Writings by Joseph Carrabis

AllBusiness.com Columns and Articles
IMediaConnection Columns and Articles
Reading Virtual Minds Excerpts

• AllBusiness.com Columns
  1. 3 Rules for Engaging Males in Social Site Behavior, Part 1 -- Looking into the Mirror
  2. Attract and Stick, Part 1
  3. Attract and Stick, Part 2
  4. Email Newsletters, Anyone?
  5. Engaging Males Through Images
  6. Eye-Tracking Studies: Just Say "No!"
  7. Happy Companies Make Happy Customers/It Pays to be Nice
  8. Intrusive Little Windows or "DeBranding Made Easy"
  9. Is Social Media a Woman Thing?
  10. Keep It Simple to Maximize Market Share
  11. LeadGen, DemandGen and the SEO/SEM tie-in
  12. Making Visitors Want It Now
  13. Males 3.0
  14. Men's vs. Women's Brains and The Effect on Social Networking
  15. More on "Multi-Channel Analytics"
  16. Multi-Channel Analytics
  17. Priming the Conversion Pump with Color
  18. Priming the Conversion Pump with Images
  19. SNCR Symposium, Case Studies, and Power Struggles in Blogging
  20. The Cost of a Question
  21. Understanding Visitors' Hearts and Minds in Three Clicks or Less
  22. Using Images to Create Visitor Rapport or "That Little Look..."
  23. VerizonWireless' 20 year plan

• iMediaConnection Columns
  1. 2 Strategies for the Future of Online TV
  2. 3 Rules for Creating Buzz
  3. 6 Ways to Make Your Ads Sticky
  4. A Little Story
  5. A New Branding Paradigm, Online and Off
  6. Adding sound to your brand website
  7. And Now a Word of Thanks...
  8. Barriers to Entry
  9. Bloggers, influence and your brand
  10. Brand Loyalty
  11. Branding and Online Ad Placement
  12. Branding in Online Video
  13. Can Customers See Your Information?
  14. Coming Soon: The Death of the Web Page
  15. Controlling a brand conversation
  16. Defining Attention on Websites & Blogs
  17. Defining Visitor Action
  18. Design by Groups
  19. Design for the Client
  20. Design Questions
  21. Directing Your Customer's Gaze
  22. Experience as an Equation
  23. Failure: a case study
  24. Focusing Your Customer's Attention
  25. Follow the Eye
  26. Forests & Trees
  27. Gender Marketing Web Design Differences
  28. Gentle Persuasion
  29. Get the attention you're already paying for
  30. God, Satan and your brand website
  31. Headlines That Attract Attention
  32. Help visitors focus and reap the rewards
  33. How to Build a Super Sticky Homepage
  34. Intelligent Website Design: Expand Your Market
  35. Is the Homepage Dead? - Joseph Carrabis, NextStage Evolution
  36. Just the FAQS, Ma'am
  37. Know Your Audience, and Reach It
  38. Landmarks Ahead?
  39. Listening to and Seeing Searches
  40. Localize Your Company's Website
  41. Make Sure Your Site Sells Lemonade
  42. Making Cookies from Breadcrumbs
  43. Mapping Personae to Outcomes
  44. Marketing to men, women and couples
  45. Maslow's Hammer
  46. Matching Marketing and IT Mythologies
  47. MIPs are Next
  48. Moving Your Brand Into New Markets
  49. Mr. Engineer? Facebook is on line 1
  50. Paid Search Delivers Magic
  51. Pavlov's Eyes: Get Users to Respond
  52. Putting the user's eyes to work
  53. Real Tracking
  54. ReDesign Timing
  55. Rethinking Your Best Practices
  56. Shared Traits of Great Web Design
  57. Shopping Carts: Loss versus Abandonment
  58. Social media & consumer preference
  59. Social Networks and Viral Marketing
  60. The First Sale
  61. The Hungry Peasant
  62. The X Funnel
  63. Tips for Your Next Website Redesign
  64. Tourists & Locals
  65. Using Sound and Music on Websites
  66. Websites: The Secret to Landing Pages and Shopping Carts
  67. Websites: You've Only Got 3 Seconds
  68. What Comes Next?
  69. What your marketing is REALLY saying
  70. When Advertisements Crash
  71. Where You Should Stick Your Ad and Why
  72. Why Some Viral Marketing Doesn't Work
  73. Yes, You Can Predict Viral Marketing

• Excerpts from Reading Virtual Minds

  • Author's Forward

    Howdy.
    My name is Joseph, I'm the author, and this is my foreword. Let me tell you some things about myself that might help you decide if this book is for you.
    First, I'm not your standard business executive and this is not your standard business executive's book. I couldn't write a popular business book if I tried. It's not in my nature. I spent an afternoon at a Barnes&Noble™ looking at popular business books before I started writing this one. Between 250 to 350 pages to talk about a single idea nebulously? With no action items? Definitely not my style. This book is going to cover a very rich topic -- how people interact with information (software interfaces, websites, emails, brochures, flyers, etc.) -- and it's going to cover that topic in detail. And I hated textbooks which had "...is left to the reader" or "...the derivation is left an exercise for the student" or some such hobnobble. To me, these were examples of "poof, and then a miracle happened" and "...it's intuitively obvious to the casual observer", neither of which were true. I have a habit of going over things in excruciating detail, explaining something then explaining the explanation. My feeling is if the reader can't follow something from the roots to the treetop then the author is leaving something out. Throughout the book there will be specific suggestions and instructions on how changing a little thing here or a little thing there will increase rewards greatly. If you're going to read this book, be prepared to take part in the discussion. Let me give you an example...
    >>Download Author's Foreword

  • Chapter 2 - What This Book is About

    Behaviors. Specifically, online behaviors.
    Two people start "reading" each other and, by doing so, start communicating. Anthropologists, sociologists and people in similar fields call this mindreading. If business is to be successful, the sign "You're successful. You know what you're doing. This isn't a fluke, you're in charge and in control." must be communicated to all those hundreds of thousands if not millions of people coming to our websites, using our software, reading our emails, our brochures, watching our TV spots, and so on.
    Each and every one of those people is doing business, exchanging information, and each and every one of them relying on the interface to give them the proper sign that right now, right at this moment in time, they're successful, they're doing it right.
    The key, then, to being successful in an information economy is being able to read customer and client minds through computer interfaces or, in short, businesses need to start reading virtual minds if they hope to create the community consumers seek.
    >>Download Chapter 2

  • Chapter 4 - Anecdotes of Learning

    These anecdotes -- all documented and used with permission where individuals are named (see Appendix A, Anecdotal Correpondence for the permissions) -- are shared chronologically as they happened and give an example of an interface learning both the rules of society and that society's lexicon as it goes. Technically, such an interface would be called a Symbiotic CyberSemiotic System, and who in their right mind wants to read that more than once in a book? Let's compromise and call the interface ET. In many ways, the interface is an alien, silicon-based lifeform visiting planet Earth and attempting to learn how we carbon-based lifeforms get along.
    >>Download Chapter 4

  • Chapter 6 - Expectation versus Satisfaction

    When was the last time somebody opened up a business-based email or browsed an B2x website and said, "My God, this is beautiful! I'm so glad I opened/read/saw this! I'll just have to tell my friends!"
    >>Download Chapter 6

  • Chapter 8 - Fair-Exchange, or "You Have to Give as Good as You Get"

    The concept of fair-exchange engages whenever there is a "give-and-take" occurring and is so closely tied to experience and expectations that to ignore its existence is to lose opportunities. To deny its importance is to offer what's not wanted and to expect what you'll never get. This chapter, for example, deals with specific aspects of exchange and how these specific aspects play into the minds of people interacting with information on websites, brochures, kiosks, etc., and how these aspects affect their expectations and experience. When the negotiator is a human agent, both parties need to trust that that human agent has their best interests at heart. That same trust, in the virtual world, gets transferred to the interface and often with uncomfortable and unfortunate consequences.
    >>Download Chapter 8