Remember my blog post called What Not To Do about double-negatives that confuse the user experience?

Well, the author of this checkbox takes first prize!

In the words of Celo Green, “F you, and F her too!”

I recently changed Ashley’s Scottsdale Az Homes For Sale site to use Thesis WordPress Theme.  I really, really like how easy it is to customize.

So I installed Thesis a few minutes ago on this site, Editweapon.com since I’m working on a new post and didn’t want any one to see the hideous “coffee” theme I installed a few months ago and forgot about!  ;-)

Thesis is currently in it’s “none more white” default state, but I’ll tweak it up and let you know what happens in the next few weeks.

The next time I get asked, “What’s your greatest weakness?” I’m going to answer — without hesitation — “Double-negatives.”

Any time I saw this question on a test in high school or college, I started to hyperventilate.

Which of the following statements are not true:
A) You never don’t understand double-negatives.
B) You always don’t not understand double-negatives.
C) None of the above are never true.
D) All of the above are true on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
E) Your brain just exploded.

As a user-interaction designer, this internal weakness of mine is a gift.  Since I’m hypersensitive to double-negatives (one might call them my own personal kryptonite), I can help by making simple changes to the words when I see something in a UI that causes me to have cold sweats.

Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about.  When I first saw this screen in an app that will remain anonymous, I threw up in my mouth a little.

Let’s count the number of negative statements.

1. The title: “Hide Updates”
2. The text: “Updates that aren’t selected will not be installed.”
3. The checkbox: “Don’t notify me about these updates again.”

That’s 4 negative statements.  In a message box with 17 words.  Nice.

Here’s how to redo this same message box, using all positives.

1. The title: “Show Updates”
2. The text: “Updates that are selected will be installed.”
3. The checkbox: (unchecked) “Yes, Please notify me about these updates again.”

Simple.

The general rule for questions posed to the user: Write them in the positive.

General rule for checkboxes: The act of checking a box should turn that thing ON, not OFF.

See Don’t Make Me Think, and especially GUI Bloopers, Dont’s and Do’s for more commentary.

I recently switch Jigsaw Health from PC + Exchange to Mac + Google Apps.  It was easy.  And it’s been awesome!  It’s no shock that no one is missing their clunky 5 year old Dell desktops.

But perhaps more of a surprise is how swiftly everyone has taken to the Gmail interface after using Outlook all day every day for 5+ years (and more)!

Perhaps a major reason for the smooth transition has been our use of the MailPlane Email App for Gmail.  It’s like a container app for Gmail.

To quote Mailplane,”The most productive way to use Gmail on your Mac” and “Brings Gmail to your Mac desktop.”

There are numerous features about MailPlane that I totally love.  But this screenshot pretty much sums up the basis of my MailPlane crush.  While clicking the Send button, this popped up:

Anticipation of users screwing up.  That’s a brilliant focus on interaction design.

Watch a 2 minute demo of MailPlane.

MailPlane offers a 30 day, fully functional demo.  So if you’re using Mac + Gmail, give it a test drive!

Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts

Turn on keyboard shorcuts in Gmail and use them.  I’m a keyboard JUNKY, and I’m getting super quick at working through my inbox.

Also, there are several AWESOME Gmail Labs features that I turn on for everyone, most notably “Send & Archive” button and default to “Reply To All”.

Shoutout to Justin Youens for recommending MailPlane in the first place. 

A good friend of mine emailed me this morning to ask if I had any suggestions for a new user interface mock-up he created for his company, ABSystems, which sells medical billing businesses.

Here’s the mock-up, along with his email to me:

I’m trying to rekindle the fire to get our ABSystems website redesigned.  Take a glance at the mock up attached. I 100% ripped it off of mint.com. We won’t be using the grassy bar, but I wanted it there as a place marker and to show the function / naming of the rollover items.  Any feedback would be appreciated.

My Reply

Dude, this mock-up rocks.  You know I love mint.com’s design and even the redesign has grown on me since my review.

Couple of thoughts off the tip top of my head…

1. Image is what I saw first, but Headline is what I *read* first.  Which is perfect.

2. Only two primary call to actions in bright orange buttons.  Awesome.  Would change the one to “Watch 2 minute overview video”.  2 mins is about the max length of attention span for an informational video online.  This is because watching the video is a passive action.  While online, people are in an active mode.  Therefore, if it can’t be said in 2 mins or less, don’t bother.  (For background on this 2 minute stat, click here and scroll down to the section with the header 1 Minute.)

3. The headline uses key phrases, “Fatest” and “Guaranteed.”  And presumably, “Medical Billing Business” is the keyword the site visitor searched on.  So very sticky as a landing page.  (Btw, I’ve been learning lots more about hiring an inbound link firm so you can rank #1 on a search term like that. More to come this week on my blog and Ashley’s.)

4. The “hero graphic” is very pretty on first glance.  But as you move from scanning to reading, it becomes more complicated.  Would recommend making it slightly simpler.  Ie. Maybe less boxes?  Less technical/insider jargon?

5. The use of the “I” instead of “we” is prevalent and much better for conversion.  Questions like, “How Do I Get Clients?”  “How much can I make?” are brilliant to use.  On the other hand, “What We Do” statements as the lead are lame.  (Check out Futurenow’s We-We calculator.)

6. For the header nav, I would recommend, in this order: “How Much Can I Make?”  “Medical Billing 101″  “About ABS”, and that’s it!  Put links to “ABS Blog” and “Products” in the footer nav.  (Check out how minimal the nav bar is for the new Jigsaw Health re-design, yet the footer has many links.)

7. Add your 800 number and a Chat Live now to the top right.

8. Get a new logo!

Dude, this is a great direction for your website.  Higher conversion always has a positive ROI.  So push hard to get it done, and K.I.S.S.

Your Thoughts?

Comments are open for thoughts and reactions.

Want to buy magnesium supplements from Jigsaw Health?  We’ve pieced together an amazing formula…so good in fact, it powers the The Man of Steel! 

Jigsaw Magnesium w/SRT is my company’s top-rated, best-selling product.  Therefore, “magnesium supplement” and “magnesium supplements” are our most important keywords.  Right?

Well, because of some stupid, easily avoidable mistakes I was making, Lord Google wasn’t even putting www.JigsawHealth.com in the top 200 results for either keyword.  Not until I learned and applied Chris Drake’s 5 Steps to SEO Domination.

1. Choose a two-word phrase you want to rank highly on.

We chose “magnesium supplements” because Google AdWords showed this had the highest traffic.

Background: This was ironically both the easiest and hardest thing for me to do.  For the last two years, we’ve been trimming Jigsaw’s product line from 138 SKUs (unwieldy and totally unprofitable) down to the current 28, with the top 5 products accounting for 80% of revenue and 90% of gross profit.  I know that we’re a magnesium supplement company. But it’s hard to draw that line in the sand, at the risk of ignoring all your other kids.

So once you’ve chosen what to focus on, how do you apply it?  I’m glad you asked.

2. Modify your Title Tag

Everyone knows that Title tags are important to Google.  And I’ve always heard, “The more keywords you can shove in there, the better!” So you end up with pages names that are 300 characters long trying to get every long-tail term one can imagine.

Well, Chris Drake’s big on keyword density, which is also important to Google, as every one knows.  BUT…who really practices the discipline of saying, “I will *only* put Magnesium Supplements in my title tag.” to actually achieve keyword density?  There’s beauty in restraint. And it works, as you will see.

Important Caveat: Since your Title Tag is the text that displays in Google SERPs, it’s good to use *some* branding with a generic phrase like “magnesium supplements”.  The title tag we used: “Magnesium Supplements | Jigsaw Health”.

Tight baby…tight like a tiger! 

3. Change the design of the home page.

Our homepage sucked for SEO.  The copy was good and inviting, but it did nothing to help us rank.  There was absolutely NO FOCUS!

So we took a look at the decision we made in #1 and said, “Dammit, our company is about magnesium supplements.  That’s what our homepage is going to reflect.“  Now our “hero” graphic (bottle) and primary call-to-action (“Learn More” button) are related to our core — Jigsaw Magnesium w/SRT.

We also added body copy laced heavily with the magnesium supplement keyword.  This copy is not so much for reading as it is for optimizing and increasing keyword density, though each section is designed to appeal to one of the four buying modalities.  (Bonus points if you can tell which goes to which!)

4. Creative H1 and H2 tags.

Chris Drake really nailed it with this one.  It seems Google has increased the importance of H1 and H2 tags.  Check this technique out:

Here’s what the visitor sees:

But here’s what it looks like to Google (with CSS disabled):

Here’s the source code:

Result of #2, #3, and #4:

In about 4 days, Lord Google bumped us from outer-space to 27th for “magnesium supplements”.  About 10 days later, we were the second listing on page 2 (position 12)!!

But frankly, page 2 is still outer-effin-space. When was the last time you went to the second page of search results?  Hell, when was the last time you scrolled to the bottom of page 1?

And 60 days later — today — we’re still stuck in position 12.

Which leads me to #5…

5. Get relevant inbound links.

The SEO gurus I have read say, “What you say about yourself (ie. title tag, body copy, etc.) accounts for only about 20% of your Google rank.  Meanwhile, what others say about you (ie. inbound links) accounts for 80% of your keyword ranking.”

Sh*t.

Getting links to a cat playing keyboard is one thing.  Getting links to a vitamin company?  BORING!!!

So now you know why I wrote this post.  =)  Sure, the info in steps 1 – 4 are totally effective.  But I’m being a link whore right now!

So how will I go about getting more inbound links? For starters, I sure would appreciate anyone out there with a blog that thought this article was interesting and wants to throw up something like this in the first paragraph of your review:

“I read a wicked cool SEO article about Jigsaw Health, which sells kick arse <a href=”http://www.jigsawhealth.com”>magnesium supplements</a>.“

If you post something, may God shine his love and light upon you.  (And hopefully you’re not doing something lewd or illegal when that happens.)  And come back here and leave a comment linking to your link.  I’ll send you a prize which in all likelihood will be a roll of toilet paper.

(And if you don’t post something, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your groin.)

At this point, some of you may be asking, “Why did you choose to use your homepage and not the actual product page?”  Simple.  WAAAAAAAY more existing inbound links to our homepage than our product page.  So in a way, we kind of hijacked those links.  And I think the presence of those links had as much to do with us sky-rocketing through the SERPs as #2, #3, or #4.

But no one really knows the inner workings of Lord Google, do they.

6. BONUS!  URLs matter.

Notice how Google bolds the word magnesium?  Yep.  This helps your keyword density.  (I’m gonna be doing quite a few page renames and 301 redirects in the near future.)

7. BONUS!  Cut out the clutter!

Here’s a peek at the new slimmed down design we’ll be launching in a few weeks or months.  Minimize and streamline baby!

Mucho Gracias

For teaching me these 5 Steps to SEO Domination, I show ENORMOUS gratitude to my friend Chris Drake, who founded the unhackable secure web hosting company, FireHost.  Link juice baby!  =)

And much love to Jeffrey & Bryan Eisenberg who have taught me so much about doing business on the web, conversion, persuasion, focus, buying modalities…I am in your debt.  These guys are the real deal and can help you improve your website conversion rate.

Leave a Comment

I’m dying to hear what you think.

UPDATE: We’ve moved from #12 to #11.  Keep those inbound links coming peeps!

These screen captures are in honor of one of my favorite design books of all time — GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don’ts and Dos.

While signing up with Apple to distribute content through iTunes, I found myself facing a tough decision. (I thought all those other places were in the world?)

Next one needs no caption. Hehe.

When I’m working on a brand new design, I pretty much can’t think without a pencil and paper.  But Peldi might have changed all that for me with Balsamiq.

The verdict?  It’s fahking delicious!!

So here’s a video of my first impression / first time using Balsamiq. I decided to build a mock up of iTunes because I had watched Peldi build a mockup of iTunes three weeks ago, but that memory was hazy, so I thought it would make for a pretty good experiment for Peldi and you, dear reader. (I don’t know why my face is all blacked out, but that prolly for the best.)

Put down that pencil…taste Balsamiq! from editweapon on Vimeo.

Here’s Peldi building a mockup of iTunes. (And now I know what I was missing.)

PS – I recorded this with Silverback, a usability testing tool that I should write a review for. 

Here’s the short version: It’s pretty good. SUPER simple and easy to use. Well done on that front. But it needs to have an to just record the active window and they need to figure out how to make the export video to .move quicker.  This 10 minute video took approx 30 mins at 50% size and "High" quality.  (I’m on MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM and 5400 RPM HD.)

In April I wrote a blog post called, Why the First 30 Seconds at Mint.com is WAY Better than the First 30 seconds at your Website. (If you haven’t read it and watched that design review video, I recommend doing that first.  But hey, it’s your mouse, you can click wherever you want.)

One of the comments on that thread was from Jason M. Putori , the lead graphic designer of Mint.com. (It’s so easy to forget there are REAL people on the other end of these websites.  Or is that just me?)

So here’s my first impression of the new Mint.com. (Executive Summary: Looks really pretty, not sure how it will increase conversion…worried conversion rates might actually drop because you pulled the "Learn More" conversion beacon from the homepage.)

Review of New Mint.com Homepage from editweapon on Vimeo .

UPDATE: I wrote all that and recorded that video yesterday (August 18th) afternoon, but I didn’t publish this post because I had to wait 80 minutes for vimeo to process the video and by then, well…you know how it goes.

However, since then, Jason (the designer of Mint.com) and I have exchanged a few heated emails (kidding!), and he watched the video you just watched.  Our thread is below.  What say you?

Editweapon wrote:

Jason, just did a “first impression video review”…waiting for vimeo to convert the video.

Candidly, I like it, but I don’t like it as much as the “old” version. The new one really popped nicely on first impression. And clearly, you are brilliant with Photoshop, etc. I’m not totally sure why I like the old version better.* My biggest concern, quite frankly, is only having one conversion beacon button “Sign Up…” above the fold on the homepage instead of “Sign Up” and “Learn More”. But that’s strictly intuition.

Mostly, let’s just see what happens to the overall conversion rate and abandonment rates when the new site goes live.

* = Just realized that I don’t like the hero shot on the new one. The graph is pretty and legible, but it’s not in the context of being inside a browser window like the “old” hero shot is. The old hero shot told me visually what mint is. This hero shot is, well, just a pie chart. It’s missing context. If that makes sense??

Jason wrote:

We actually ran it as an A/B test for I think two weeks before launching it, and the new site converted [significantly better than the old one].

Removing the second glossy CTA [Call To Action] button was conscious. I felt if you didn’t want to sign up there are plenty of other call outs elsewhere, like the tabs, and the other boxes on the home page. The second button failed my personal ‘squint test’… you no longer really have to read that button title to intuit what’s going to happen because there’s no other one.

The change from the screenshots was mainly because we wanted to merge that tour below the fold, with the above the fold space. We weren’t sure people were clicking on those, and I got many complaints about the screenshots not being readable, despite that readability wasn’t the intent, it was more an overview shot. This way we were able to kill those two problems in a single shot. Your feedback though is valid… one way to solve would be to switch the tour stops. If the second one was first, then would that do it?

I greatly appreciate your thoughts… keep it coming.

Editweapon wrote:

Well, the numbers don’t lie! (Except I do distrust Google Web Optimizer a little because of some oddities I’ve experienced…)

Good logic for removing the second CTA, I can agree with that. I’ve only my intuition saying that if the biggest/boldest choice is A) Sign Up, or B) Leave the page, or C) Figure out which OTHER button, tab, nav link to click because I want to “learn more” before I sign up, then that might cause higher abandonment. The “Learn More” button might be sort of ugly, but it’s the lazy man’s answer to “Well, let’s see what this is all about before I sign up.”

> we wanted to merge that tour below the fold, with the above the fold space.
I don’t understand what you mean?

> one way to solve would be to switch the tour stops. If the second one was first, then would that do it?
I don’t understand this either. What’s a “tour stop?”

Btw, I couldn’t get to the Features and Why Use Mint pages earlier, but I can now. Wow, those look dynamite!!

Jason wrote:

Hah, that’s a problem. Did you see those tabs on the grass? You can click on them to go to different features. I’m guessing I need to make them more obvious.

Learn more I can do, as long as it’s not a heavy button. Text would be a great compromise.

Editweapon wrote:

Yeah, I saw the "grass tabs" at the bottom of the fold, but I wasn’t compelled to click on them. When I did, I saw the screen image change and thought "Oh cool."

Multi-variant test without a "Learn more" (what you have now), with a "Learn more" button equal to the size of Sign-up, and with a "Learn more" text link under the Sign-up button??

Hehe.  That title makes me laugh.

My friends at the Arizona Department of Transportation have several major issues with their website, don’t you think?

Besides the horrible big white blank spot in the middle of the homepage with navigation images that don’t look like navigation, and footer navigation that jumps away from your mouse cursor, methinks their biggest problem is ignoring the rule of frequency of use.

Watch the video and leave a comment to let me know what you think.

PS – Thanks to Chris Drake for prodding me to get my butt off the bench and start writing again!  I might have phoned this post in a bit (as my friend Jamie Woolford would say), but there’s a lot of rust to polish off here kids.

PPS – Totally unrelated…  But we’re all king of the dorks once in awhile, right?  I captured mine on video .