When someone shows their trust in us, we tend to trust them in return. This neat psychological truism has been (mis)applied by con artists for generations... and can work equally well on your website.

Just to demonstrate how it works, let's first consider the dark side: how you might — if you were a con artist — use this technique to steal a camera while on a tropical holiday. Eight easy steps:

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What a week for news. There was more than I could include on almost every subject--even analytics! Paring it down to just a few, we have: newbie twitter mistakes, coding with lesscss, setting up GA goals, and the logic of good and bad usability.

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Due to popular demand, we've added additional days to our March Internet Marketing Essentials seminars. We've now got openings on March 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th!

For those not in the know, Internet Marketing Essentials is a seminar series taking attendees through the four key components of Internet Marketing: designing persuasion, attracting visitors through SEO & PPC, and understanding & Optimizing your visitors with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer.

If you want to learn the tools to build an online empire then…

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Cool stuff this last week, even ignoring all the olympic bacchanalia. We've got CSS typography, installing GA on your Facebook fanpage, and madlib style signup forms.

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Over the past couple of years, I've been shifting my focus from creating sites that are merely "usable" to creating sites that actually motivate visitors to take action. In other words, to persuasive web design. From "can do" to "will do".

A great primer in the field is Dr. Susan Weinschenk's book, "Neuro Web Design: What Makes them Click?" An absolutely fascinating read, the book opens with the concept that we actually have three brains:

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From the warm sunny location of the Winter Olympics, it's another Monday Roundup. This week we have sunny +8 weather (highs of +12!), why keywords are overrated, using Google Insights for Search, and why the iPad(/pod/phone) will never have Flash.

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Two weeks ago, I wrote about the importance of making the user experience a core value. Today I'd like to discuss another shift in mindset that must occur before a user-centered web design process can succeed.

Design and development of a modern website is too complex a task to just "pull out of the air" and get right the first time. No matter how clever and well trained your team is, there are simply too many elements to consider (many of which, including user expectations, are in a constant state of flux).

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we'd put some rings here, but we'd likely be sued

If we could harvest the sheer energy pulsating through the central district of Vancouver we could power North America for years. Of course if you step out side of the Olympic areas the city is empty, its populace all drawn into the center. This makes sitting near a window looking out on downtown a very difficult place to be.

This week we've got olympic fever. We've also got studies on what makes things go viral, reasons why developers should use Chrome, and loads of email marketing advice.

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The Olympics start this Friday, to a nice warm Vancouver February. With a week light on rain and heavy on spring temperatures, it looks like its going to be a gorgeous month. Well, unless you want stuff like snow and ice and all that "winter Olympics" stuff.

This week we have real time social search, tests on the best kind of video ad (and its a preroll ad, ugh), CSS3 tips and tricks, and Facebook in China.

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If you're serious about bringing usability practices into your organization, there's something you need to know before you even get started.

To succeed, you're going to have to shift the core belief system of your organization. If you can't pull this off, you'll encounter resistance at every turn, and your project is destined for failure.

Below are some of the fundamental shifts that must occur before a true user-centered web design process can succeed.

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