It starts with a clean, professional, easy to use website.
Then you launch a new product line, so you add a new button/ad/page, etc. Innocent enough right?
Next your company receives an award from an industry publication. Why not show it off on the homepage?
Then you read an article about a Google Adsense millionaire. Why not throw a few ads in, and pick up some extra revenue?
Then one customer complains that your Privacy Policy was too hard …

WARNING: Website optimization testing is extremely addictive. Sitting behind the scenes, pulling the strings, and seeing the effect of positive change is overwhelmingly rewarding.
So now you’ve committed to testing your website. Where do you start? What do you test? While you’ll ultimately have to answer these questions for yourself, below are 7 Do’s and Don’ts to help guide a successful testing strategy.

Do Test Properly: So you tweaked your homepage and sales shot up 50% from …

What goes through a visitors’ mind in the first 5 seconds after they land on your site? After all, that just might be all the time you’ve got until they reach for the back button. Let’s speculate on what happens at each moment…
Second 1 - Impressions: First impressions are forming. What loads first? Your header logo? Your navigation? Ads? As your page finishes loading, your visitor is already unconsciously judging your site based on the …

Nearly every business collects feedback from their customers, and rightfully so. Yet something has always bothered me about the way most online businesses elicit customer suggestions and criticism: they usually get it from their best customers.
In other words, the people most likely to give feedback are the people who spend the most money. So what’s the problem with this? Simply put, these are the people who’ll give you the least helpful advice. Let me …

“Who Are You and What Do You Do?” - Is this possibly the last thought your prospect has right before they leave your website?
Too many websites have identity issues. That is, it’s too hard to figure out what the heck the site does, or what sets them apart from the crowd. Simply put, if prospects can’t understand what your business does within a few seconds of arriving on your page, you’ve lost them for good.
Identity …

I’m making the list, be sure to check it twice to ensure success for your e-commerce website this holiday season.
Offer Bounce Back Discounts: Your site will be flooded with traffic this holiday season. How can you harness that traffic to create year long business? Consider offering a good discount incentive for customers to come back and shop in January. You can automatically email them a coupon after each order, or send one along with the …

There’s a very good chance you won’t finish reading this blog post. Why? Because you’re constantly bombarded with distractions and options.
You have plenty of other blog posts to read or emails in your inbox beckoning for your attention. Even if you commit to reading this you may be distracted by a ringing cellphone or a text message. Or maybe your brain will suddenly remember that proposal you had promised to send out 3 hours ago. …

Stop for a moment and consider the goals of your website. Regardless of whether it’s a purchase through a shopping cart, a lead generation, white paper download, or a email opt, I’m going to bet every one of these actions requires a customer to use a web form.
With web forms playing such an important role in the completing goals, it goes without saying that we should optimize the heck out of them. Below are 25 …

What’s one thing that all successful e-commerce sites have in common, regardless of their industry, technology, or experience? Their customers trust them.

E-commerce in particular lends itself to a low trust environment. After all, when you make a purchase online, you’re giving money to someone you can’t see, for a products that you can’t touch. Needless to say, trust is a crucial aspect of transacting business online.
Duct Tape Marketing recently interviewed Steven M.R. Covey on his …

What’s possibly the #1 problem preventing you from improving your website?
You.
As much as we want to believe website optimization is all about tactics and strategy, often the key to success lies in our own behavior. In order for optimization to occur, we first have to properly collect and interpret data about our websites. However, if the daily processes which we use to collect data are overly systematic and rigid, inevitably out of the box thinking …