Commercial websites aren’t cheap to build and maintain, and if you own a business with a website you probably want something to come from that expense. For some businesses that means a sale, for others a lead, and for yet others it’s clicks on paid advertisements.

Regardless of what you want from your website, it seems obvious that more traffic to the site would help with all of the above…right? Yes and no.

Before you drive more traffic to a website, it is important to make sure that your website is doing what you want it to do as efficiently and effectively as possible. There’s no point pouring more water into a leaky funnel. Enter conversion optimization.

If one were to define conversion optimization, the definition would be quite simple: making a website simpler and easier for customers to use.

Have you ever made a purchase online? Filled out an online form for more information? Signed up for an online service? If yes to any of these, how was that experience? Easy? Frustrating? Keep those experiences in mind as you read the following.

Though conversion optimization techniques can range from the ridiculously simple to the incredibly complex, the process can be broken down into 3 steps: Research, Measure and Test.

Research

One of the most beneficial things you can do, both for your business in general as well as your conversion rate is to exactly define and then thoroughly research your target audience. Only when you really know the people you are trying to reach can you craft a compelling message that will get them to do what you want them to do.

Visit successful websites in your industry, as well as successful websites in different industries that cater to the same demographic, and make notes about the site. Go through the following steps on each site:

1. Start at the home page, search for and locate a product you want, and add it to your cart (or start at the home page and find a contact form, if lead generation is your goal.) Make a note of how many steps were in that process, whether it was easy or hard to find the product/form, and anything else that stood out to you.

Also pay attention to how you feel and the colors being used for backgrounds, headers and buttons. Colors can evoke an emotional response, so keep that in mind.

2. Spend some time looking at 3-4 product pages. Are the product photos clear, attractive, and detailed? Can you zoom in or rotate the product image? Is the description clear and compelling? Is the price clearly displayed? Does the product page mention things like free shipping, discounted pricing, or anything else that would motivate you to make that purchase? Is what you need to do to buy that product obvious? Is a return policy and/or privacy policy visible? Make notes about all of these things on at least 3 product pages.

3.  Make a purchase. If you don’t want to spend any money, you can stop at the point that credit card info is required, but it is highly recommended that you test the process from start to finish. Consider it an investment in market research. If you do lead generation, fill out the form with your real info (so you can see how they respond to potential customers later on.)

Do they force you to create an account to make a purchase? How many pages/steps are in the checkout process? Does it estimate your shipping costs? Can you ship to an address other than your billing address? Does it force you to duplicate information? Is it frustrating, or simple? Do you see security elements in place (VeriSign, TRUSTe, 128 bit encryption?) Are you comfortable making a purchase from the site?

4. See what happens after you make a purchase or fill out the form. Does the company contact you, and if so how quickly? By phone or email? Are they courteous and personable? Did the product arrive quickly, well packaged, as described?

By following these steps, you’ll learn what is and isn’t working for your competitors. Distill what you’ve learned into a list of things that you think were helping conversions. Keep in mind that at this step you are simply going to make a list of hypotheses, things you want to test on your site, so trust your gut. If any step in their process was difficult or made you uncomfortable, feel free to leave it off the list.

Measure

If you don’t have analytics in place, such as Google Analytics, then all your research and testing will have been in vain. You can’t very well conduct a test without data!

Make sure that your analytics tracking code is properly installed on each and every page of your website. The quickest way to do this is by using ObservePoint. If analytics code is improperly implemented or missing from a page, visitor interaction with that page will not make it into your analytics data. That’s a bad thing.

The most important thing you can do in your analytics program is to define and track your conversion funnels. Knowing the necessary steps to a conversion can help you to tighten the funnel and more effectively funnel visitors to the action you want them to take.

Monitor this funnel for pages that “leak”, where visitors are leaving or doing something other than what you want them to be doing. These leaky spots are where you want to test conversion optimization changes, fixing the leaks so to speak.

Test

Now that you have a list of things to test and the tools in place to measure, start testing them one by one on your website. The easiest way to do this is by using Google’s Website Optimizer tool. This tool integrates with a wide variety of content management systems, and allows you to A/B test changes to your pages by showing 2 different versions, rotating with every other visitor.

In this way you can test your hypotheses one by one, determining with hard data which is the best way to do things. DO NOT GUESS. Test everything. When you’ve had at least 500 people view each version of the page, you have the minimum amount of impressions you need to declare a winner. More is better, but 500 is enough.

Once you have a winner, implement that change on the site and move on to the next hypothesis. Test, measure, test, measure, working your way down the list. Add to the list whenever you think of or discover a new possibility and test some more.

By researching your customers and your competitors, testing potential changes, and monitoring how people interact with your website, you’ll be well on your way to increased conversions.

Guest Author: Sam McRoberts is the CEO of VUDU Marketing, a Utah SEO company. He has been involved with online marketing since 1999 and has worked with hundreds of clients, from small local businesses to Fortune 500 companies.

When it comes to the world of design, having one’s own aesthetic and taste is admirable. But more often than not, those who are working on projects involving bytes and bits should focus on the basics, especially just when starting out, to ensure the final product is one that’s easy to navigate and instinctive to use. Plenty of different big-name restaurants and clothing lines pump tons of cash into pages that ultimately just confuse surfers, because most people who are using a website are more interested in a bit of information than whether or not it’s possible to cram three songs and five different flashing images onto the main page.

Whether starting out in the game of design or trying to get the most out of time spent coding and Photoshopping so that the final product simply makes more sense, here are top website designs that are worth following. No matter what the purpose behind the design, opting to go with these cornerstones of successful layout will have web surfers content and clients even happier.

#1 – Less is more. When it comes to graphics and photos, that is. Plenty of different companies have pursued the whole “let’s put everything possible onto a single page” game for a while now, but the fact is that with anything else that can be designed, a site should not be crowded and cluttered. Give the information and the logo breathing room, and notice how much more time people spend poking about the site. Unless the goal is to overwhelm the audience with something a bit retro or ironic, there’s no reason to have flashing graphics and noises going off all of the time.

#2 – Remember connection speeds while designing. Sure, plenty of people have upgraded to speedier ways to get online, but just as many are using slower connections. Keep this in mind when you consider doing something particularly image-heavy, or embedding a bunch of content that’s going to take forever to load on anything other than the highest-speed connection. After all, no one can see a brilliant design if they cannot even get to it.

#3 – Make the important parts easy to find. This sounds so simple, and yet countless designers–even those working for Fortune 500 companies–forget about it. Basically, if there needs to be a log-in or something to click on for help, then these need to be in regular places that people intuitively look for when visiting a site. After all, the purpose of having a presence online is so that people can consult the page for information. And making it tougher to get to that information won’t be winning any long-term customers.

#4 – Fonts make the first impression. Sure, layout itself is important, but part of design is the font in which you choose to present yourself or the client at hand. And people instinctively judge content based on the font that it’s written in. There are entire websites devoted to hating particular fonts (Papyrus or Comic Sans, anyone?) and focus groups spend thousands and millions of dollars just to report to their clients that switching to Helvetica will boost the youth consumer base. Do a bit of reading up on just how much fonts can accomplish, and then tailor the content of the site being designed accordingly. It’s about more than simply layout or whether or not there are a ton of images, and choosing the right font is a designer coup.

Guest Author: This article was written by Mona Pennypacker of Acorn Creative Studio who specializes in web site design in Colorado.

I have always disliked those long sales letter web pages. You know what I am talking about, right?  They are the never-ending web pages that you have to scroll down and down to get to the end before you finally see what they are offering.  I knew you would know what I am talking about!

Everyone says they work if they are written well. I created one in the past, only because I didn’t think I had another choice, and I may have to create another one again soon.  However, I am really hesitating this time since I dislike them so much.

What is your opinion?  Maybe it is best to allow my readers decide for me!

How do you truly feel about sales letters? What alternatives do you suggest?  Please expand on your answer in the comments below.

There are a number of things you should look at when selecting the best web hosting service for your website.  How much you can store and how much can be transferred to visitors are only the beginning.  There is a lot more to think about than that, especially since so many web hosts now offer unlimited storage and bandwidth.

One of the more obvious things to look at is price.  You need to find something that you can afford, but you should always keep in mind that cheaper hosting is often worse hosting.  Lower cost could mean a reduction in features, customer support, storage, bandwidth, number of allowed domains, and more.  If you don’t need the features that were removed to reduce the price, then the reduced price is better for you.  Otherwise, consider spending more to get what you need in a web host.

The second most obvious things, storage and bandwidth, often have much less obvious restrictions.  Most hosts offer “unlimited” storage and bandwidth, but they almost always have some sort of catch to that (which is usually listed in their terms of service).  For example, some hosts that claim unlimited storage put a cap on the number of files you can store and on the size of files that can be transferred, or the terms of service will state that everything that is stored there must be expressly used for the website, not simply for storage.  Usually, these restrictions won’t affect you, but you should know what they are, because sometimes they do.

Depending on what you want to do with your website, the offered features can be very important.  Not all web hosts support the latest programming languages, and without them, you might not be able to do exactly what you want to.  Some hosts offer regular backups and uptime guarantees, sometimes even short term money-back guarantees.  Knowing which features your host offers will let you get the most out of your host, or it might convince you to switch hosts entirely.

The most difficult thing to compare between hosts is the terms of service, but they can be very important.  They often state what you are allowed and not allowed to show on your website, how you can use it, and what happens if you over-use or abuse it.  You want a terms of service that is strict enough to prevent someone else from hogging all of your resources, but loose enough to allow you to do what you want to do with your website.  That balance can sometimes be difficult to find.

Lastly, the level of customer support is very important.  A seasoned programmer might need less customer support, but if the site goes down and it needs to be fixed from the server side, even expert programmers will want fast and easy customer service.  Everybody else will likely need the customer service that much more, so try to find out how good the host’s customer service is before committing to them.

If you’re having difficulty comparing all of these things yourself, you can always look up some web host reviews, but be sure to try to find reviews that cover all of the points mentioned here.  It’s also not a bad idea to look at more than one review of the same web host.  Good luck shopping for your new web host!

Guest Author: Jeff Manors

The whole point in having a website is to either generate sales or gain readers, other than that there is no other real value. Blogs want more people to reads their news and general ramblings, whereas retailers, tour operators, car leasers and directories want to generate sales. Making money is a core element in anyone’s website whether it be through creating sales or just building up your profile online for more recognition across the globe.

1) Check the layout of your page. Try to keep things as simple as possible. Don’t overload your site with images and flashy objects. Make sure that the site has a clear and easy to follow navigation. Don’t overload your home page with text; you could scare off potential customers.

2) Build separate pages to sell products. Don’t have all of your products listed on the homepage, it will be an overload of information and supplying such a mass amount to your customers could be confusing, not to mention very difficult to crawl through.

3) With the separate pages you have built, make sure that you build links to these. Deep linking to these pages will ensure that people searching for specific products will land on the relevant pages. Instead of landing on the home page which could be irrelevant to a specific product.

4) Put a search box on your site. Those that do land on your homepage for a general term may have something in mind they want to look for when they get there. The search facility gives them the chance to list a whole host of products that are more like what they need.

5) List your top selling products on your home page. The products that sell well should be advertised more, these are your top converting products which mean that someone looking for something like this has an idea of what is popular across your site.

6) Advertise your site on guest blogs. Try to write guest posts on other blogs to get recognition and possible click through(s) to your site. If you can get your name spread across popular relevant blogs then there is always the chance of a click through to your product/service.

7) Get listed on directories dedicated to your niche. If you can find directories that offer free directory lists to your site and receive a large amount of visitors, then you could be in for a win. Depending on what your niche is, will depend on your directory choice.

Guest Author: Marcus heads up the SEO for a Road Bicycles company that delivers bikes around the UK.