Even small changes in response times can have significant effects. Google found that moving from a 10-​​result page loading in 0.4 seconds to a 30-​​result page loading in 0.9 seconds decreased traffic and ad revenues by 20%. When the home page of Google Maps was reduced from 100KB to 70-​​80KB, traffic went up 10% in the first week, and an additional 25% in the following three weeks. Tests at Amazon revealed similar results: every 100 ms increase in load time of Amazon​.com decreased sales by 1%.

Citations omitted. Via A List Apart.

Data can be a powerful tool to help you optimize just about anything—from your online marketing to your company’s personnel decisions.

When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer decided to end remote working, she relied on data to help make her decision:

After spending months frustrated at how empty Yahoo parking lots were, Mayer consulted Yahoo’s VPN logs to see if remote employees were checking in enough.

Mayer discovered they were not — and her decision was made.

It’s not just businesses following using data for decisions. The Obama campaign obsessively measured its every activity, and sports franchises collect volumes of data about their players’ performance. Continue reading »

The effective use of Twitter hashtags like #StandWithRand helps explain the popularity of Rand Paul’s filibuster, Ericka Andersen writes: “Hashtags corralled a legitimate, constructive conversation by multiple thousands into one space. The only way it could be accomplished was with hashtags.”

Roger Craver points to a new study suggesting that premiums may not lift donations:

In a paper appearing in the Journal of Economic Psychology, “The counterintuitive effects of thank-​​you gifts on charitable giving”, two Yale University behavioral scientists describe a series of experiments showing that, contrary to expectations, rewarding contributors cuts donations in most circumstances.

The Yale researchers who conducted the study, George Newman and Jeremy Shen, found that the most likely reason for the negative effect on contributions was “crowding out”. In essence, the prospect of receiving a gift activated a feeling of selfishness which, in turn, reduced altruism and consequently cut the average donation.

A new group aims to foster stronger Republican and conservative online efforts:

They decided that the conservative movement simply did not have what liberals did: An infrastructure to train and nurture the next generation of campaign operatives and develop cutting-​​edge techniques. So they decided to take a shot at filling the void, by developing a proposal for a suite of new outside groups that would mimic, and eventually outpace, Democratic efforts.

Megan McArdle is skeptical that Groupon’s business model remains viable. It has commanded little loyalty from its customers or the businesses that offer the deals. Perhaps worse, it operates in a crowded field with few ways to sustain its competitive advantage:

Moreover, to the extent that the model did work in other sectors, it would be very easy to imitate.  (And it was, endlessly).  Groupon’s core asset is essentially a mailing list, and mailing lists don’t have great network effects, or economies of scale, to protect their owners against competitors.

It sounds like the firm needs a primer on Porter’s Five Forces.

Workers are increasingly purchasing their own services and apps, like DropBox or Remember the Milk, to better complete work tasks. Using outside services this way can create challenges for firms trying to secure their data. But limiting these outside apps can be costly too, as Netflix’s Bill Burns tells the New York Times: “If you try and implant software that limits an employee’s capabilities, you’re adding a layer of complexity.”

Chris Hexton offers four tips to improve how your e-​​mails perform:

1. Write strong subject lines. You need to be relevant and clear without giving everything away.
2. Craft personal e-​​mails. That means both using your customer’s name—it really works!—and writing in a friendly, personal style.
3. Include a P.S. People read it, so it’s “a golden opportunity to make sure your customers read the CTA.”
4. Be careful with images. Not everyone’s e-​​mail program will render your beautiful, image-​​heavy e-​​mail, so make sure you have a text fallback.

Remember to test every technique you try, since your audience may be different. And always remember that you can spoil your perfect e-​​mail with a crappy landing page.

Democratic technologists and online marketers have organized institutions to allow individuals to collaborate and share ideas–what Patrick Ruffini calls a “free market” of ideas. Republicans, by contrast, often rely on top-​​down direction and old-​​guard consultants.

Alex Chitu:

You might remember the [do a barrel roll] Easter Egg which rotates Google’s search results page. The query is so popular that it’s the first suggestion when you type “do a” and Google Instant automatically shows the results for [do a barrel roll] and triggers the Easter Egg… This is an example of [an] Easter Egg that disrupts the user experience and makes Google Search more difficult to use.