And for the finale!

Go2web20 – This is a Flash directory of Web 2.0 applications. You can send them an email by clicking on “Suggest.”

Emily Chang eHub – eHub is a personal initiative of Emily Chang (a well know web designer) where she lists web startups. You can submit a site, service, or news on her “Submit a Site” page.

Ciao!

With faster start-up times, rapid graphics rendering and improved page load speed, the latest version of Firefox is full of major performance improvements you’ll notice instantly. From integrating Compartments and more efficiently managing JavaScript objects to supporting ECMAScript5 and improvements to the JägerMonkey JavaScript engine, we’ve been working hard to make this the most powerful Firefox ever.

Experience super-fast graphics acceleration of video and Web content with a new layers-based graphics system that takes advantage of Direct2D and Direct3D on Windows.

Take a peek.

Expands the context menu’s ‘Search for’ item into a list of installed search engines, allowing you to choose the engine you want to use for each search.

Search engines can be added or reordered in Firefox’s Search Toolbar (“Manage Search Engines”).

Once the search engine menu is visible:
- Left click to search in a new background tab.
- Middle click to search in a new tab and switch to that tab immediately.
- Ctrl+click to search in a new tab and switch to that tab immediately.

If you have Firefox set to switch to new tabs immediately, the above key combinations will have the inverse effect.

Shift + click opens search results in a new window.

And there’s more!

Create free disposable email addresses and paste them directly in forms. This helps to protect you from spam mails and could be useful when subscribing to forums or newsletters…

Guide to use this extension: Click the right mouse button in an editable field. A menu will appear with the option to paste a disposable email address (see screenshot).

This plugin uses the free TrashMail.net DEA service.

This is hot.

The mirror is a harsh critic.

Which can also qualify it to be a favorite, if you can stand the view from an honest vantage point. For this reason it’s a great -though difficult – exercise to look at yourself through the eyes of a customer.

We all have our preferences, expect to be treated a certain way, even feel entitled to this treatment, right or wrong. In a perfect world, we’re all certainly entitled to common courtesies like please and thank you. And yet, how often do we truly say thank you in business? Not just in emails to our customers or when a peer passes the pepper at lunch.

On the phone, to a client we call just to say thanks.

Looking an employee in the eye, with a smile, expressing gratitude.

And yet. We expect some of these things when we do business with others.

Here’s where we circle back around to the harsh critic.

Make a list of the things you expect a thriving, successful restaurant to have. My list has:

• a website where I can see a menu
• good reviews
• a helpful and courteous waitstaff
• a clean kitchen
• takes credit card in addition to cash

Here’s an even more fun one. List things that irritated you so much that you stopped doing business with another company. I’ll share some of mine:

• someone on the staff was rude to me
• they didn’t have basic things I thought a business should have
• couldn’t talk to a human on the phone
• nobody ever acknowledged my complaint, even to say they got it or were working on it
• couldn’t avoid talking to a human – no website, email
• had a service they abruptly stopped having with no notice
• no office near us we could walk into to talk to a live human

Now, the first time I did this, it wasn’t for the exercise we’re doing. My then-roommate and I were bored and this was almost like a game- could we find one place to place bulk orders for a particular thing online that could make us both happy?

This was about 2 years into owning my own business, and for a reason I can’t remember, I looked down at the list and thought “Is it fair that I include on this list that you can’t speak to a human on the phone? You can’t speak to a human when you call my business either.”

And it was then that I realized that when people were deciding whether or not to do business with me, they weren’t going through their list of must-haves and asking themselves if it was fair.

They want what they want.

If I don’t have it and my competition does – that’s usually not a win for me.

This went beyond the loss of an existing customer whose needs were being met, which is pretty bad, since a reported 82% of people said they stopped doing business with a company after a negative experience in one study on customer experience. It could also interfere with getting new customers and clients, which is more expensive endeavor.

It wasn’t easy to even contemplate some changes, but I had to make them.

Some things I literally could not compromise on – at the time I was still bedridden much of the week, so being available to talk to people in person was not an option. The company was just me then, but it became a priority during expansion.

Other things I was ashamed to say I hadn’t addressed. Like a live person to answer the phone. Even if I couldn’t answer my own phone any more due to my work schedule, sure I could get at least a part time person or service?

So look at your list and think about where your business is falling short of what your expectations would be if you weren’t the owner, and where your competitors are beating you. If you’re really honest with yourself, it can be a real eye-opener.

There’s only three types of pages in this site.

It’s not going to win a usability award, ever, as a whole site. But there’s only three types of pages, that only want three types of action.

At any given point, you’ll either see a sales page, a blog post or sign-up page, and most people here will end up doing one of three things when they land here:

• Buy something
• Read or react to a blog post
• Sign up for the newsletter

Most of the time it’s one of the last two items.

How does this relate to you? What’s all this about thinking and sinking?

In offering a bit of assistance to various clients and colleagues with minor campaigns, I’ve noticed in them one tendency I used to have – making things too complicated.

My site may be a sprawling fixer-upper as a whole, but each page has three or less types of options you can choose from. So the conversion rate for new visitors is higher than normal.

By conversion rate, I mean the % of people who take one of my most desired actions. Which actions?

First, I want to deepen the trust between me and you. It’s always harder to work together if we don’t trust each other. That can entail anything from reading another blog post (to determine whether you trust my information) or interacting with me in the comments (that could help you decide if you want to do business with me).

Second, I’d like permission to follow up with you at some point, mostly with tips that are too juicy or involved to share in public, but also to offer you special discounts on my services and products.

Third, I wouldn’t hate it if you bought something on a whim. I’d rather we get to know each other first, but I get how sometimes, you just don’t have time for the courtship and just want to get on with it. Maybe we can get to know each other later. Maybe you’ll just drive by. Either is cool.

What I don’t want, is for you to have to think about how to go about the process.

See, that’s the problem I was talking about in the title. It’s not that I don’t want thinking people at my site — I prefer to work with intelligent people.

What I mean is, you shouldn’t have to figure out how to do the things I’d like you to do.

Because what happens when you open Firefox, Chrome (or IE for the 8 people using it, still love you) and come to a page that you can’t figure out?

You leave.

If you walk into a store to buy groceries and see petals falling from the ceiling, hear harps playing, and see waltzing couples, if you stay it will be out of curiosity, not to buy groceries. Confused prospects leave. So there’s no longer a customer.

And that conversion rate sinks to Zero.

This goes for EVERYTHING if you’re trying to get one particular action, such as a sale or subscription, a click, a vote, a response to a blog post, or a retweet.

Yes, it’s different on a blog, where you want many options, and you want them to take a leisurely stroll around, deciding if they can trust your information or want to do business with you.

But if you want a person to do one thing – don’t make them think. Give them less than three options – only one if you can swing it.

You want someone to click a link?

Link directly to the link they should click.

You want someone to buy something?

Link to the product, directly, with clear instructions on how to buy, and no distractions.

You want someone to sign up for your newsletter?

Send them to a page where there’s no other option but sign up or leave.

Building a relationship first? It’s okay to have more than one option on a page during the courtship – but when you’re ready to close the deal, eliminate distractions that interfere with the buying process.

Try reducing the options on your site for a week. You may find that sales increase so much, you don’t even need more traffic.

But I’ll still be right here if you do.

Save pages to read later with just one click. When you have time, access your reading list from any computer or phone, even without an internet connection!

Features:
* Save pages to a reading list to read when you have time.
* Offline reading mode lets you read the items you’ve saved for later on the plane, train, or anywhere without an internet connection.
* Sync your list to all of your computers, at work or home.
* Sync your list to Read It Later apps for iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android and more.
* After reading, bookmark pages on your preferred bookmarking service or share them with friends.
* Click to Save Mode lets you quickly batch a reading list just by clicking on interesting links.
* Text view strips away images, ads, and layout from articles and presents them in an easy to consume way.

Excellent!

I’ve been thinking about whether to start a brand new traffic challenge or just pick up where we left off in the video traffic challenge. So much time has passed and so many priorities have changed. But there were still two weeks left in the challenge when we last did an update.

If I start a new traffic challenge it will be on LinkedIn. I’ve decided to take 45 days and find or re-visit places in LinkedIn that I’ve been neglecting on my own, for 4 reasons.

• A person I have a lot of respect for, Vincent Wright, has sworn by it for years.

• Gini recently wrote a fantastic article about using LinkedIn to find new clients.

  Not that I haven’t before but I haven’t done it lately.

  Furthermore, it occurs to me that I can write basic, intermediate and advanced how-to articles or even books about any major social network except LinkedIn. I have got to go beyond basics, if not for my benefit, then for yours.

• I hate LinkedIn.

  But in the interest of taking my own medicine, the point isn’t how much I like it, but how much I can leverage that technology to benefit me, or my business.

  So I’ve committed myself to going back to do the things that worked, and finding new things.

• I get more mileage out of someone sharing my posts on LinkedIn, 2 – 6 more visits than Facebook, and about 10 times Twitter. If I have a finite amount of effort, I should be putting it towards the area where I get the most results. It makes sense.

Now, I could explore the site on my own and do some research and testing, then compile a reasonably priced video guide  giving you the highlights.

And I probably will. But in the mean time, why not learn together?

The only reason I can think of is that the Video Traffic Challenge got stagnated, partly because I got busy after the July 4th holiday, which was smack in the middle, and also due to a dip in participation in general before that.

So here’s what we’ll do.

Vote by entering your vote in the comments, or Twitter retweet (so the Livefyre software can pick it up) whether you’d like to see us continue the video challenge or start a new LinkedIn challenge. We’ll say voting will go on for a week from today, and then I’ll post the results.

Whichever one we do, anyone is free to join us, and there’s no financial cost. It’s just a thing we do as a community from time to time. Though we will all shame each other when we don’t follow along with the steps, so be ready for some well-intentioned ribbing if you fall behind.

I’m not off-limits in the ribbing. So I should know.

We’d love to have you, in any case. Worst case scenario, you get visits from the days I post links to the people on the Leaderboard.

A strange thing happened today.

Besides spending most of the day thinking I was insane due to a fever and a pre-migraine, I mean. Fun times.

The other really strange thing that happened today was that I got a note from a seller on Amazon. Oh wait, I forgot the back story.

You see, I am an Amazon whore.

A few years back when I had to spend 23 hours a day in bed recovering from a back injury, I got everything delivered. It was then that I fell madly, deeply and permanently in love with Amazon. And since some people sell their items through Amazon, I fell vicariously in love with them too.

This odd revelation is relevant because I have ordered a LOT of things from Amazon, and from Amazon sellers, many, many, many times. For several months in 2007, I got deliveries almost daily.

(Boyfriend’s money. You understand.)

So when I say that it was strange that I got an order from an Amazon seller, this is from the perspective of someone who

1- has ordered from people through Amazon a LOT, and
2- had a special folder, pop-up notification, and sound associated with any email that even had the word Amazon in it.

In all the emails I’ve gotten from them in all those years, I don’t remember getting a note from a seller unless something was wrong. Especially not a follow-up on an order.

Now, despite the fact that I am an Amazon trollop, I rarely create a review on Amazon, and when I do, it’s for one of two reasons. I’m promoting doing it in relation to an activity to promote myself, or I have had an extreme reaction to something. If something is great or awful, I’ll do a review. Not a lukewarm kind of gal – if things are just okay, I tend to keep my mouth shut.

And what do you think one of the suggestions in this follow up email asked me to do?

That’s right, write a review. Which makes me realize that I just lied. I’ll write a review if something thrills me UNLESS it’s something that I don’t want the whole world to know about me. In this case, since it’s just you and me here, I’ll tell you — it’s about a wig I bought.

The wig is fabulous. In it I can go from bad hair day to vixen in 41 seconds. It took some adjusting but when I finally got in on straight, well. In the words of my good friend Jill Foster, I look “Hawt.”

And since it’s not that different from my normal hair style, even my niece mistook it for my actual hair this weekend.

So. Am I going to review it? Darn right I am. Because the people who made the wig that makes me so happy, asked me to do it.

And the moral of the story is?

Ask people to do things that even seem obvious. Obviously, if I liked the experience I had with the product I bought, I’d review it, right? You would think. But as I just explained with a personal example, people are crazy, and so are the reasons we do or don’t do things.

Yet you can sometimes overcome our crazy just by asking us to do something. Want more people to comment on your blog posts?

Ask them.

Not just at the end of the post. Pick five peers and say, I need a comment on this blog post if you have time today. Don’t forget to give before you receive, regardless of whether you think reciprocation will occur. And the thing you do needs to be genuine support, with no grudges allowed. My test is that it’s something I’d feel I’m doing the world a service by doing, whether or not it’s ever recognized.

I’ll share a post in Facebook whether or not the other person will do the same for me in my estimation, because I think it’s a great post that people who have friended me will enjoy.

Now if someone does the same for me? I take a page out of Lisa Byrne‘s book and spend hours paying attention to what they do as ell.

To get back to the point, ask people to take action. You probably are on the big things, but break that down more and think of where you expect an action but can’t take it for granted. Are you asking people to subscribe to your newsletter? Are you asking newsletter subscribers to be on the lookout for the next offer? Are you asking new customers to buy one more thing?

Really think about it….

What do you want your customers and clients to do? And have you asked them to do it?

Extends the function of the drag-and-drop mouse gesture so that it can be used to load URLs, do a web search of selected text on a page, or save an image on a page. The successor to Super DragAndGo.

There’s more – you need to have this.

Scroogle is a search engine that acts as a proxy for Google searches. Scroogle does not collect or share personally identifiable information. This search bar add-on utilizes SSL to protect searches between You and Scroogle.