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Photo of Alex Hunter by http://www.alexdesigns.com/. Used with permission.

I’ve been lucky enough to make public speaking part of my career. It’s something I love doing and enjoy every second of, but that’s not the case for everybody. For many of you, the thought of standing up on stage fills you with vomit-inducing fear.

But I can’t stress enough how important it is to be able to clearly articulate your thoughts to an audience in an engaging manner, whether it’s a handful of your co-workers or 2000 people at a tech conference.

If you’re trying to get a project green lit, pitch your idea to investors, relay your experience to a group of bright eyed young developers, or rally your employees, keep the following few tips in mind.

1: Rehearse

Again and again and again. So you know every detail of your talk, all the slides and the order in which they appear. Practice in front of a mirror or even video yourself. This is the best way to find potential tripping points, inconsistencies, and also gives you a chance to weed out the crap jokes.

But more importantly, it will make you so comfortable with the content that you won’t need notes or prompts and you’ll appear conversational but knowledgeable.

2: Don’t repeat what is written on your slides

It’s painful when a speaker reads verbatim what is written on each slide. Give your audience some credit, they’re going to be pretty good readers so you don’t need to help them out. Your job is to give context and detail to the one or two lines (at the most) on a slide. Or in some instances, vice versa; I often use slides to add a quick parenthetical note to something I’m saying to the audience.

3: Don’t overload your slides

Further to the last bullet, nothing is uglier or less appealing than a slide with 15 bullet points and a graph. It’s confusing, cluttered, hard to understand and of no value to anyone as a presentation aid. In my recent keynotes, over 80% of my slides only have one line OR graphic/chart on them.

Sure it’s more clicking for me but this isn’t about me, it’s about the audience, and simple slides help you guide the narrative in a clear, concise way.

4: Make eye contact

This may sound like a no brainer but so many speakers spend their time looking at their feet, at their slides, at their notes – anywhere but the audience. If you don’t make eye contact with the people you’re talking to you end up looking like you’re talking to yourself, just like the guy you avoid sitting next to on public transport.

5: Know your audience

I spoke at a two-day tech conference recently and was scheduled to speak on the second day. This turned out to be a huge advantage for me because I spent the whole first day following the (substantial) Twitter traffic surrounding the event and I noticed some interesting trends in the audience reactions to speakers and their content.

As a result, I spent several hours that night retooling my presentation to better suit the audience – I like to think my keynote went down well the next day.

6: Move around

As a speaker, I loathe standing behind a podium when I speak – it feels like I’m preaching down from the pulpit and as far as I’m concerned public speaking is about conversation not lecturing. Also, a podium is physical barrier between you and the audience making it much harder to connect with them psychologically.

So wherever possible get out from behind that podium or lectern, get out on stage, move around, gesticulate and really CONNECT with your audience.

7: Don’t read the script

Reading word for word from a prepared script is the fastest way to put your audience to sleep. It’s also lazy. Don’t do it. It’s perfectly ok to have some notes jotted down which you glance at from time to time but anything beyond that is a disservice to your audience and to you as a speaker.

8: Slow down

It’s really easy to rush through your content and speak very quickly, especially if you’re nervous. It’s much easier for an audience to engage with your content if your delivery falls into a natural rhythm. Try to pace yourself and remember to punctuate your speech with pauses to emphasise key points.

9: Make ‘em laugh

Humor is my most powerful tool when I’m giving a presentation. I almost always try to get a laugh within the first 60 seconds of a talk. It relieves the collective tension in the room almost immediately and helps ease the transition into the bulk of the content.*

10: Be passionate and energetic

I learned this from the best, Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk, whose energy on stage is completely captivating. Look, chances are if you’re standing up in front of people giving a talk, you know what you’re on about – and if you know what you’re on about, you’re probably passionate about the subject.

So make sure you project that passion during your presentation! Raise your voice when it makes sense, be effusive, throw your hands up in the air when you’re making a point! That type of energy is totally infectious and your audience will appreciate the effort.

*A note on swearing during presentations. Those of you who have seen my Future of Web App keynotes might have noticed that I punctuate my talks with some occasional swearing. This is a calculated risk on my part and certainly not something I do whenever I speak at conferences.

Hell, if you did at work you’d probably be fired so I strongly suggest you suss out your audience before you drop F-bombs during your Quarterly Sales Review with the Board of Directors.

That’s the theory, here’s the real thing

Ed: The following video is of Alex’s presentation from Future of Web Apps London 2009.

As the mobile user base swells, it is becoming easier to classify mobile users based on their attitudes towards their phones and the features they use most often. Merchants should consider how mobile customers will prefer to access web content. From that, merchants can decide what kind of user experiences they can affordably deliver. Experian Simmons’s recent 2010 American Mobile Consumer Report breaks down mobile users into segments by their attitudes towards mobile devices. It’s an excellent way to analyze the various ways people use their mobile devices. Simmons estimates that nearly one half of mobile users are pragmatic adopters or social connectors, indicating that, in the U.S., most mobile users still use their devices prim...

Americans made 14.5 billion Internet searches in February 2010, according to comScore, the Internet tracking firm. Google users accounted for roughly 9.5 billion of those searches, equating to an approximate 65.5 percent market share, up .1 percent from January. Microsoft beat Google in percentage gain between January and February, however. In January Microsoft controlled 11.3 percent of the market, and by the end of February it held 11.5 percent, according to comScore. Yahoo!, Google’s closest competitor in terms of market share, lost the most ground when it dropped from 17 percent market share to 16.8 percent. Ask Network, which includes the Ask.com search engine, also lost market share, dropping from 3.8 percent in January to 3.7 ...

Regular readers of Think Vitamin may know that Carsonified, the company behind the blog, also run a number of web related events in Europe and the USA. We thought you might like to know that we recently launched our free to join event affiliate program. Here’s how we describe it on the web site:

The Carsonified Affiliate Program allows you to earn money. Every time a ticket to an event is purchased thanks to someone clicking on your affiliate link or banner we pay you £20. Sell five tickets through your site and earn £100, sell twenty and treat yourself to a new laptop.

Here’s Ryan to tell you a bit more about it:

You might wonder what Ryan is pointing to in the video. He’s referring to the new page on our web site dedicated to the affiliate program.

On it you will find all you need to know about how to sign up to the program and will also be able to grab banners for all of our upcoming events including:

• Think Vitamin HTML5 Online Conference
• The Future of Web Apps Dublin
• The Future of Web Design London

If you have any questions about the program please do get in touch via e-mail: affiliates@carsonified.com

Visit our new affiliate web page to find out all you need to know.

Many online merchants wish to edit their own images but do not want to purchase expensive photo-editing software. Luckily, there's Aviary. Aviary is a free online design suite that offers much of the power and capability of expensive desktop software. Aviary's mission, according to its website, is to make creation accessible for artists of all genres. Aviary Video Tutorial [video] In this video tutorial, I will give you an overview of the Aviary Design Suite. To begin, I will walk you through registering for an Aviary account. Registration is crucial if you wish to utilize all of the features in Aviary, many of which are very helpful. Next, I will give you an overview of the main page and discuss the Aviary applications that are ...

In today’s constant-distraction-and-huge-todo-list culture, it’s extremely easy to get sidetracked by things that aren’t vital to achieving your goals.

Here are some simple tips for making sure you’re not wasting a large percentage of your time on things that don’t matter.

#1 Gather Your Todos

I use Remember the Milk to record all my todos. I group them by projects and then assign due dates and priorities. They also have a great iPhone app which syncs automatically with the web app.

Whether you use Remember the Milk or another tool, it’s super important to write things down as soon as you think of them. If you don’t, then you’ll constantly be plagued by the feeling that you’re forgetting something (I have over 500 tasks currently active in Remember the Milk).

#2 Organize Your Todos on Monday Morning

A sure-fire way to waste 50% of your time is to charge into the week without organizing your todo list and inbox. There will be hundreds of things shouting for your attention and you need to proactively choose which things are important to you – not things that other people say are important for you to do. As someone once said …

Your email inbox is a todo list that anyone can write to.

Here’s how to organize your todo list:

1. Block off the first hour of every Monday to organize your todo list. Turn off instant messenger, close email and silence your phone. You need absolute silence so you can focus. I tend to do this from 5am – 6am on Monday mornings, before my wife and son wake up.
2. Go through the todo lists for all your current projects (in Remember the Milk in this example) and pick important things that you need to do this week. Prioritize them and assign them a due date this week, or tag them with ‘thisweek’.
3. Use a tool like TadaLists.com and create a list called ‘This Week’. It’s important that this is separate from your main repository of todos (Remember the Milk in this example).
4. Take a deep breath and ask yourself “What are the things that I could work on this week that will get me closer to my longterm, important goals?”. (These things may not even be on your Remember the Milk todo lists.)
5. Put several of these things on your ‘This Week’ list in TadaList and prioritize them by putting the most important things first. Make sure these are atomic, do-able things (not big concepts like ‘Increase signups by 3%’).
6. Go back to Remember the Milk (or whatever tool you’re using) and filter it by tasks due this week.
7. Pick several of the important ones and copy them over to your ‘This Week’ list in TadaList.
8. Close Remember the Milk and only refer to the small ‘This Week’ TadaList for the rest of the week.

What you’ll find is that you had a ton of things that you were supposed to do this week (in your Remember the Milk list) but only 10 or 20 of them are really important. Those 10 or 20 items should be added to your TadaList. At that point, I’d close your Remember the Milk list, and only look at your TadaList for the rest of the week.

Another reason to distill your huge weekly todo list down into a smaller list is that it will keep you motivated and excited, as you’re consistently finishing your todos for the day, instead of having 15 undone items at the end of the day.

Here’s a screenshot of an example TadaList. Note that I’ve created a pretend item called ‘==== END TODAY =====’. This helps me see what I’m supposed to complete today, and feel good about it once they’re all done.

#3 Stick to Your Guns

The most important thing is to stick to your simple ‘This Week’ todo list (the TadaList in this example) and not get distracted when new things get thrown at you. Just remember that you have control over what you’re doing and whether it’s helping you move towards your longterm, important goals.

Don’t waste 50% of your time on things that don’t matter.

Many small- to medium-sized online retailers are entrepreneurial companies. Their owners and employees often have diverse responsibilities, and it is common for a single person to handle multiple tasks, such as customer service, email marketing, order processing and website design. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to simultaneously be a great retail marketer, shipping clerk, and coding guru. This means that site development and site performance can suffer. LABjs ("Loading and Blocking JavaScript") is a free-to-use JavaScript, designed to improve site performance. And LABjs is easy enough to use that even merchants with a limited understanding of HTML will be able to implement it. Depending on how many JavaScripts your site is load...

"Ecommerce News Around the Web" is our weekly review of articles, blog posts and other news items that could interest ecommerce merchants. Five Common Ecommerce SEO Mistakes - Econsultancy Search engine optimization is both art and science that often requires the skills of a trained professional. Learn from these five common SEO mistakes made by ecommerce sites. Handy Dandy Tools for Ecommerce Websites - Smashing Magazine There is a plethora of tools that make it easier to get the most out of your ecommerce site. This article introduces some of these tools and offers a tip or two on how to use them. Forrester Paints Rosy Ecommerce Outlook - E-commerce News In 2009, ecommerce was a clear winner in a recession that took its toll o...

There are more than 500 online shopping carts. And each week we feature one, interviewing both the cart's developer and a customer. "Cart of the Week" is not a review or an evaluation, but rather an opportunity to learn about a shopping cart from the people who build it and use it. This week, we'll hear from John Panyavorachart, co-founder and CEO of Vevo Systems, developers of VevoCart. The company is located in Bangkok, Thailand, and its shopping cart currently serves around 6,000 users. We'll also hear from a VevoCart customer, Stephen Bowden, director of marketing and operations for Tres Beau, a site that sells wedding accessories. Practical eCommerce: Please provide some general background on the cart. John Panyavorachart: "...

Lead gen pages are often misunderstood as standalone, single-page designs. There’s a science behind A/B testing and optimizing lead gen pages, but there’s also a component of creative user experience that should not be overlooked as you drill deeply into what drives your users through your conversion funnel.

Some user behaviors make clear sense, while others can confound your expectations. Overall, however, designing a complete experience around a conversion page is best understood taking these 3 “Ss” into consideration:

1. Somewhere—Users get to conversion pages from somewhere, so go there first!
2. Superficial—Good looks matter. Users respond to a particular aesthetic, so try different designs!
3. So Much More—Users engage deeper through community, so get them connected to you and each other! (FYI a Facebook Fan Page is a great ecosystem & it’s free)

Okay, so few weeks ago I posted about a redesign I’m working on for a lead generation page. That project began with a single page, but preliminary outcomes further demonstrated that we needed to step backwards and design for an entire experience, which is where Somewhere, Superficial, and So Much More came into play.

I’ll explain!

First, our initial A/B test is over:

• Good news—we didn’t break the existing conversion rate.
• Better news—we raised the conversion rate a little bit ;-)
• Great news—we blew up our Facebook Fan page by designing a thoughtful “Thank You”! (*We increased fan acquisition from 3 fans per day to 30+ fans per day)

Second, we’re embarking on Phase 2 of our test plan, so let me share what that plan looks like, because A/B testing can be delivered in a number of ways. Here is the 3-phase method I recommend and that we’re currently using:

Phase 1: Update, Don’t Break

(This phase is optional, in the project I’m working on we did need to update an older design before we could effectively move forward with testing.)

• Update the design to a higher standard that better expresses the brand
• Don’t break existing conversion (50 v. 50 split test, confirmed by a 5 v. 95 follow-up)
• Phase original design out completely

(Current design in the wild, original design)

Phase 2: Design Different Concepts

• Create 2 more well-informed aesthetically different designs
• Conduct user testing (DIY-style works well!)
• Release new designs into testing cycle in increments (10 v. 90% to start)

(Potential design to test)

Phase 3: Optimize One

• Select the “winning” design from the 3 that have been tested
• Optimize the winning design with A/B testing of the smaller elements on page (copy, image, steps, etc)

(Potential design to test)

Third, as we prepare for our next test, which will involve 3 very different designs, here are things we considered about the current experience to make sure we covered “Somewhere, Superficial, and So Much More”:

Traffic Sources

It’s important to learn about where your users are coming from; this is the first step to take in order to reduce your bounce rate.

Are your users coming to your site after clicking an ad? Are users coming to your site to learn something, or have they accidentally gotten there, is the message seductive, on target?

User Testing

User testing doesn’t have to be expensive, drawn out, or complicated. Do informal (or formal if you can) user testing to gather feedback on the different designs before you release them into the wild.

Form Friction

At the heart of every conversion page is a form. Determine what variables can be tested, and what variable make sense to test. Some form friction is good!

Let me share an example, for us, it seems like “phone number” is an easy variable to test out. But, it turns out it’s not! While we might get more conversions by taking that element out of the form, we would also open ourselves up to less qualified leads, which we don’t want and also aren’t equipped to scale for.

(*Consider your community support team, if you put their phone number on your conversion page can they handle the incoming calls?)

The Thank You

Never underestimate the opportunity for a second level of conversion that your “Thank You” messaging provides for you to create and facilitate community and further engagement.
Our Thank You experience in our first round of testing, totally changed our approach to how we were looking at this conversion page.

To wrap it all up, throughout this process of redesigning and optimizing a single conversion page (we’ve planned on about 3 months of testing), we’ve really come to understand that the best and most effective lead gen page designs involve an entire experience that goes well beyond a single page. Suddenly, our little conversion page isn’t so lonely or so little.

Take a look at your app’s conversion page, rally your team, and consider the impact of Somewhere, Superficial, and So Much More.