Mequoda Weekly: March 25th, 2013 – March 29th, 2013

Let us transform your organization into a digital publishing powerhouse – as we have for dozens of your colleagues and competitors already. Join us for the Internet Marketing Intensive!

—–

Sell more Magazine Subscriptions Online Using the Mequoda Method

If you’re looking for an easy answer to online publishing success, stop reading. We don’t have one.

We know dozens of publishers who have made online publishing a large part of their revenue stream.

But we don’t know one who’s done it without putting in the effort to learn what actually works – as opposed to what they “heard” works – and then spending the time and money it takes to execute the business model.

So I’m going to tell you where our clients have found the money. It’s not where you think: It’s not your website, it’s not social media, and it’s not the awesome gadget app you just built.

The answer is one of the biggest secrets of online publishing. It’s email newsletters: the medium that gets no respect from publishers. Keep Reading

—–

The Email Copywriter of the Future Will Write for Readers on the Run

Just when you thought you’d mastered all the new copywriting techniques demanded by the 21st century … mobile devices are about to shake up your world.

When I have my email copywriter hat on, I enjoy the opportunity to flex my marketing writing muscles without the constraints of SEO copywriting. And like any good email copywriter, I’ve learned to focus on specific best practices, including …

  • Write subject lines of up to 70 characters.

  • The subject line is the most important feature of the email.

  • Readers respond well to personalization.

  • Write plenty of compelling copy to sell the product, because long copy beats short four out of five times.

Too bad all those things are about to be pitched out the window! In 2013, new best practices are about to be created to deal with the new reality: Email on mobile devices. Keep Reading

—–

Merging Usability Testing Methods from the Past and Present

Website usability tests are performed to determine if websites are functioning correctly. If they aren’t, users will have a hard time executing on their desired tasks, leading website publishers to fail in building rapport and generating revenue from these users.

There are three basic approaches to usability testing. They include expert reviews, heuristic testing and usability labs.

In an expert review, usability problems associated with a product’s interactivity are identified and diagnosed without the involvement of users. For example, malfunctioning links or contrast issues are a few of the problems that an expert review can easily find.

Heuristic testing is a method used to identify usability problems in user interface design by examining and judging compliance with recognized usability principles. During a heuristic evaluation, the study is usually conducted one-on-one with a moderator and user with an advanced working prototype of the website. Jakob Nielsen says it’s the most popular of the usability inspection methods as it offers a quick, cheap, and easy evaluation of a user interface design.

With a cognitive walk through you may have many more users involved and it may be more of a theoretical prototype evaluation. Usability labs create an environment where users interact with systems so testers can evaluate the overall performance of the system while the user interacts with it. Testing is usually limited in time and scope, as it focuses on certain tasks and parts of an interface.

Keep Reading

—–

Why Special-Interest Magazines Will Win the Online Advertising Wars

The Mequoda Online Magazine Index (OMI) is a mathematical equation that can immediately tell the effectiveness of any publisher’s strategy to develop an online audience.

In theory, it should be easy to get more traffic to your website than subscribers to your magazine per month. Free content versus paid content and all that. Still, most of the top circulated magazines haven’t even made a dent in web traffic compared to paid circulation.

Excellent news for print circulation, but not great news for online advertising, which is forecast to outpace print advertising by 2015. In order to keep advertisers happy as print sales inevitably dwindle, your call to action is boosting website traffic. Keep Reading

—–

If you have only a nominal understanding of digital publishing, or none at all, you must attend the Internet Marketing Intensive.

—–

Comments

Leave a Reply