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 @richpage offers up 25 things you can do to impact your conversion rate. Not all of these are really "free" when you consider the cost of time and effort. None of them require sending money to an ad network or Google or an agency.

My favorites are: #7 State your value proposition clearly #8 Create landing pages for your PPC ads #13 Run an A/B test for the subjet line of your next email #18 Improve your webpage load time #22 Discover what your visitors are really doing using CrazyEgg

Scott Brinker builds the bridge between landing page optimization and content marketing.

This is a great example of how to optimize a purchase funnel

Here are some good answers to burning questions when using video on your pages..

For online services like Shopify, "Onboarding" is a fancy word for conversion. This slideshow takes you through Shopify's successful onboarding process.

One thing to note: they have Optimizely split-testing software installed. This could be how they came to this successful "onboarding" implementation.

There are sevreral items in this list that are important for conversion optimizers to take note of, things to try. Mobile-first design: I surprised to learn how many leads and sales are now coming from the mobile web. Skeleton screens: Far better than some spinning animation for decreasing both load times AND percieved load times. Photo-cenric Menus: Try these for ecommerce sites. Scroll-triggerd animations: ONLY FOR STORY TELLING! Animated Call-to-action Buttons: Try those that shimmer without interaction. Hand lettering: Be careful not to make things hard to read. AI for design: I just have to try Grid.

@theGrok writes: "We opened the first CRO agency in 1998. We no longer offer CRO services to clients. We still have a lot of friends in the industry. It's likely some of them will disagree with the way we approach it. That's OK! The goal of this post it help you hire a CRO agency that is a great fit."

Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg are the reason I'm in this business. I'm grateful, and many of our clients, current and past, are grateful. So, I can't think of a better source for guidance in this industry.

Many have contemplated the counter-intuitive ability of "ugly" sites to win huge market share - think eBay.com, Amazon.com, DrudgeReport.com, PlentyofFish.com, CraigsList.org, MySpace.com, or usability expert Jakob Nielsen's Useit.com.

The folks at ConversionVoodoo give us two simple questions we should ask before creating a landing page. The "elephant in the room" here is that one landing page probably isn't going to work, as different people respond to different ads, and thus need a different landing page. What you know about them will make all the difference in your conversion rates.

Here's the first line from this very helpful little post. "0 sales! What? But we got 517 unique visitors this week!" Airing your mistakes is not seen as smart marketing in many circles, but this kind of thing really is helpful. Besides the important moral of this story, there's another:

Failing the right way leads to success faster. Failing without knowing why invites unnecessary failure.

I predict good things for these folks.

We almost always test headlines on the landing pages we optimize. It's how we get some of our best wins to increase conversion rates. This orthography is a great primer for writing headlines that you can test on your pages.

I'm pleased to be in such amazing company at the Landing Page Success Summit

Good email stuff from @matthewhayes on @ClickZ. Email is so important to conversion.

@widerfunnel "We have tested rotating offers many times and have found it to be a poor way of presenting home page content." Enough said.

Businesses love rotating banners because they are cowards. They are afraid of picking something and running with it. They don't want to lose a chance to get everyone. Well, when you try to sell to everyone, you sell to no one. If you won't listen to me, please, read Chris Goward's article. When it comes to testing, the Wider Funnel people konw what they're doing.  

A blog is critical for SEO. It can also be a great lead generator and email list builder.

The Conversion Scientist™ is crucial to our marketing efforts.

Rich Page has a great list of do's and don'ts here with examples. You should take a look. Annoying Ads Unclear value proposition Articles with no call to action Not mobile optimized Short articles, no sub-headlines Cluttered sidebar columns No social proof Bland articles Poor incentive to subscribe No exit-intent popups Start Here page

Just because you have the data that proves you are "right" about something, don't expect anyone to believe you.

It's not about the data, it's about how you present the data.

Since Conversion Optimization is ONLY about generating data to guide decisions, I love to explore the various ways of presenting it.

Here is some awesome eye candy from some amazing sites.

The steps we take as conversion optimizers look suspiciously like designers. Each of theses steps can use more data, though:User PersonasJob StoriesUsability TestingAffinity Mapping2x2 AnalysisProblem DefinitionIdeate & CreateMockupsPrototypeValidateOur task is to execute on this with high frequency and make small changes as we go to learn what moves the needle.

@neilpatel collects some of the most interesting eye-tracking images available and provides seven insights that can help you design your pages and choose images. We have done our own eye-tracking study of business video and you can get the full report now. The report offers similar conclusions for the use of video in a landing page. It includes over 30 minutes of embedded video that you can watch yourself.

Neil's conclusions include:Be careful you you use [images of] peopleThat people love media (especially on search results pages)That men and women look at images differentlyThat simple images can be more effectiveThe power of the left side of the pageThe power of facesThat people love hand-written notes (my favorite)Enjoy the images he provides.

Forbes doesn't mince words when talking about CRO. Author Niel Patel has built several online businesses, including CrazyEgg and KISSMetrics. He would know.

The article starts off with a great insignt: "Conversion optimizaiton works."