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I am Jess Bachman.  You can find out a lot about me from google. There are three main themes to my life. Designer A self-taught Jess-of-all-trades designer,  I learn by doing.  I started designing posters for a friends band with a pirated version of Photoshop.  Then I did posters for other bands, hundreds of them.  Then data-viz posters and infographics, hundreds of them.  They were kinda popular.  After I helped Mint.com aquire millions of users I joined Visual.ly as Creative Director.  I take pride in being really good at all flavors of design though I am most at home among the many layers of Photoshop (legal copy!). Take a look at my design audits and dissections of other sites. Entrepreneur I have always had a passion to create, for creations sake.  I started a business selling posters, then went on the Martha Stewart Show, sold thousands, and was published by Seth Godin.  I also designed and run MajorCommand, a strategic online strategy game.  I love all things marketing especially the intersection with design. Family man I’m 33 and have a bustling family with my wife Eva.  Forest is 6, Fable is 3, and Gavin is 14 (uhg).  It keeps me hopping for sure.  How do I get everything done with such a busy family life?  Don’t sleep of course! Fun facts I’ve wrestled John Cena several times I enjoy shooting arrows. Never took a class or read a book about design Brother and father are veterans Was a best selling author for two days Have a hard time getting addicted to anything Acted with John Krasinksi and B.J. Novak Was a DJ/Turntablist and had a radio show Have lived in MA,TX,ME, VT, LA, and DC Had sushi and ice cream with Ben Cohen Was bailed out of jail by a Walt Disney VP Intern at a fake VC firm Never had a good haircut Always wears a hat Contact It’s best to email me.  Jess at madoocreditfree.com.  I am also on Twitter.

This is a topic I touched upon before, but I wanted to codify and expand upon it in a visual way. The gist is, in order for a visitor to your site to achieve a goal, you have to give them enough inertia in the sales process.  It sounds simple enough, but many so-called best practices encourage the visitor to skip the sales process and go directly to the uncomfortable “ask”.  Below I will diagram many of these cases, but first, let’s get a handle on this visualization. Sales: This is the sales copy, images, or anything else on the page that you are using to persuade the visitor. Ask: This is ultimately what you are asking the visitor to do on this visit.  It might be entering their email, filling a form, liking a page, or buying something. Call to action: This is the “buy now” or “click here” button that takes you to the ask.  Sometimes it’s not needed when the ask is on the same page as the sales. Visitor: This is the visitor to your site.  They start at the top when they land on your site, and hopefully make their way over the ask hurdle. Level of persuasion: This is how persuasion your sales page actually is, not what you think it is.  A higher and steeper sales page might include some powerful social proof or other sales devices. Level of resistance:  The height here refers to how hard of an ask you have.  A simple email address would be a shallow ask, and entering in your credit card might be a steeper ask. Length of time: This is how long your sales and ask process takes. Momentum The goal of any website with an ask, is to get that blue ball to build enough momentum to get up and over the ask.  It sounds obvious but many sites cut their sales process short buy putting the call to actions above the fold and encouraging the visitor to click the “buy down” or “download” button as soon as possible.  In many cases that would look like this. Clearly this is an ineffective model.  You haven’t given the visitor enough inertia to power through the ask.  You may have lots of great sales devices like testimonials and videos, but you are also encouraging the user to skip all that with a big and above-the-fold call to action. In some cases, the call to action should be front and center.  This is often because you don’t need an internal sales process as visitors already have inertia from branding and external momentum.   Such is the case with the FireFox site.  Mozilla doesn’t have to sell the benefits of FireFox.  The visitor has likely already made up their mind to download it before they got there.  You will note in this chart, the ask is relatively small.  It’s just a one-click download.  You don’t need much of a sales process to get them to take that action.  Using the product is another process entirely though. If you have a significant ask, like the visitor entering in their credit card number, you need to have a significant sales process and often keep the call to action away from the visitor until enough momentum is achieved.  It should look like this (right).  Sometimes the resistance level of the ask isn’t high, but the time requirement is.  This might be asking the visitor to take a survey. Sure it’s easy to tick some boxes, but you still need enough sales inertia to get them through it.  In this example (left), it is not clear if there is enough inertia at work.  You would either need to reduce the length of the survey, or increase the length or persuasiveness of the sales process. Long sales While lengthening the sales process can be effective to build inertia it can be taken too far.  This is often the case with the bullshit internet marketing schemes.  In this case, the ask is a significant “add to cart” of $700+.  So they try to stuff every possible sales technique into the process making 10+ minutes long if one were to actually read everything on the page.  This simply won’t work as reading the sales copy because and ask in and of itself.  A long and unpersuasive sales process will just cause visitors to leave or skip down to the ask ‘unsold’. The more savvy internet marketers will use a long sales process followed by a low ask, just your email.  Then there is another sales process and another ask.  Finally a persuasive, often on-the-phone sales process, followed by a large ask or… all your money. There is an excellent article from Verge about it here.  But scam artists aside, this process can be used for relative good.  If you are selling a $1,000 product B2B, it’s going to be near impossible to build a long and persuasive enough sales process to get them over that first ask on the first visit.  So you get their email first, then ask to show a demo, then a follow-up call.  Or sometimes the ask and call to action can have the same function.  By having a call to action that says “find out more”, the visitor is giving you permission to sell you a little bit more.  This can be done to lengthen the sales process while keeping the visitor engaged. Beware the free trial One mistake I often see is assuming visitors think the free trial is a low ask.  RJ Metrics has a short sales page and prominent call to actions.  This takes you to a sign up page where the plans start at $500, but “don’t worry, because it’s free for 30 days.”  Visitors, especially corporate decision makers can be quite savvy and know that engaging in a free trial can mean a significant commitment to a product.  The financial cost might be nil, but the time cost and more importantly the ego cost will

I am, er was, a True Blood fan.  But the lack of focus and every increasing number of ‘supes’ and their storylines has proved too much for me.  I decided to let the data speak for it self. The illustrations are by the talented Ilias Sounas.

Here is the 2nd Amendment, it’s pretty short. A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Most gun owners I have talked to usually leave off the first part and invoke the 2nd Amendment as a “right to defend oneself” which is not the case.  But that is understandable.  Who wants to put in the work of joining a militia these days… all those meetings. But the well researched and educated gun owners I talk to also are missing the point.  Taking it one step back, the intent of the 2nd Amendment is to allow the citizenry to be a check on the other branches of government.  In 1791, that check meant arming the citizens with rifles and muskets.  Those were the effective tools of the revolution back then.  But since we started rolling tanks, bombers, and aircraft carries off the assembly lines, the citizens ability to match power with our potentially “tyrannical” government is nil.  With a literal reading of the 2nd Amendment, it’s clear it has lost it’s teeth. But “arms” can mean many things.  Today, in 2012 we have much more effective weapons against our government.  The internet.  In 2012 our government tried to pass some “tyrannical” legislation in SOPA and PIPA.  Did the government listen to us because we have fully loaded assault rifles?  No.  It was because the citizenry used the internet to lobby and shame the government, and it worked. The internet is the greatest “arms” we US citizens have and should the Founding Fathers be around today, I think they would recognize this an opt to protect a free internet over guns, which haven’t been effective tools against our government since the Civil War.  And in a twisted irony, gun owners are currently using the internet as their most effective weapon in defending their right to own guns.  Think of the power our populace would have if these patriots embraced their greatest weapon and we refused to give up our internet until you pry it from our cold, dead hands. opinionated mom i couldn’t agree more. every American family should save their pennies and buy tanks and rockets to go along with their artillery. their right to bare arms.the Second Amendment served a purpose in the time it was written.. nowadays it really makes no sense. the average American has no real need/or/purpose to own guns. of course their are exceptions to every rule.. but why should the suburban Father of 5, need weapons that can cause such destruction, death, living in his bungalow safe and sound?Not only are the gun laws of the US lacking, they leave something to the imagination. i don’t think the forefathers had the current state of American’s ‘right to bare arms’ in mind, when they wrote the second Amendment of the Constitution.great post Jess! alexWhat about personal nuclear arsenal. Hell if they have tanks you want something better. Pingback: The 2nd Amendment should protect the Internet, not your AK47 | My Daily Feeds Rational OptimistWholeheartedly agree that the pen is mightier than the sword.But consider Warren vs District of Columbia or Castle Rock vs Gonzalez. It’s pretty clear that state and federal judiciary bodies have ruled that the onus of self-protection lies with the individual, and not the policeSo although I agree that an AK-47 won’t do much against a tank, I’d argue that your suburban father of 5 has the right to protect his family how he sees fit, to include owning a pistol or rifle should he so choose. http://byJess.net/ Jess BachmanI agree as well, with the caveat of proper licensing, training, and background checks.  Untrained and uneducated gun owners REDUCE the safety of their families and those around them.  We require as much for vehicles, also highly lethal.  Hell you even need insurance to drive a car. http://xeric-front-yard.tumblr.com/ Tim ThomasThat was a pretty bad decision, but it’s a good reason for gun control advocates to work on rolling back the 2nd amendment completely as the 28th amendment to the constitution. Then we can hash out actual gun control through the legislative process. Realistically having your constitution talk about any technology (guns or otherwise) is a pretty bad idea since you’re making an absolute law about a fast moving target. opinionated mom my suburban Father of 5, does not take shooting lessons, has no idea how to properly clean his gun, and only bought the gun, when he got his new security system as a last resort, should his pretty bungalow be broken into.it’s after midnight, he and his wife downed a bottle of merlot with dinner..he’s still feeling a little drunk.. but..someone just broke into his house and he thinks, is trying to steal his big screen tv.the security system fails and he loads his weapon.he runs down the stairs pistol blazing and…shoots his teenaged son in the face, it’s dark, he couldn’t see, he thought it was a robber… his son’s supposed to be in bed.when he realizes what he’s done, he shoots himself.should my suburban Father of 5 had that gun in his possession?the US needs better gun laws. mental evaluation’s on anyone owning a gun, military or otherwise. and some type of policy that is against the purchase of semi-automatic weapons..Pennsylvania the week after Sandy Hook.. Robert Bales in the US..my suburban Father of 5.. all prime examples as to “why” they need such. opinionated mom or let’s try another scenario:suburban father of 5, does NOT lock his gun away. But takes it out to show his ‘friends’ on Sunday when they come to watch the football game and eat his wives homemade cheese dip. His ‘friends’ think it’s “sooo cool” and “badass”.. his 5 year old son, see’s the men in the house excited by the weapon in his Father’s possession.. when the men turn their attention back to the game.. the 5 year old takes the gun and runs to his room with it. in his room, are his Father’ friends children.. they’re playing Call of Duty with

You know whats getting really annoying?  When some new startup comes out of beta and you signup, only to find it’s fledgling community is full of other startup people. It was annoying at Quora but if you get below the startup topsoil you can get some interesting questions answered.  But that is only IF you stick around long enough.  If you are in Silicon Valley and your startup solves Silicon Valley problems then by all means, launch to your target demo.  But If your demo is “normals” or middle America, why are you laying down a foundation of startups and techies? Case in point is Kohort.  I signed up for beta many months ago and this was video pitch to potential users. So from this video they are targeting moms, bikers, and aliens.  Basically everyone , but particularly moms and women.  Tagline, “Kohort, connect your community”. So when I got the “we are live” email from them today I was excited.  There is a lot of work to be done around groups and location.  If there were a biker moms group near me, I’d want to be a part of it… if I was a biker mom. So I signup and then start to explore the most active groups… Gah!… more startups and venture capital!  Don’t I already have enough communities for this?  Where are the biker moms, the aliens, the normals?  Apparently there are 21 members in the Kohort Ambassarors group so either they haven’t really started yet or have tunnel vision. Either way, Kohort is much less interesting to me now.  So please, future Startups, when you launch with a fledgling community, show me whats possible outside of Silicon Valley where 99.9% of the America lives.  And if you are in NYC, like Kohort is, there is really no excuse to serve up exclusively Venture Capital related groups to new users.  I’ll check back in with Kohort in 6 months to see if it has gone beyond the startup-circlejerk phase of user acquisition.

It doesn’t work so well as light-on-dark because it flips the light direction and becomes less legible  Although it still looks handsome, it feels more ‘baseball’ than ‘bevel’.

Mark Susters blog is one I’ve been reading for years and one of the very few I check daily.  Being a designer by trade, I readily offer up my design critiques for free.  I’ve already given Brad Feld my two cents and wanted to do the same for Mark.  However Mark’s blog was less in need of critique and more in need of a complete overhaul.  I bugged Mark about it (in July) and he agreed to give it a go.  Having worked with Mark before on creative projects I knew this was going to take a very long time.  That’s just the way it is with busy people (and free work). You can see an archived image of Mark’s site here.  Large file warning! Thats what you get when your front page is 21,000 pixels in height. There are two major problems with Mark’s old design.  The first is that it completely lacked personality.  It was top blog in its category, from a technology investor, and it was using the most basic wordpress theme.  The content deserved a better treatment.  Something with an identity that was also modern in its implementation. For a while I’ve been totally enthralled with the way Newsweek treats its feature magazine content online. Huge graphic headers. Really clever parallax cutaways to surface full width images. Carefully guttered content images.  All legit.  So I found a wordpress theme that had the right basic elements and was able to hack in what I wanted with the help of a fiverr coder.  I am a huge fan of fiverr and have spent over $1,000 there in $5 increments.  It’s been an invaluable extension of my skill set.  I don’t code, I’ve tried, and while I am decent at hacking with html/css the intricacies of some of the more modern wordpress themes elude me. I took a chance on a Pakistani developer named Mudassar Ijaz and he’s been indispensable. The other indispensable person was Kyle Taylor who does “platform management” (whatever that is) at Mark’s firm Upfront Ventures.  On this project Kyle was Mark’s liaison and also a second pair of design eyes and hacking hands.  Working with Kyle (starting in November), rather than with Mark directly we were able to get this project done in record time.  Well… three months. So with the right blog theme and structure, I could focus on the lacking personality.  I had this concept of doing a pixel art illustration of an old and young Mark sitting across a table.  I am no pixel artist, but that is what fiverr is for.  I found a guy, Eloy, and he is awesome at pixel characters.  I did a little photoshopping and came up with the follow header for Mark’s blog. I thought this was just awesome.  Humorous, light, and fits in with the tech audience.  Kyle dug ’em, but Mark wasn’t too jazzed.  Too… gimmicky maybe.  I went a few rounds to see if there was a way we could adjust and get them in there, but it wasn’t happening.  Back to both sides of the (drawing) table for this central element.  Side note: I did work with Eloy on another outside-of-fiverr project that did really well.  But the header was the main opportunity to inject some personality and customization.  We tried a few different backgrounds of LA, but they felt too generic.  Then while searching around for inspiration I came across this charcoal image of Mark, which he is using for his about.me page. I am pretty sure the other guy is Brad Feld and this is from an episode of This Week in Venture Capital.  I thought it could make a great background header but of course would require a lot of ‘charcoal-shopping’.  I went back to my young and old (er.. current) Mark idea and extended the table, ‘shopped out Brad (sorry!) and added a younger Mark.  It came out really well I think. Click for larger version. I am all about details when designing, so for this ‘shop I had the younger Mark be a bit more wide-eyed (literally) and optimistic (up-turned mouth) which I think fits well with Mark’s blog and content.  If you can’t tell its been manipulated (without seeing the original) then I have succeeded. There were 101 other smaller design decisions and Kyle did a stellar job turning many of Mark’s post into really handsome works of content.  The second major issue with Mark’s blog is the organization and structure is a mess.  He has so much evergreen content that it just impossible to find since, as many bloggers due, he abandoned useful post tagging and categorizing early in the blogs life.  But we already have a really great solution for this in place, it’s just not live yet. The whole thing turned out really well and I think Mark’s blog is certainly the dopest VC blog on the net right now, as always in function, but now in form too! http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/ Edit: In case there are future design changes from my original, here is working version for posterity. http://madoocreditfree.com/bothsides/