Some of you are saying, “duh,” but judging by the number of ugly, hard-to-use websites out there, not everyone understands this principle: people trust things that look better and are easier to use. I’m sure I’ve also read an article about how this is true with people too—beautiful people seem more trustworthy than ugly ones. (If you find the article that talks about this, please let me know.)

There are a couple implications of this rule. The one you’re not supposed to take away from this is that if you’re a scammer, making your web site look more professional will catch more people. The correct thing we should learn from this study is that if you’re a legitimate business trying to provide value to your customers, making your web site look better will help your visitors feel that legitimacy.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article today about results posted by Compete Inc. showing that Facebook has passed up Google as the largest source of traffic for Yahoo and MSN portals as well as other sites.

“People are spending less time navigating the Internet on their own and are now navigating the Internet based on their friends’ recommendations or their friends’ activities.”

-Dave Yovanno, chief executive of Gigya Inc. (a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services)

Intuit has gotten in on the social media frenzy, calling its way of getting customers to refer friends “friend-casting.” Heck, they don’t need to trick me into advertising for them—I’ll do it for free. I’ll be getting my largest return by far this year and it took less than an hour using their TurboTax Freedom Edition, which lets you file your federal and state taxes for free if you qualify.

Alright Intuit, let’s see how many referrals you get from this social media buzz.

Check out the full article (about Facebook, not TurboTax) here: Facebook directs more online users than Google.

Copyblogger posted some great findings on how crappy landing pages kill email campaigns. Here’s the summary:

• Business-to-consumer companies are more likely to use readable URLs than business-to-business firms
• Nearly 50% of the landing pages studied failed to repeat the email’s call to action
• 6 out of 10 companies use landing pages to sell products/services; other goals include lead generation, branding, and education (educate target audiences, support product usage)
• 17% of email marketing campaigns (mostly business-to-consumer) dumped recipients at the company’s home page as opposed to a unique campaign landing page
• 35% of landing pages failed to match the look, feel and tone of the original email
• Only 36% of the landing pages used the recommended one-column format; 25% used two-column formatting
• 9 out of 10 landing pages had the main call to action above the fold, but of those pages that had copy continuing past the natural fold, only 11% had additional calls to action adjacent to the below-the-fold copy

What makes one tweet more interesting than another? Surprisingly, it’s not necessarily the topic. Here’s what Tammy Erickson of the Harvard Business Review has to say about how we should tweet:

1. Don’t report banal details. Unless you’re observing a true breaking news event (and note: this does not include what you or your child ate for lunch), skip it.
2. Do interpret your experiences. How do they make you feel? What do they mean to you?
3. Do share the oddities you observe. Look for things that seem unusual, out-of-place, surprising.
4. Do share things you love – quotes, phrases, descriptions of events that brought joy to your day.

Here’s the full article: Are You Fun to Follow on Twitter?

For those of you new to Twitter, here’s The Complete Guide to Getting the Most Out of Twitter from Noupe. This guide is very thorough (read: long) and includes:

• Terminology
  • Direct Messages
  • Hashtags
  • Lists
  • Replies
  • Retweets
  • Trending Topics
• Etiquette
• Tools (clients and services)
• Finding people to follow
• Twitter used for:
  • A promotional tool
  • Blogging
  • Problem solving
  • Productivity
  • News
  • Entertainment

You name the Twitter topic, this guide will teach you what you need to know.