”).
• Every element on that page has been tested, tested and tested some more.
• Internal search is geared to support their extensive, hand-delivered paper catalog.
• The first offer, “Earn Double Schwan’s Rewards,” is above everything.
• Look at what is under their video positioned on the LEFT of the page (in the very HOT and well trafficked “Golden Triangle” area): OFFERS (“Specials” and “Hot Deals”).
• Right below “Specials” and “Hot Deals” on the left is “NEW & Seasonal” (with an implied deadline via “Don’t Miss”).
• The word “save” is used 7 times.
• The word “rewards” is used 4 times.
• “Hot Deals” is used 3 times.
• “Specials” is used 4 times.
• “NEW” is used 4 times.
• Color palette is simple, and they use RED to create a sense of urgency.
• Hero (largest image) is dedicated to a single thing – rewards program.
• There is only one human on the page, a Schwan’s employee smiling and explaining rewards.
• The truck is a HERO for Schwan’s, and it has 2 pictures.

If you are reading this and aren’t familiar with Schwan’s, you may be confused by their website. Their website is built to convert their catalog. Schwans.com, for the most part, assumes you already know about the company. There is one “new to Schwan’s” block, and that is in the upper left of their homepage.

The block that starts with “Delivering Cheer”, then the email subscription form and then the “Get to know us!” video introduction to the company is the “new to Schwans.com” area. Look where their Live Chat and Toll Free information is positioned, in a million dollar real estate area  above the search bar upper left (brilliant).

Schwans.com isn’t easy to navigate or simple to take in, but their website communicates clear value messages in big, bold, red type. There are 12 Calls to Action, including:

• “Learn More” (2 times).
• “Shop Now” (3 times).
• “Save” (7 times).

Don’t read this article thinking I advocate every website looking like the 41.7% converting Schwans.com. Every company has an appropriate look and feel online, so don’t attempt to adopt Schwan’s look, because on your website it very well could sink your  conversion if you don’t have the direct marketing list and power of a Schwan’s. Every website shouldn’t look like Schwan’s, but every website must learn lessons from it, such as:

• FOCUS homepage language and images to 2, maybe 3, ideas.
• Calls to Action (CTAs) are YOUR FRIEND, so use them liberally.
• LARGE and highly contrasting BUTTONS are your best CTAs.
• Use the “golden triangle” area on the left to get important things done.
• An email subscription form is one of the MOST IMPORTANT things any website does.
• Video is GREAT, but HOT (gets a lot of traffic and attention) so put things immediately below it that are HOT TOO.
• Scrolling is fine, but major CTAs must be above the fold.
• Rolling images are distracting, adding little and costing much, so AVOID THEM.

I admit this last bullet is based on personal prejudice and research conducted by Amy Africa and others. Other highly converting sides have hero images that roll. I see rolling heroes as distracting, especially on some of these very busy DM sites.

I think Schwan’s is doing the right thing to NOT roll their hero. Rolling is very Attention Deficit Disorder. Constantly blinking something at me makes me want to LEAVE (See VitaCost.com if you want to be driven to leave by a hero’s roll).

What does it mean if you DON’T have Schwan’s list or DM power? It means your website will need to:

• Build your email list with:
  - EMAIL subscription form LARGE and IN CHARGE.
  - Email drip campaigns ready to fire on subscription.
  - Email personas and segments developed.
• LARGE, CONSISTENT and CONTRASTING Call to Action buttons.
• Language that reinforces your Unique Selling Proposition.
• Use golden triangle LEFT for important CTAs.
• Reward loyalty.

“Marty, we run a B2B business, so these ideas don’t apply to us,” I can hear some readers thinking. My experience is B2C (mostly), but the principles that make websites work are universal. Clear CTAs and offers to a list of adoring fans WORK and should be part of any website’s design and marketing. The days when websites supported a printed brochure or ad campaign are coming to a close. Websites need to make money and create the means to make money for future marketing efforts.

You need your website to MAKE MONEY. Make sure your web marketing team got the memo.  Every website I’ve ever created made money, and some have made LOTS of money (thanks to great teams and customers). There are a few secrets to making money online, including:

• ASK for the order.
• People buy what YOU sell them, so sell them well.
• TEST and then TEST some more.
• Never STOP testing some things (headlines, offers).
• LIST = MONEY (email marketing is KEY).
• TRAFFIC = MONEY.
• CONVERSION = MONEY.
• MOBILE = Darwinian (get with it or LOSE).
• Social Media = Darwinian (need it, but don’t let SMM break the bank either).

Internet Marketing Is Not What You Think

Most customers worry about how their website looks. Look and feel is important, but no more so than CTAs, email subscription and making it easy to BUY what you want to SELL. A good team, a little data and an artist or two and you can create a website sure to out convert your competitors and make an ever-increasing ROI.

The “ever-increasing ROI” is another important Internet marketing lesson. If your net net return year one is 10%, look to move to 15% year two and 20% by year three. This assumes you started at zero. You should look to increase net net return at the same time as you scale topline sales.

If your website generated $100,000 in topline sales the first year, look to do $500,000 the second, because Internet marketing only has WIN and LOSE as options. If your trend line isn’t moving aggressively UP, then someone is eating your lunch. Tie top line gross sales to net net so you don’t go broke and feel good about going broke all the way to when the bank is coming for your car (lol).

I agree that the typical sales cycle for B2B is longer than B2C, but that is the only difference I’ve observed after working for a year at Atlantic BT and helping numerous B2B customers. Funny part is, all B2B clients think what they do is on the other side of the moon from B2C.

Not so much, as it turns out. Making money online is Darwinian. Those who know how to make money get to go on. Those who can’t figure out a CTA from a Tweet won’t be with us this time next year.

What About You?

Do you think B2B and B2C are different? How? Have you had luck with ideas discussed here? Other ideas? Want to guest blog on this or other topics? Share your thoughts, ideas and reactions in comments, or email me directly at Martin.Smith(at)AtlanticBT(dot)com.

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The leading provider of open source support, Red Hat, reached a milestone yesterday. Red Hat received top security certification from the U.S. federal government, as reported by @WRALTechWire today (and picked up in our Atlantic BT Daily). Congratulations to our neighbors at Red Hat. Red Hat’s win is a big win for open source programming too.

Great News for Open Source

Red Hat is a great local company; they are moving to downtown Raleigh after years at NC State’s Centennial Campus. More than just the pride of seeing a great local company recognized, Red Hat’s recognition, after what we are sure is a grueling process, is a large statement about the growing importance of the open source philosophy. The U.S. government’s vote for Red Hat is also a vote for open source.

What Is Open Source?

Open source programs share source code and other resources that are normally reserved to one company via secrecy and copyright. Open source creates a hive-like ecosystem by allowing products such as Magento’s e-commerce platform (Atlantic BT is a Bronze Magento Support Partner) to rapidly respond to evolving needs from a variety of customers including retailers and the military.

Open source also marshals the wisdom of crowds. There is no top-down authority to slow open source development by attempting to direct its efforts. If a programmer believes they can improve Magento, WordPress or FireFox (the top 3 open source applications), they write some code to fill the need.

At its inception, Red Hat understood an important open source problem. Support and market coherence were needed if  Fortune 1,000 companies were to embrace open source software in their operations. Red Hat’s competitors include Microsoft and Oracle, companies highly invested in expensive, copyright-protected software. Red Hat helped create an alternative, an alternative now used by many companies within the “Fortune 1,000″ list of largest companies in the world.

Platforms vs. Websites

Not long ago I had an epiphany. I realized that closed-loop, solipsistic websites are dead and gone. In Platforms vs. Websites, I shared recently-concluded gift industry research showing that Etsy.com had more than 100 million pages listed in Google.

RedEnvelope.com, a favorite and an online gift retailer pioneer, had a fraction of Etsy’s presence. Etsy.com is a platform that marshals and depends on User Generated Content (UGC). Etsy.com is a platform where craftspeople create “stores” to sell their homemade products. Other social platforms that marshal UGC include: Facebook, Twitter, Scoop.it and even Spotify. I wouldn’t be surprised if Etsy.com is based on open source code.

Open Source Advantages

Combine the platform idea with wisdom of crowds, and powerful ecosystems emerge. These “user communities” create wisdom of crowds benefits faster and cheaper than most command and control companies. It turns out the key to creating success in the marketplace is to gain the trust, confidence and love of others (a common Internet marketing need, too). When a programmer creates a company to develop Magento or WordPress plugins on their own dime, it is a powerful statement in favor of emergence and hive-like wisdom of crowds.

Yesterday the federal government joined open source developers to make a powerful statement about the need for speed when they awarded Red Hat their highest security clearance. Government systems, like Internet marketing, need to evolve faster and faster. There is one key difference: Our lives and livelihoods depend on government systems, so it is exciting and confidence-building when the government embraces open source, Red Hat and the ever faster speed of change we Internet marketers know so well.

Congratulations, Red Hat!

Best USA E-commerce Sites

September marks the beginning of a race that ends on 12.25. After 12 years as an Internet marketer, I look at e-commerce sites differently. I look at how hero images, the largest image on the page, balance offers, navigation and search. I look for how keyword-dense an e-commerce site’s navigation is and how intuitive the design. Do I know where to go? Does the site feel like a place its target audience would want to shop and join. Are there clear Calls-To-Action?

Here is my list of 6 favorite E-commerce sites for 2012:

1. REI
Consistently great, the Internet marketing team behind my favorite ecommerce website knows how to point their hero’s eyes at Calls To Action; they keep their palette clean but full of eye candy. The engagement and “like me” factor is high. REI’s images make you feel like joining that party in that place, now please. Great job!

2. Apple
I copy this clean Einstein-smart design all the time, and I am not alone. Apple.com is one of those rare sites that shouldn’t heed my “people not things sell” rule.  These products can be the hero. We project ourselves right into Apple’s product shots. We see ourselves using those cool superhero tools. Can’t ask for more from a website image.

3. Patagonia
Different feel than REI, even though they plow some of the same, “Life is an adventure,” terrain. If REI is about the magic of the tribe, Patagonia is about the magic of place. Patagonia’s magical website design is not designed to SELL, it breaks every e-commerce rule, but it really works. Patagonia is the exception that proves rules such as big Call-To-Action buttons in orange and offers you can SEE (lol). I love that in half the images they roll, their tiny “Free Shipping over $75″ offer can’t even be seen. That is a huge rule break, and Patagonia can do it because of those magical images. I wouldn’t suggest hiding your Free Shipping offer!

4. DWR.com (Design Within Reach)
The furniture category has strong players and may be a six of one, half-dozen of the other between DWR, Crate and Barrel and others. This category can quickly all look alike. I like DWR.com’s clean lines. They keep it simple but are creative with social, campaigns and offers.

5. Vestique.com
Women’s apparel can start to all look alike, too. I like how Vestique’s site uses pictures of their target audience (young women) engaged in almost candid moments. The design is clean, social and engaging. The design points the way to social engagement, and Vestique’s owners live on Facebook,  Pinterest and Twitter. The website design makes visitors want to be part of the club, a very important idea for a fashion site. Eileen Allen and her design team at Atlantic BT did a great job on Vestique, and it was supported with some great behind-the-curtain e-commerce functionality in Magento by Chris Duffy and his team. Well Done, Guys!

6. Woot.com
Daily deal sites seem to be losing some luster, but Woot.com has some of the best copy online. The “wooters” are a very loyal tribe. They get up in the middle of the night and check Woot’s deals. This rabid loyalty is something you EARN by being great. Every Woot.com element works.

Your favorite Ecommerce site not on the list? If we missed your favorites, post a comment here,

Tweet to @Atlanticbt, or

share your list on our Facebook page.

I’m now working on ecomm websites NOT in the USA, so be sure to share your favorites.

- Marty

He calculated $400M since our start all those years ago (1999 for me, some at the table before that). One FOM (Friend of Martin) runs a company specializing in ecommerce sites between $5M and $50M. He had the lion’s share of the money made online, but everyone at the table had millions in sales to their credit.

At $30M over 7 years I was the “baby” merchant at the table. I’d earned my way in by being a good student, and I was buying lunch in downtown Raleigh (lol). Since I was paying, I challenged my friends to agree on five things “e-commerce pros” look for when reviewing web design. Before I share these 5 “how to look at ecommerce websites like an ecomm pro” tips, it is important to know the backgrounds at the table:

• Programmer / entrepreneur running a company controlling a little over $30M annually in a wide range of retail sites across several business verticals ( not Atlantic BT ).
• Designer, entrepreneur and branding expert who has worked with Fortune 100 clients creating identity and every nature of campaigns whose graphic designs you’ve probably seen without knowing it.
• Entrepreneur who was one of the first to explain social media marketing to me long before anyone knew what such a thing was, now working in B2B.
• Friend and former designer who was now running a massive ecomm niche site, doing a little under $6M in online B2C transactions, and who was getting ready for another busy season.
• And Me, former Director of Ecommerce running a site my team built to $6M annually generating over $30M topline over 7 years, and I was the “baby” at this lunch.

Here are the tips we came up with for how and why we look at websites:

• Brand, Tag and Contact.
• Golden Triangle.
• People and Lines of Sight.
• Calls to action.
• Nonverbals (mine).

Brand, Tag and Contact

Brands, once established, are shorthand for larger messages and emotional connections. Prior to a brand owning a position in your brain, brands must be explained and understood in order to create the shorthand. The ideal brand interaction, my “branding” expert friend explained, is an ever tightening spiral loop.

“Ideally you get more and more meaning with less and less interaction,” my friend shared. The idea is to drip water into a crack, let it freeze and widen the crack over and over until the crack is won over. We don’t play for cracks in cement, my friend explained, we play for hearts and minds, but the process is similar. Create more and more connection with less and less exposure, interaction, overhead and cost.

One of the important and easy to get wrong ideas is an easy way to contact without the web. “Few use the physical address or the 1-800 anymore, but having information that doesn’t require a computer to access makes computer users more trusting,” my programmer / entrepreneur friend shared.

Golden Triangle of Website Design

In western culture we read from left to right. It isn’t hard to understand why the most powerful portion of a webpage is the upper left. Eyes rest in the upper left for longer periods and they start there, so guide them well. Guide eyes and minds with images, text and calls to action.

People and Lines of Sight

I’ve written about the importance of people in web design (People Not Things Sell), and my friend brought this article up. He was the inspiration for my post, so he likes to remind me (lol). He is the champion of using people in web design. He sees people as the most important way to warm up web design, encourage conversion and get new visitors comfortable with a website fast. He has specific rules about how he uses people, such as avoiding stock photography.

His sites use stock sometimes, but they use stock in some unique way (by changing angles, filters or combining with other imagery). His great designers share something with Atlantic BT’s web designers. Both know how to blend stock into web design so it doesn’t feel so Stock photography-like. We all agreed this was a mission critical skill, since stock is FAST and therefore CHEAP, but stock photography should be used like a loaded gun (carefully).

Calls to Action

When people come into a new site, they want to know two things. They want to know if they are in the right place (called “Scent Trail”). Next, they want to know what YOU, the wizard behind the curtain and the website designer, want THEM to do. If your site is unclear, hard to find the answer to either of those questions, then you, your company, brands and products are seen as confusing and not a website visitors want to buy from.

Website Design Nonverbals

When a site is a clean, well-lit place, it helps visitors feel comfortable and trusting. We look for certain clues and meaning to know if we can trust a website. These judgments are made in the time it takes to blink three times, and they may last forever.

Next, I challenged my friends to comment on some example websites, shared as plates were cleared. I pulled up a few examples from a recent Scoop.it post: 30 Excellent Website Layouts, via Flashuser.net. Here is the design that got the most energy and response:

1. GeoTime5

The energy on this design was around more clear communication about the 5 W’s (What, Who, When, Why, Where). The lack of both a brand tag (usually put directly below the brand name in the upper left) and a creation story hurt the design. “The site assumes I know more than I do,” my designer friend said. The other Internet marketers at the table agreed that GeoTime5 needed to explain what they do and who they are, better and faster.

They should move the ‘see movement patterns’ tag under the logo to create a relationship to the name. Proximity is a constant theme with these guys. They hate it when someone breaks proximity rules. I shared my recent Ecommerce Audit Post featuring high-end ear buds manufacturer Etymotic. On the Etymotic site, the brand tag was right justified and so far away from their name, not unlike GeoTime5. One of my friends pulled up my Ecommerce Audit post on his iPad and sent his iPad around the table.

“The location of GeoTime5′s tag in a ‘hero’ position is confusing and creates ‘cross talk’.” My friend went on to explain that “cross talk” in this context meant that the brand’s message, “see movement patterns”, didn’t help much, since it is located in a position where offers are traditionally made. He did like that there was a call to action in the hero, but here was his take on the language: “Saying ‘see how we do it’ is not the point. The real POINT is to see how customers use and love GeoTime5. We know the team at GeoTime5 loves it. The real question is, how does everyone else feel about GeoTime5?”

The best way to sell ideas to customers is to NOT “sell” yourself. Use specific, tagged and non-anonymous testimonials, tweets, reviews or other sources of legitimacy curated from the social web about how your company is impacting the world. When your customers SAY you are great, THEY are believable.

We Internet marketers can speak to our vision and values but not how anything we do is great or good. “So we get to speak to aspirations and facts but not to recommendations or suggestions?” I asked. The table agreed, some lines can be crossed. One of our roles as Internet marketers is sharing opinions grounded in expertise and appreciated by the mob, so clearly identified “Staff Reviews” is one of the favorite “selling” content almost everyone at the table uses. “Clearly labeled Staff Reviews can’t be the only review on the page, or it looks like you are trying to sell again,” my designer friend pointed out. He doesn’t bring in staff reviews until there are at least 5 reviews on the page and a sense of the product already being formed by those reviews.

GeoTime5′s tiny Calls to Action saying, “view video”, got the ire of our keyword SEO specialist and the designer. The SEO expert wanted more keywords in the CTAs. The designer wanted a big orange or red button with the ability to do an A/B test against a blue button.

I chimed in to ask, “Where is the site’s story? Where are the founder’s sweat, hopes and dreams? Where were small children looking up to their father asking about movement patterns?” A half eaten roll was thrown at my head as I finished that statement (lol), but my friends agreed that the site was thin, confusing and not very welcoming or engaging. Finally another friend suggested I send my post about People Not Things Sell to the company (something I would never do, and he knew it). The person making that suggestion was who taught me about people as design elements, so he was really complimenting himself (I pointed that out too, LOL).

Geotime5 didn’t set the hook very well, the table decided. They might have a great product, but we weren’t intrigued enough to do the work to find out. “Like all sites, they have two choices,” my designer friend said, “They make it EASY to learn, or they plant the emotional hook deep enough I MUST learn.” The consensus was GeoTime5 did neither.

“Don’t even get me started on their SEO,” my Google Panda and Penguin expert friend said, dismissing the site completely. I pressed, asking what he meant. “The title is keyword weak, there are no keywords in the CTAs, and the CTA setups are keyword weak too. And I can say that without having done one hour of research,” my friend noted, and that is where we left GeoTime5.

Since most of the table spend most of their time working on and creating ecommerce websites I asked about favorites. REI was on everyone’s list:

REI

Well designed heroes, great uses of people and line of sight (where people look at the call to action you want visitors to do). Another friend noted how they used video. “I love the small video box inside the hero,” he said. Video is so powerful, it gets so many clicks, and REI doesn’t oversell it. Subtle but powerful was the consensus view on the party visual.

Everyone’s favorite of the rotating front page images was the runner (see below). “There are two brilliant intertwined triangles here,” my designer friend pointed out. The first triangle is the famous golden triangle that starts upper left and extends into the body of the hero (hero is web designer speak for largest image on a page).

“Note how the golden triangle in the runner image takes your eyes to the runner and then directly to the Call to Action,” my designer friend said, drawing on my screen with a toothpick. The murmurs of approval told me my ecommerce friends had great respect for such a clean jump to the main point of the page – promote the click. Another friend pointed out my Amy Africa notes from the conversion conference. “It was great to hear a researcher confirm what we believe and have tested,” my friend said, meaning the way he uses people to look at CTA’s or straight out at the visitor to increase engagement. Lest you think my friends read my posts all the time, they do NOT (lol), but this friend was scheduled to go to Conversion Conference in Chicago with me and had to stay home and attend to an emergency on one of his websites instead. He was the reason I liveblogged the conference.

He went on to explain that his take on the REI runner page was, yes her view was directly into the “Maximize Your Fun on the Run” headline, but her eyes are also directed out toward their red sale button. “The right is a real gutter ball area,” my friend said, “We have trouble getting any clicks out of the right side of the page.” He went on to explain the gymnastics necessary to get eyeballs to the right side of the page with the one exception – an ecommerce site. “Your note about people’s eyes going immediately up and to the right in an ecommerce site is why we ALL have cart icons there,” he pointed out (as does REI).

The cart icon in the upper right is a form of scent trail, a confirming signal. Same friend pointed out the large Free Shipping, with a price trigger, believing that information was bold enough that even if it wasn’t in the direct line of site, it would be seen and noted in the visitor’s peripheral vision.

I chimed in with how the clean lines, fun outdoor scenes and action created great nonverbals. The site is selling its benefits, making it clear that they can be trusted and are a fun, well-lit place. Another roll was thrown at my head as I paid the bill and thanked my friends for tossing things at me and sharing their expertise.

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Great story, great cause, and something you want to know more about and support. The web does many things well, telling stories chief among them, but there is a problem. The web, for all of its magic, can’t change the paradox of choice. Barry Schwartz wrote a great book on this human problem: The Paradox of Choice: Why less is more explains the limits of our attention. I love the point of diminishing return idea. Anyone who spends a lot of time researching and then finally making a decision knows how the paradox can rob your life. You rob the one thing we can’t make more of, time, for the thing we can always make more of, money. Not a great trade as Schwartz points out.

The flip side of Schwartz’s argument is we, as Internet marketers, must use Occam’s Razor to narrow our choices. When I looked at the BuckwheatHull.com there were two sites fighting one another for visitor attention: the ecommerce site selling buckwheat hulls for pillows and the Life Experiences site about the love of a mother for her daughter and a worthy cause.

Fixing Ecommerce

My friend Bill did a great job getting the Buckwheathull.com site up, live and taking orders, so be sure to understand my thoughts build on Bill’s work. Bill did the right thing. He created something with nothing to prove the web’s ability to help. He created a “lean startup” and got something up fast. I applaud all the Bills out there, since early and flawed beats late and perfect in Internet marketing. People used to take my websites apart too (once famously by Seth Godin).

My goal was to follow what Seth Godin taught when I spent a day hanging on his every word. Godin told me and about 20 other Internet marketers we should realize that to do one thing on a web page is monumental, to do two things almost impossible and to ask for 3 actions is beyond the pale. The interesting thing about my investigation was Buckwheathull.com had a page closer to important ecommerce conventions.

The BuckwheatHull.com Shop page used ecommerce convention and design to send a clear message – time to buy buckwheat hulls and seeds.  I used that page as inspiration to build this draft of a new design for BuckwheatHull.com:

Buckwheat Hulls and Occam’s Razor

One other important caveat. I am NOT a graphic designer. I know enough about Photoshop and design to rough out ideas to be perfected by my betters, by pros. Caveat stated here is how I wanted to help Bill and Life Experiences:

1. Send a clear, this is where you buy natural Buckwheat Hulls for pillows message.
2. Use leader in the craft space, Martha Stewart, bigger since Martha = comfort and trust.
3. Connect to the end product, not the hulls or seeds in a bag, as that feels like too much work.
4. Tell Life Experiences story but in support of goal #1. Create a way to LINK OUT to the other story.
5. Create TRUST and engagement by doing less and more.

The most confusing idea here might be #5. How does a web design do less and more? I’ve been discussing website “non-verbals” for years. More than justification for my expensive degree in psychology, the concept of how a website communicates with hidden messages is being supported by research (see my Conversion Conference liveblog notes for more on that research). When a site is hyper-organized, simple to navigate and seems like a clean, well-lighted space, trust endorphins fire and visitors become buyers, and buyers may become advocates (read Social Media’s Magic Feedback Loops for more on the real endgame of customer satisfaction – advocacy).

Bill sent me a nice note. Hope these thoughts helped. I’ve been an Internet marketer for a long time (12 years). There are few immutable truths. One is no matter how clear and simple the teams I managed thought we had everything, it could have been better, more simple. One of the keys to being good at this job is living with the pain that statement brings and being determined nonetheless.

Marty

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You may preach a lifetime before seeing the smallest sliver of revelation. Zen monks spend lifetimes in meditation and prayer. As much as I appreciate and respect such discipline, I’m too impatient to contemplate, much less live, such an eastern truth. Today the mobile revolution fell from the sky like Texas hail. Today a spiritual belief, a faith, was confirmed by science, by numbers. This post could be titled, “Portrait of the Internet Marketer As A Young Man”. I wasn’t that young when I became an Internet marketer in 1999, but grant some creative license as I share a story.

Marty’s Internet Marketing Experience

I fell into Internet marketing when Found Objects, the specialty gift company we started, needed a website in 1999. We didn’t have the $10K web developers were asking, so I read a book on HTML, attended a seminar on photo editing and dusted off writing chops rusting in my personal brand’s attic.

Impatience fits Internet marketing. In 1999 no one knew nothing. There was NOTHING to lose. I moved from startup to an ecommerce site when eating became a much needed necessity. It wasn’t that FoundObjects.com wasn’t successful. The site came too late. Our company had a HUGE hit with our generation’s “Pet Rock”, called Magnetic Poetry Kit: words on magnets most put on their fridge. Magnetic Poetry Kit sold millions and destroyed our company. It goes that way sometimes. The good news is Magnetic Poetry Kit was a HUGE HIT. The bad news is MPK was a HUGE HIT.

I have an intuitive sense about trends, I sense some trends about half a step before the crowd such as:

• Purchased an Apple II in 1982.
• Replaced it (much to my now disgrace) with an IBM PC in order to use Visicalc and then Lotus.
• Created one of if not the first territory management systems in consumer products goods in 1985.
• Being half a step ahead on PCs led to a new job as a Project Manager on M&M/Mars’ Sales, Management, Analysis and Telecommunications (SMART) system, the first territory management system in CPG.
• Built first B2B and B2C ecommerce enabled website (FoundObjects.com), November,1999.
• Being a half a step ahead on ecommerce led to Director of Ecommerce position on a million dollar website (that we turned into a $6M in annual sales ecommerce site).
• Understanding print was dead despite protestations to the contrary motivated me to leave, after 7 years, my job as Director of Ecommerce to ride a bicycle across America (Martin’s Ride To Cure Cancer).
• Returning from Martin’s Ride, everything Internet marketing felt different due to social networks and the massive amounts of User Generated Content (UGC) they generate.
• Google responds with Panda and then Penguin algorithm updates.
• Being half a step ahead on the NEW SEO and Ecommerce leads to becoming the Director of Marketing here at Atlantic BT.

Mobile has been making my spidey senses tingle for a year, and The Mobile Marketing Revolution arrived at Atlantic BT in July. Here is a chart showing % of Atlanticbt.com’s traffic that is MOBILE for the last 18 months:

The Mobile Marketing Revolution

Fear and a dinosaur was in the room. Attending the Bronto user conference, the managers of several large, sales greater than $10M a year, sites were complaining. “We didn’t know what hit us,” I heard a man in his forties explain to one of the speakers, “our mobile traffic went from nothing to something in the blink of an eye, and then from something to Holy Batman.” Yes, the man said, “Holy Batman,” and it is probably why I heard what he was saying.

Atlantic BT reached the Holy Batman stage with our Atlantic BT Gives Back $25,000 Mobile Grant contest. Our contest moved us from “something” to “Holy Batman” in mobile traffic bringing several important mobile marketing lessons including:

• People use their phones to curate their lives and VOTE in contests.
• YTD mobile traffic on AtlanticBT.com is now above 5%, the “something” threshold.
• July’s mobile traffic was 13% of all traffic (the “Holy Batman” stage).
• Mobile is different.

Mobile Marketing Is Different

Mobile first is a movement suggesting we should work from mobile out to everything else. Don’t force mobile into a process sure to be eliminated soon (static websites, say), the mobile first argument goes, think and build to the future, not the present, and the future is mobile. More than Responsive Design, mobile should promote a rethink of key Internet marketing concepts including:

• Search and Search Marketing (mobile PPC is CHEAPER).
• SEO.
• Content development.
• Email marketing.
• Social Media Marketing.

Don’t know about you, but just about everything I do for a living is on THAT list. In the middle of a revolution, you don’t know how things are going to come out. You know stuff is changing at an ever faster pace, but how everything and everyone will shake out is unknown. I’ve never worked for a company capable of generating millions in annual revenue that is comfortable being way ahead of the pack. They like to wait for an undeniable event and then adjust accordingly. The mobile revolution comes to Atlantic BT chart above is the mobile network effect chart your website will see for its mobile traffic too. When? Who knows, but that you WILL see a mobile traffic network effect that looks like Atlantic BT’s is a fact.

What To Do About It

Beyond finding and hiring great mobile development partners, every company needs to RETHINK a few things including:

• Customer Service In Real Time On Social Networks Via Mobile Phones.
• Content Development – One database needs to feed many channels and receiving devices.
• Social Marketing – StumbleUpon moved past Twitter on the strength of their mobile application. Who is trying to make a mobile move on you, your company and brands?
• Websites – static page limited sites are dead, platforms capable of curating, creating and generating UGC (User Generated Content) that are easily and powerfully mobile will rule the future of Internet marketing.
• Campaigns, Offers and Promotions – Feels like we are reaching the end of the “never ending sale” merchandising cycle with “social shopping” powered by platforms and mobile its replacement. Figuring out what that means to your promotions calendar is beyond critical.
• Ecommerce – how do we sell and communicate MOBILE FIRST and have that communication be MORE exciting as customers up their ante (look at our communications across devices).
• UI – User Interface is different on phones and pads, how do we encourage and build to the conversion behavior we want (swiping, tapping, and an infinite pool look and feel created by pads).

Hate to end a post with more questions than we started, but such is the nature of a revolution. You don’t know who, what or why is going to win in the middle, no matter how well your spidey senses tingle. The mobile marketing revolution is coming to your website, company and brands too. Get ready, and yes, that strange tingle you feel is your spidey senses in full alarm.

Related Posts

Mobile Revolution on Scoop.it

Internet Marketing Goes Mobile – Join The Revolution

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We all dream in color. Every design concept and sketch comes with some sort of color association. But what do those colors mean? What associations are we making just with that choice alone?

Marty Note
When you want to win online you understand the crowd and surf their wave. This is not to say you “sell out” or leave your beliefs or values in the dirt. It is to say smart Internet marketers watch their feedback loops like hawks and modify their brilliant plans with feedback from the mob and wisdom of crowds. Here is a USA Today poll showing favorite colors:

Blue: 44%
Green: 12%
Red: 11%
Black: 4%
Purple/Violet: 4%
Brown: 3%
Pink/rose: 3%
Beige/Tan: 2%
White: 2%
Grey: 2%
Yellow: 2%
Mauve: 2%
Fushia: 2%
Maroon: 2%

Let’s see we can use yellows and thrill NO ONE or find new ways to be blue. You know where I’m going (lol).
Marty
See on designmodo.com

What is Ecommerce?

This may seem like a dumb question, but it is harder to answer than you might think. Electronic commerce is the creation of an online store with the ability to emulate, as much as possible, shopping’s tactile experience. The weakness of an online store is its inability to directly address three of the five senses (taste, smell and touch). The strength of a web store is its ability to capitalize on uniquely digital assets such as:

• Infinite Inventory pulling information or inventory from any node within the network.
• Social Shopping Via Wisdom of Crowds and powered by Reviews and Social Networks.
• Flexibility and an ability to create a one-to-many, one-to-some or one-to-one shopping experiences based on patterns or real time behaviors.

[will write more on each of these topics soon]

How does Ecommerce happen?
Ecommerce could “happen” with as little as a single phone. If you sold something everyone wanted, where demand well exceeded supply, ecommerce infrastructure could be minimal. When you have the better mousetrap, customers do beat a path to your door. Problem is there aren’t many of these high demand, low competition businesses anymore.

The 12 Ecommerce Components
Since our contemporary world is replete with “better” mousetraps, ecommerce requires a commitment in excess of a single phone. Typical components of an ecommerce store are:

• Home Page – sets the “who are we” and “what we are all about” tone.
• Images – pictures and graphics speak to brand and shopper aspirations.
• Copy – words speak to brand and shopper aspirations.
• Navigation (or “menu” or taxonomy) – provides shopping paths.
• Categories – groups of products to aid in merchandising, shopping and SEO.
• Product Pages – where the magic BUY button lives along with a product’s story, reviews and specifications or features.
• Shopping Cart – where shoppers “put” products and then checkout.
• Content Pages – about us, contact us, guarantee and a return policy are typical ecommerce content, but some sites like Woot.com tell great stories.
• Site Search – “internal search” to differentiate from external search (Google).
• Forms – When you subscribe to a site’s email list, you use a web form.
• Metadata – feeds keywords to search engines to help index a site.
• Analytics – codes feeding usage data to programs such as Google Analytics.

These are ecommerce’s 12 puzzle pieces; how a company or team combines these elements determines the success or failure of their store.

What is Magento Ecommerce?

Magento is a powerful and flexible ecommerce Content Management System (CMS). A CMS’s main role is to tie the 12 Ecommerce Components together into an efficient and easy to understand system. Internet marketers, Web Masters and Web Merchandisers use a CMS to organize, merchandise, modify and create their store.

Ecommerce used to require Information Technology pros just to do something as simple as change a product’s color variation or add a new product. Thankfully those days are gone, but not all Content Management Systems are equal or appropriate for every application.

CMS Admin System
Within every CMS is an admin system. Admin is a system within a system. It controls key CMS features such as security. Security, in this context, is mostly about who can access what and who can make changes. Admins contain user profiles for the team working on the online store and other system management tools.

Difficult and underpowered admins send merchandising and marketing teams running to overloaded IT staff to make changes. Ecommerce happens NOW. Any request forced into a queue may lose meaning and relevance by the time it gets implemented. Delay creates competitive advantage for the OTHER guys.

Magento is a GREAT ecommerce CMS.

I used several BAD ecommerce CMS systems over my 7 years as Director of Ecommerce before joining Atlantic BT. CMS is a kind of language. Once you learn the language of how to segment, add or modify products, managing millions in online revenue becomes possible and easier. This “language” is usually a series of connected screens called a “User Interface” or UI. Most UIs are created by engineers (left brainers) and used by marketing and other creatives (right brainers). In the old IT dominated days, right brainers had to conform. We had to learn an unnatural language.

Magento’s UI requires learning a left brain language, but it is intuitive and organized around Ecommerce’s 12 Components. I give Magento’s admin an A- with the potential to become an A+. Magento isn’t one product owned by a large company. Magento is “open source,” so its code is free and readily available to anyone.

Think about the iPhone’s success. Apple created an exclusive platform allowing programmers to build apps on top of their core programming. There are millions of apps now because Apple encouraged collaboration and partnership. Magento’s ecommerce platform uses the Apple approach. Create a set of core instructions and encourage programmers to add on.

Magento is better equipped to become an A+ CMS because of the tens of thousands of plugins and extensions programmers have and are building. Magento keeps up with new developments such as mobile commerce thanks to the extensive developer community.

Atlantic BT’s “Should I Use Magento?” Test

I like Magento’s understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the amount of power in the admin and its ability to morph quickly with plugins and extensions. I would strongly recommend Magento for any ecommerce store who may be small today but who wants to be bigger tomorrow. Changing a CMS is a train wreck (been there, done that, never want to do it again). BUY MORE CMS than you need now. Answer these questions about your web store or e-business:

Do you have more than 100 products (counting each attribute variation as a separate product)?

Is your ecommerce store critical to your company’s revenue?

Do you want your ecommerce store to be 4x or 5x what it is today in the next few years?

Are you in a highly competitive business?

Are you heavily involved in social or mobile communication or commerce?

If you are a B2B business, are you using content to create inbound marketing?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, Magento deserves a strong look. If you answered NO to every question, then you can probably survive on a WordPress blog with a little ecommerce programing. I would only suggest such a minimal option of there were no plans to scale larger in the next 2 to 4 years.

Cost of A CMS Change
Always buy your NEXT ecommerce CMS NOW, because limiting your selection criteria based on what you are doing today means you will need to change your CMS in a year or so. After making it through two CMS changes, my advice is to avoid a CMS change if possible. CMS changes are fraught with problems, including:

• Damage to SEO.
• Learning curve on a new “language” or system.
• Data integration costs (if you have legacy systems this could be substantial).

Always buy your NEXT ecommerce CMS today because you save money and pain. I know the courage it takes to write a check for a robust CMS such as Magento that can grow with you, but you save money in the long run.

CMS Development Partner – Choose Carefully
Atlantic BT loves Magento. We’ve gotten to know its quirks, strengths and hidden potholes after developing more than 50 Magento enabled sites (B2C and B2B). Even if you don’t use us to help create your Magento store, make sure whoever you partner with has these capabilities and experiences:

• Host websites too, since hosting creates a more intimate knowledge of what is happening.

• Developed more than one multimillion dollar ecommerce online store, since you learn things at scale you can’t learn any other way.

• Have every aspect of web design under one roof, since it eats money to communicate among design, programming and marketing teams.

I’ve been selling one thing or another online since 1999 (see FoundObjects.com example below). Sites and teams I’ve managed have made more than $30M, performed close to a million transactions, achieved Google page 1 listings on over 50 highly competitive keywords, and made money consistently year over year for seven years straight. We accomplished these things mostly by hook and crook. We had to work AGAINST our CMS.

Even if I had the same talented team, today is different. We couldn’t achieve those results because there is no hook and crook anymore. Internet marketing is too competitive now. The moment you queue a request for later, today’s competitors would eat your online store alive. Give yourself a chance to succeed:

• Buy more CMS than you need today.
• Look hard at Magento.
• Find a great, experienced partner you can trust.

I hope this post doesn’t sound negative or complicated or hard. I LOVE ecommerce and will be a web merchandiser at my core forever. Nothing compares to the all-in, fully present, real-time nature of ecommerce. You can’t have more fun in life than creating and growing a store, especially with tools that ROCK like Magento’s flexible, powerful and magical CMS.

FoundObjects.com
(Now RIP) My First Ecommerce Store, Launched November, 1999

Built my first site in 1999 after learning HTML from a book, site design from a seminar and Photoshop from a friend and I fell hopelessly in love. Until today I didn’t know WHAT I love so much about Internet marketing. Now I know and the challenge is to describe the tornado in my head. Let’s take a journey to Internet marketing’s magic in 3 parts:

• Arthur C. Clarke’s Slightly Modified Three Laws.
• The Hero’s Journey – Wandering In The Dark.
• Finding The Wizard Behind The Curtain.

Modified Version of Clarke’s Three Laws of Prediction

1. When a distinguished Internet marketer says something is POSSIBLE he is almost certainly RIGHT. When a distinguished Internet marketer says something is IMPOSSIBLE he is almost certainly WRONG.

2. The only way to truly ever know what is possible is to venture into the impossible at least a little.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology (or meme or idea) is indistinguishable from magic.

After more than 12 years, thousands of Internet marketing campaigns, millions of ecommerce dollars earned and at least 4 completely different teams I know how well Clarke’s slightly modified three laws describe what I do for a living. My teams and I must create magic. How can the ability to reach across an impossibly crowded room to touch someone’s heart and mind be described other than creating magic?

The Hero’s Journey – Wandering In The Dark

There is a special RUB to creating Internet marketing magic, a twisted paradox. You can’t set out to create magic. Any attempt to create magic eliminates your ability to do so because Internet marketing magic is spontaneous and real. Magic is created by, at least initially, wandering in the dark.

I’ve been a marketer for almost 30 years starting with the Bar Soap division at P&G and now here at in Raleigh for Jon, Mark and the Atlantic BT team. Looking across every campaign over almost thirty years there is a single common thread. The beginning of MAGIC always starts with anger, frustration and a sense of dislocation. If you don’t feel like you are wandering in the dark then you aren’t about to create magic. If your content, community and campaigns feel good from the start you are doing it wrong.

Magic can’t be the objective of an Internet marketer’s journey. The marker we are on the right course, the course toward magic, is the feeling we are on the wrong course to NO WHERE. Ironic but what in life isn’t ironic? This irony is also filtering since many teams never get past the wandering in the dark part of the hero’s journey. They punk out, quit and go home convinced they can’t create magic when they may well have been on the path to do exactly that (more irony).

If you are starting to hear Joseph Campbell’s A Hero With A Thousand Faces then you were a step ahead of me until TODAY. Today, thanks to an email from a colleague wondering if we were wandering in the dark, a big, bright bulb exploded over my head. Compare this hero’s journey chart to the first phase of every project you’ve ever worked on:

When the hero refuses the call to adventure he or she is wandering in the dark. Look at the rest of the hero’s journey and think about every project you’ve ever worked on. The hero’s journey describes every project management timeline along with our daily quest for meaning and context.

Finding The Wizard Behind the Curtain

In the worst of wandering in the dark we may not be very nice to be around. When I created the Mondrian grid for my first website it took 3 months to figure out how to engineer the lines. Now those lines would take any web programmer in the Atlantic BT center minutes, but FoundObjects.com (now RIP) was launched in November 1999. Things were different then. Usually a friend, mentor or family member (Yoda) frames the conversation or problem slightly differently and revelation happens. Presto Chango and we see the wizard behind the curtain. We are transformed from wandering, lost and frustrated to someone who, for a tiny moment, sees and knows truth. What do we want to do the moment we know truth?

We want to share. Truth is so rare and beautiful we rush to give it away, to bring it home and change others. Knowing the phases of the journey to magic doesn’t change their required existence. We only find magic when we are present and capable in each phase. If we try to jump the shark magic disappears.  When we “fail” we believe we are at “fault” and begin to assign “blame”. Eckhart Tolle taught me a magical lesson in his book A New Earth. Tolle explains whatever IS happening is what is supposed to be happening. WOW was my reaction. I remember furiously underlining. I  wanted to get up and talk about how Tolle just defined the essence of life, love and Internet marketing.

Internet marketing always happens NOW. Great Internet marketing is created by heroes capable of creating magic, those true believers who create magic without meaning too. Internet marketers must think magically. They must go through the same processes every campaign, website design and mobile application. They must treat every all too familiar step as if it were as new and untouched as fresh snow on a quiet winter’s morning or the sound of the ocean at night. Thankfully, our Internet marketing journey to magic is always the same.

Marty

Internet Marketing Summer School

Hope you are reading this post on a mobile device as your children splash in the waves. It is almost too HOT to be in the office. That sounds like a good excuse, right? “Jon I would have knocked that thing down but it was too HOT.” Doubt it, so decided to share a quick Top 10 Summer Reading list to begin to think like an Internet marketer or increase your understanding of how the biggest mystery wrapped in the strangest enigma (the Internet) works.

Atlantic BT continues to receive a lot of traffic on the question of if Internet marketing can be taught in a classroom. I’ve also weighed in on this issue with a firm NO. Here are those links:

Experience vs. Internet Marketing Degree (on Atlantic BT blog)

Internet Marketing Degree – Do I Need One? (on ScentTrail Marketing)

The problem with learning Internet marketing and ecommerce in a classroom is much of what you need to know will never appear in a text book. You need to understand emergence, viral marketing, the battle for hearts and minds and technical things that change all the time such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click advertising (PPC or SEM). Classrooms are too static, to yesterday’s news. By the time what we do for a living is in a text book it helps no one. Internet marketing moves at light speed and requires knowledge you wouldn’t know unless you are doing it.

Since the web and ecommerce is one of the shinning lights of an economy that can only be described as tepid many are interested in becoming an Internet marketer. While I don’t believe any classroom can match the speed things happen in Internet marketing I always ask job applicants what books they read. If you’ve read and can use any 2 of these books in your next interview you will get the job even without an Internet Marketing Degree:

Mobile Firstby Luke WroblewskiThe most influential book on Mobile development leads my list because the mobile tsunami is here. Watching Atlantic BT’s metrics we’ve seen a steady increase in mobile traffic. From nothing to 5% on some days means mobile is here. Mobile is here because:* Phones are curating emails.* Smart Phones are 50% in US.* Social and Phones go together.* Death of free time – we don’t stand in line with checking our phones now.*We don’t want to miss out.* Marketers are creating more mobile content.Add these and about five other things and you understand why the VC community is already moved over to mobile.The next time you look at your site’s metrics don’t look at the absolute number of mobile visitors look at the tend line. If, after reviewing your data, you don’t think mobile is important staying at the beach may be the best idea.If, after reading Mobile First, you come away with a renewed commitment to understanding mobile, and make no mistake it is a different gig, then your time in summer school will make your fall classes (Holiday 2012 will be the first “Mobile Commerce Holiday selling season”) easier and more profitable.Note: It is a pain to buy Luke’s book on Amazon so don’t. I’ve linked to an independent book seller A Book Apart.Luke’s Site Luke on LinkedinSummer Reading Rating:

Made To Stickby the Heath BrothersReread one of my favorite Internet marketing books yesterday and it holds up well. Made To Stick’s ideas including simplicity beats complexity, not burying the lead and use visual clues and “schema” such as the duct tape on the cover to help readers quickly GET your ideas are beyond critical for Internet marketers.I started selling bar soap person-to-person for P&G. Now we have to create the same intimacy and familiarity without being face-to-face.Fastest way to have someone understand you is to build on what they already know. This is not to say you can’t introduce THE NEW, it means to introduce the new via known analogies and metaphors, or schema.This book you can and should buy from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.Heath Brothers site. Summer Reading Rating:

The MeshBy Lisa GanskyLisa’s “Meshed” world isn’t quite here yet, but it is coming fast. The Mesh explains how the world is being changed by Moore’s Law, the power and cheapness of integrated circuits and our ability to take advantage of OPP (Other People’s Platforms).6,000 “Meshing.it” companies have signed up already on Gansky’s site and look for that number to grow. Lisa, a successful entrepreneur, notes how much less expensive it is to start companies today than a little as five years ago.Beyond an important text book for entrepreneurs, every company should be thinking of ways to mashup content, curate from existing sources while providing unique perspective that reinforces your brand’s core values. Read the Mesh and you will think of new ways to present your brands online.Quick easy read, so perfect for iPads at the beach.Buy The Mesh on Amazon or Barnes and Nobleand good ebook.Lisa’s Site: Meshing.itSummer Beach Reading Rating:

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and SoftwareBy Steven Berlin JohnsonEverything Bad Is Good For YouWhere Good Ideas Come From I strongly recommend reading Steven Johnson. He has a way of organizing and explaining difficult concept that is perfect for the beach. The concept of emergence, how things happen in a decentralized way, is important to understanding the organic, almost sentient network your website lives on. When you see a content or tribal bloom, something getting a lot of attention that usually doesn’t, you need to build on it, curate around the bloom and contribute new ideas and food into the network.Your repayment for watching the weather that is the World Wide Web is a virtuous cycle. You get more followers and link juice faster and faster. Understanding what and where blooms come from requires a passing understanding of the biology of emergence and Johnson will have you there after a few days reading at the beach.Other important books by Johnson include Everything Bad Is Good For You And Where Good Ideas Come From. Steven Berlin Johnson’s Site .Summer Reading Rating

Linked:How Everything Is Connected To Everything Else and What It Meansby Albert-Laszlo BarabasiBursts:The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We DoI owe this recommendation to my friend Nathan from last summer. I could hardly put Notre Dame network research Barabasi’s book down (but I am a bit strange when it comes to my obsessive love for all thins Internet marketing). Barabasi’s book explains so much about how the largest content network man has ever created functions it can be a page turner for the right audience. Concepts such as proprietary linking and how any network the size of the Internet will form hugs will create real light bulb moments. The book isn’t easy or a fast read.I had to read several sections more than once to get all of the meaning, but its importance in understanding how Internet marketing works can’t be overstated.Bursts is the easier summer read, but bursts is less strategic and tactical (so you make the call).Summer Reading Rating Summer Reading Rating Burst

The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google Have Redefined BusinessPhil’s book is both great history lesson and prescient view to what is next. Websites are dead as I noted a few month before Phil’s book was published on ScentTrail Marketing (Platforms vs. Websites).If you are about to create a closed loop 20 page website good luck. Good luck competing with Etsy.com (100M pages in Google), Amazon (600M pages in Google) or any other competitor smart enough to know PLATFORMS RULE in a social age.Phil is a good guy who answers his email and appreciate comments and involvement. His book is an easy read and gets faster as you go. I wouldn’t skip the history lesson since knowing what is around the next corner is hidden in there somewhere.Buy on Amazon or Barnes and Noble(leave some shipping time in there)Phil’s Site: AgeofthePlatform.comSummer Reading Rating:

Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Livesby Michael ShermerThis is one of my secret weapons. Shermer’s book walks the same path as Brainfluence by Dooley and has at least a passing understanding of NonZero by Wright, but Shermer’s cut through the clutter approach is perfect for the summer. I just returned from the Conversion Conference in Chicago and they were all talking Shermer’s language.Mind of the Market discusses what we know to be true – we can spot BS a mile away now and we want to help each other. Mind of the Market was behind my thinking a few weeks ago when I wrote People Not Things Sell and that post has looped around the world twice now. Shermer helps you see the web design you need and the weakness in the one you have.Michael Shermer’s, former editor of Skeptic, websiteBuyMind of the Market on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Summer Reading Rating

Atlantic BT Summer Reading Summary
Reading any 2 of these books will help you understand what happens behind the Internet marketing curtain. Read all 10 and you deserve some kind of special prize (we will think on that). In the meantime, have a great summer of reading by the pool or at the beach.  Remember Holiday 2012 is around the corner (sorry about that but force of habit for an old ecommerce guy like me).

Marty