The Secret You

What is free will? Who is really in charge of your decisions? Is it you, your conscious self or your unconscious mass? How aware are you of your true self, the true ‘you’ who lays hidden in your consciousness?

In this amazing BBC Horizon episode “The Secret You” from 2009, Professor Marcus du Sautoy takes a deeper look into these questions and tries to show us the evidence of consciousness and its effects on ‘being’.

True, there is no direct link between my blog, on how to gain practical insights into online optimization, and this BBC Documentary (although I will try to make this link later), but the Neuroscience element is simply intriguing and I am confident many of you will find it interesting, too.

The most interesting evidence shown, was from an experiment that proves that we subconsciously make decisions long before we are consciously aware of them. In this specific experiment up to 6 seconds!

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Tealeaf & Customer Experience Management

About 2 months ago I was asked to participate in creating a testimonial video for Tealeaf and how we have come to use it at Thomas Cook Netherlands to help gain insights into our customers’ experience.

Although the video is quite short, not even 5 minutes, there is a lot to say about Tealeaf and CEM (Customer Experience Management) in general. Let’s face it, quantitative data is fantastic but not always suitable to gain insights into qualitative actions. In other words, web analytics will tell me if something is going wrong, where and how often, but it won’t tell me how to fix or optimize it or even tell me how my visitors use my website.

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Trust Logo Recognition Precedes Presence

Last week I set out to discover how trust logo recognition effects online purchase behavior. It is widely accepted that trust logos can have a positive effect on conversion rates when purchasing online, but is that enough? What about which trust logo? As someone who works in the online industry I consider myself relatively knowledgable of the different supplies of SSL certificates, but what about Joe Consumer?

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The Travelers’ Voice

Last week I presented my Voice of the Customer presentation at the Dutch Emerce eTravel 2011 event in Amsterdam. The event which focusses on developments and trends in the online travel industry was a great moment to share some of my experience setting up and maintaining Voice of the Customer programmes.

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Poor performance ruins holidays

With a catchy article title like that, you know you need to read it.

In many previous articles concerning website performance and availability we have all learned plenty about the importance of it all. Speed Matters, plain and simple, but what I missed the most in many of these articles is the potential impact speed and availability can have on the bottom line. In an Aberdeen study, researchers demonstrated that poor performance can severly impact conversion with as much as 7% for every 1 second delay.

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