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 @sitetuners offers a great way to look at conversions and landing pages through the eyes of cating. Don't propose on the first date. Suit Up! Show that you're the perfect match. Go for the second date. Read on to find out what this all means to your website.

1. Scent 2. Transparency 3. Specificity 4. Proof 5. Readability

Landing Page Optimization and analytics

Great case study on using Facebook to test ads and landing pages.

Poor post-click marketing experiences can no longer hide behind the click.

by @chiefmartec It's time to stop making excuses. Most interesting to me is the UX Fund, that invested in companies commited to design and user experience. They outpaced the market by over the past five years. Scott also puts a nail in the excuses: "We want to be simple, like Google", "It pays to be cheap," and "The CMO doesn't get it."

The "sales letter" is a style that is used in particular situations to convert. You may never need one. However, the four P's of copy are a golden nugget in this article. They should guide your copy in any landing page situation, sales video, etc. They are: PromisePictureProofPush

Good example of using "persona tabs" on a landing page.

The three most important things on your landing page: Headline, Bold Call to Action and Social Proof. Nice read.

 @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

 @crestodina I spoke at the Conversion Conference #convcon this week about flipping your message according to your Web visitor. This can be applied to subject lines, search ads, display ads and landing pages.

One of the most powerful "flips" is between the four kind of visitors outlined by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg in their book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?.

Here is a creative twist on the four kinds of visitors you'll encounter on your website: video game characters.

Is the page, post or email you're working on right now targeting Frogger or Mario or Galaga or PacMan?

It should.

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.

"After clicking through 900,000 ads, researchers from Google discovered that the average mobile landing page loads in an embarrassing 22 seconds. That's over 7 times longer than most impatient internet users will wait before they abandon a page - 53% to be exact."

When designing pages that are informational and persuasive, "visuial sugar" will often have a very meaningful negative effect on leads and sales. This is a great summary of what NOT to do on your landing pages and websites.

Shimon Sandler offers some tips for linking phone orders to search campaigns, ranging from simple (using a pay-per-call provider) to more involved (setting up a database of unique promo codes tied to specific keywords).

You can create a unique landing page for each product that features a different phone number for each of the engines, or add a promo/reference code to each product page and train your phone sales reps to ask for and record this code for every order.

Sandler says that you can also put a printable coupon on each landing page that consumers need to redeem in-store, or try an IVR phone system that tracks phone calls and their sources. - Read the whole story...

We've seen in email tests that subject lines can have implications far beyond the open rate. We've seen two identical emails with identical landing pages have the same open rates and the same click-through rates (CTR), but one generated more sales than the other.

What's the difference? The subject line.

In short, subject lines are important.

And they are difficult to write.

This infographic does a great job of boiling things down to help remove the indecision when you are writing subject lines.

I'm giving away free copies of my book Your Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist. There are no strings attached.

Starting December 15 and running through December 19th, my book will be completely free in the Amazon Kindle Store. Just click on "One Click Buy" during the promo dates, and it'll be delivered right to your Kindle free of charge.

Don't have a Kindle? Never fear. You can read it on the Amazon Cloud Reader on your computer, or through the free Kindle App available for your Smartphone or iPad.  

  So what is this book I am offering for free? It's called The Customer Creation Equation: Unexpected Website Formulas of The Conversion Scientist™. It gives readers the foolproof formulas to creating a website that not only gets the right traffic, but converts that traffic to customers, returning customers and advocates.  

Some of the great things you'll learn in this book:

- Identify the unique customer creation formula for your site. - Set up your own digital conversion lab to measure your progress. - Develop landing pages for your site that actually deliver. - Charge your marketing "batteries" to reduce your advertising expenditures. - Communicate authoritatively with designers, developers, and executives.

So please, do not buy this book.  

Go over to the Kindle Store and get your copy absolutely free. Your website will thank you for it.

I've put forth in my new book that adding social media icons to a landing page is a bad idea. I get a lot of pushback on this. Here's some support for my position. Simplicity sells. "Engagement" doesn't. This article highlights three components that consumers need to make it easier to buy. They need to trust the information they receive.They need to learn effectively without distraction.They need to be able to weigh options confidently. Help your visitors choose and choose confidently. Worry about your social media strategy after the sale.

 @crazyegg hits us over the head with a list of mistakes we make when testing our site. The most brutal is "#8: You're testing a crappy site."

Fear not, especially if you're shepherding a new testing initiative for your company. There's great advice and encouragement here.

To avoid these mistakes in your business, consider a Conversion Catalyst program from Conversion Sciences. Your first call is free.

Rotating headers, called "sliders" are losing their favor on landing pages. Ultimately, this is a good thing. But these hedges don't have to be conversion killers.

In the article's summary of our tests on sliders, we've been able to make rotating hero images work by first testing the order. A large part of the increase in revenue per visit was from putting the most important panels first.

Notice that the two panels that delivered the best result were offer oriented (Same Day Shipping and Super Saver Shipping). It's possible that we could remove the conceptual panels ("Make a bold outdoor impression" and "Leader in digital mesh banner printing") without impacting the revenue per visit. This would save some load time.