Today the Interactive Design Foundation said:

“Consider your current website.
What can you do to increase consumer trust?
What can you do to increase consumer familiarity?
What can you to to construct a sense of presence?”

To which BW & AW replied:

I. Increasing Consumer Trust:

We should definitely offer the book with a money-back offer, and also a soliloquy promising to not hold it against you if you return the book, a soliloquy that should make clear that we ourselves have misgivings about the book, and that if you don’t like this one, we hope you’ll still like the next one, since it has to be better than this one–if it isn’t, we just don’t know how we’ll get by!

II. Increasing Consumer Familiarity:

No one’s heard of us. If there’s lots to do on the site that is free and worthwhile, people will goof around with us awhile and then start to know our ways and so we’ll become familiar to them. Unfortunately, the site has only madcap to offer. Maybe if we made a Pure Love Certificate you could download for free. Why? It would demonstrate that, all kidding aside, insofar as it is within our power, we are happy to give away all the Pure Love we have. And it could be short and sweet, unlike so much of our literary attempts. In the same vein, we need to pay a lot of attention to introducing the writings: it should be very easy to find writings that most people will find engaging and avoid the ones most people will consider overly long-winded.

III. Increasing Presence

Let’s make some skits! We wrote some ads for products. Let’s film them and embed them or link to them. This will also enhance familiarity. However, by seeing our movements, the way we hold our bodies, and the attitudes of our facial contortions, customers will perceive that we are bits of string slowly unfurling and fraying, which will decrease their trust in us. Perhaps if we hired actors.

IV. But shouldn’t we be helping consumers see what a scam advertising/presentation is?

Definitely. We need some way to point out that neither Amazon nor Wandering Albatross Press is really their friend. We at Wandering Albatross Press would like to run our business in a way that is good for everyone, but we are still selling something. Everyone thinks that they are OK and blah blah blah; but who among us even truly wants to do what’s best for everyone, let alone knows how to and does it? I know! We’ll issue a certificate of our official heartfelt apology for only kind of meaning to be truly kind–as another free download.

BW/AMW/WHATEVER