Josh Summerhays

Chances are you may have heard of the Butt-Brush Effect, from Paco Underhill’s seminal work, “Why We Buy.” A brief synopsis of the Butt-Brush Effect: Underhill observed women shopping for neckties at a department store (not in a creepy way, he was conducting research). He noticed that the racks were really close … Read more

Is there any more common, sad experience than a business owner or marketing executive rolling out a new website with great expectations only to see its performance fall flat? If you find yourself in this leaky boat, here are some possible reasons your website is missing the mark with your target audience: … Read more

This is part three in a series of four posts on understanding the realities and challenges of split testing to improve your website’s conversion rate. If you missed earlier parts in the series, you can read them here: Part 1: Traffic considerations Part 2: Choosing meaningful tests Part 3: Executing your test … Read more

I get energized when clients and my SEO colleagues catch the vision of split testing changes to a website. The potential for conversion rate increases is huge, and it’s also great fun! It’s not all rainbows and fluffy bunnies, however. There are challenges that can sabotage otherwise promising split testing efforts. Awareness … Read more

I review several websites every week, analyzing them from the perspective of usability and overall ability to converting traffic to customers/leads. While a fair amount of businesses out there are getting their act together where online user experience is concerned, I’m constantly amazed by the huge amount of low-hanging conversion optimization fruit … Read more

My head is still spinning from the awesomeness proffered at the inaugural Conversion Conference held last week in San Jose, Calif. Not only could I not share every bit of value (believe me, I tried – to the tune of 160+ tweets), I’m still distilling new insights from my scattered notes.   … Read more

As a conversion optimizer, I cringe at the phrase “best practice.” Best practices may be quite reliable when it comes to personal etiquette, getting dressed, driving a car, or skydiving, but in my line of work, you gotta be careful about putting too much stock in them.