How people read online: Why you won’t finish this article. – Slate Magazine

I’m going to keep this brief, because you’re not going to stick around for long. I’ve already lost a bunch of you. For every 161 people who landed on this page, about 61 of you—38 percent—are already gone. You “bounced” in Web traffic jargon, meaning you spent no time “engaging” with this page at all.

So now there are 100 of you left. Nice round number. But not for long! We’re at the point in the page where you have to scroll to see more. Of the 100 of you who didn’t bounce, five are never going to scroll. Bye!

OK, fine, good riddance. So we’re 95 now. A friendly, intimate crowd, just the people who want to be here. Thanks for reading, folks! I was beginning to worry about your attention span, even your intellig … wait a second, where are you guys going? You’re tweeting a link to this article already? You haven’t even read it yet! What if I go on to advocate something truly awful, like a constitutional amendment requiring that we all type two spaces after a period?

via How people read online: Why you won’t finish this article. – Slate Magazine.

How to Build Links to Your Blog – A Case Study – Moz

I recently took some time out to do a bit of travelling across East Asia (which was incredible!) and decided that I would, along with a group of friends, set up a travel blog. Knowing that I would be embarking on some amazing adventures, I thought it’d be a waste not to blog about them. Plus, the idea of bringing in a little extra cash to go into my travel fund helped in my decision.

After a month or so of development the site was finally ready and I wanted to start thinking about how to get some traffic going on the website. Whilst paid advertising and social media were a huge part of the strategy, I knew that appearing in the search engines for a wide selection of long-tail phrases was going to be instrumental to the blog’s success. This is when I began developing my link building strategy and, after trialing out some very successful approaches, I’ve decided to now share my link building tactics with you all – you can thank me later

via How to Build Links to Your Blog – A Case Study – Moz.

How to Make Buying from Your Website Inevitable

The classic sales funnel model is quite accurate, but only if you expect the funnel to be seriously leaky.

People come out the bottom only if they avoid falling through the cracks before buying.

An alternative model is the inverted funnel.

In a way, it’s more accurate; each step closer to buying something is more like climbing up than sliding down.

In other words, if you don’t keep people moving up, they’re just going to slide back to the beginning and off your funnel.

But you shouldn’t ask people to climb a mountain before buying.

The most useful model—I believe—is the conversion path that consists of all the steps people take before buying.

via How to Make Buying from Your Website Inevitable.

The Power of The Nudge: How to Convert Visitors Into Customers

Some good ideas on how to nudge visitors into becoming customers:

The Power of The Nudge: How to Convert Visitors Into Customers.

Q&A with Mailbox founder, Gentry Underwood – Business Insider

In January, an email organization app called Mailbox launched, and it promised to help users reach inbox zero. Thirty-seven days later, cloud storage company Dropbox acquired it for a reported $100 million.

We sat down with the app’s founder, Gentry Underwood, who told us how he was able to flip the app so quickly and what it is like working for $4 billion Silicon Valley company, Dropbox.

via Q&A with Mailbox founder, Gentry Underwood – Business Insider.

[Be sure to watch the viral video!]

Seth’s Blog: How to write copy that goes viral

I don’t know if you can get viral with Seth’s advice, but you can certainly tap into passion.

Seth’s Blog: How to write copy that goes viral.

Using Social Media To Deal With Customer Trolls

One of the best discussions of how to handle bad customer reviews I’ve seen:

 

For many small businesses, their online reputation is their passport to virtual word-of-mouth referrals. Unfortunately, an articulate and engaging negative review on Yelp!, TripAdvisor or Amazon can have an outsized impact on a small business.

You operate your business from a small boat in the remote waters of northern Fiji and your customers are spread across the globe, residing in the US, Europe and Asia. How can you protect your company’s reputation when a rouge customer unjustly flames your startup?

In searching for world-class examples of public responses to irate customers’ complaints, I found one that emanated from an unlikely place, Savusavu, Fiji. The respondent to the customer complaint was Tige Young, CEO and Owner of the Tui Tai Expeditions, cited by National Geographic as, “one of the best adventure travel companies on earth.”

With an excellent online reputation, it would be understandable if Tige chose to disregard the occasional negative review. However, rather than ignore discontented customers, Tige does a masterful job of crafting rebuttals that are informative, appropriately deferential and amusing.

In addition to utilizing reputation management services such as YellowBot, entrepreneurs must become proficient online advocates, defending their businesses against unjust and unfounded attacks. Left unattended, such attacks are detrimental. Inartfully handled, such reviews can be disastrous.

via Using Social Media To Deal With Customer Trolls.