persuasion - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

There was some lively debate at an E-consultancy Persuasion Marketing roundtable last month about whether this topic constitutes a separate discipline which should have its own processes and budget.

Bryan Eisenberg is the co-founder of Future Now and the creator of some devilishly clever techniques to help web businesses improve their conversion rates.

Along with his brother Jeffrey, Bryan co-authored the bestsellers 'Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?' and 'Call to Action'. He also publishes the GrokDotCom blog and was voted one of the world’s top 10 usability gurus in our recent User Experience Report.

Here, he talks about the ancient Greek philosophy behind persuasion and suggests why the roots of web design can be traced back to the fifth century BC. Oh yes...

BJ Fogg directs research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab , and is pretty much The Don of captology - the study of how computers can be used to influence people's behaviour.

We asked him a few questions about how internet marketers could be using persuasion techniques more effectively, as well as some of the more scary implications for individual web users.

The Shredder was shocked to read recent comments from Tim Berners-Lee, the Godfather of the internet, who questioned the authenticity of blogging and of people’s behaviour online. “Bad things” might happen, says TB-L.