Just finished a nice little article at A List Apart on Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction by Nick Usborne. The premise of the piece is pretty simple: when you make a call to action on the Web (ask someone to do something) you're transferring kinetic energy to them that carries them through the friction of doing whatever you want them to do: fill out a form, check out a shopping cart, etc. Here are some key points:

• Maximize the transfer of energy with words and design
• The bigger the task, the more energy you need
• Reduce friction where ever you can by simplifying the process.

This reminds me of something Ron Kohavi said few weeks ago at the CS Colloquium about shopping cart abandonment. They discovered that adding a "enter coupon code" field to a checkout page significantly increased abandonment. Everyone stops and thinks "I must not be getting the best deal I could!" Friction.

I was wondering how this applies to blogging. Do I want anything from you? Your attention, I supposed in the form of comments and links.