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Summary: Feeling that there is only one chance can convince people to take action sooner, sometimes without careful consideration of consequences or alternative options. The scarcity principle is a well-documented social-psychology phenomenon that causes people to assign high value to things they perceive as being less available.
Whenever I see one of those “Top ten designs of the year” or “Eight keys to good navigation design” I usually rip into them. It’s really not that I am a negative person. It is just that they always tend to be so overly simplistic. They underappreciate the importance of context or completely misunderstand human behavior.
In a study by Google in August of 2012, researchers found that not only will users judge websites as beautiful or not within 1/50th – 1/20th of a second, but also that “visually complex” websites are consistently rated as less beautiful than their simpler counterparts.
If you’re like most SEOs, you spend a lot of time reading to rank for SEO. Over the past several years, I’ve spent 100s of hours studying blogs, guides, and Google patents. Not long ago, I realized that 90% of what I read each doesn’t change what I actually do – that is, the basic work...
From 2005 to 2010, Cyber Monday sales (the Monday after Thanksgiving) have more than doubled, as illustrated. A recent article from the Wall Street Journal showed an increase of 22% in sales on Cyber Monday in 2011, compared with the 2010 holiday season. According to research firm Score, Inc., the 2011 holiday season saw a...