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This article is almost impossible to read because of an animated image in the center of the text. Fortunately, this is not a mistake. It underscores that adding motion to your pages makes it hard to focus on the message of the page.

I hope you'll get a chuckle from this as I did.

 @conversion_team-I'm speaking about "flipping" you message when writing copy that converts at #convcon West in San Francisco. Basically, "flipping" prevents "blending" your message, which makes it lose impact and relevance.

The catch is that you must understand something about the Web visitors that you're flipping your message toward.

The Conversion Team has a solution, and this article does a great job of helping you get an actionable understanding of how to write for your visitors in a persuasive and relevant way.

 @conversion_team It's easy to cut prices.It's hard to build up the value of what you offer in words and images. If you can occupy the high-price category in your niche, life gets much easier.

So, I was pleased to find this article which makes a bold statement: "Avoid Best Practice Conversion Rate Optimization"

What?

While your competitors are testing button color, you can be comparing yourself to the competition, being open about your profits, and doing the math for your visitors.

Best practices only get you so far. Here are some alternatives for online success.

In my book Your Customer Creation Equation I talk about the two conversions that online services have:Conversion from visitor to trialConversion from tryer to buyerI recommend that online services find ways to get the visitor started as soon as possible. Online services have the advantage that we can try the product right there online.

This article is further proof that getting the visitor engaged with questions is a more effective way to find more tryers and buyers than the typical home page.

Forms are a key component of Landing Pages (in addition to Offer, Image, Trust and Proof). When a visitor considers completing a form — for lead gen, to subscribe or to purchase — it is the moment of truth.

So, it is sad that so many forms work to chase these ready customers and prospects away.

This article will give you some things to consider as you guide development of your website forms in these areas: Right time of informing about problems/success Right place for validation messages Right color Clear language

This article on ebooks comes at an important time at Conversion Sciences as we put the final touches on a unique ebook of our own (preorder Business Video Through the Eyes of Your Prospects).

Content is the way you charge and release the power stored in your marketing batteries (customer lists, email lists, social media networks).

And don't forget that ebooks now outsell print books.

 @TheGrok (Bryan Eisenberg) is one of the founders of the performance marketing movement -- we've called it conversion marketing. He has the cred to ask the hard questions. In this very impactful article, he asks "Really, is this so hard to do?" of the email marketers whom he sees as "broken."

These examples should leave you with a feeling of, "Oh yes. I get it now."

That can be a very valuable feeling.

 @neilpatel While it may sound self-serving to share with you an article on why you should spend money with a company like ours, a conversion optimization company, I think you'll find the points made by Neil Patel are a great guide to choosing your conversion optimization strategy.

Yes, you need a conversion optimization strategy, even if you don't hire consultants.

Given Neil's background of creating companies in the online marketing optimization space (KISSmetrics and CrazyEgg), I hope we'll see some more from him in the form of tools.

While this article discusses the bottom navigation bar for andriod apps, we often test "sticky" headers and footers on mobile websites. We call these kinds of tests "lead tophats" and "sticky shoes".

Our tests often don't favor the hamburger menu, so we are always looking for alternatives. This sticky shoe approach has the footer navigation change with context. Given the results, such an approach may increase mobile conversion and call rates for your mobile website.

Regular expressions rear their ugly head in more and more places. Google Analytics is just one.

For me the regular expression showed up in the excellent Yoast SEO plugin for Wordpress. I needed to redirect a URL that had parameters, like this:

http://conversionsciences.com/conversion-upside-report/?t=10000&v=344&x=250

To do this, I could not use a regular redirect, as everything after the ? would be stripped away. I needed to use a Regular Expression Redirect. However, this sort of thing -- using query parameters -- wasn't covered in any of the Yoast documentation.

This article gave me the hint I needed, and the technique that ended up working. To summarize, I used the following regular expression to match my URL with the parameters:

^\/conversion-upside-report($|\/.*$)

The parentheses save the matching contents into a variable, which I can access using $1 in the new URL, like this:

resources/conversion-rate-optimization-calculator/upside-report/$1

It worked great. Give it a try: http://conversionsciences.com/conversion-upside-report/?t=10000&v=344&x=250

Thanks to Himanshu.

Here's a nice roundup of do's and don'ts for conversion rate optimizers. Even experienced AB testers like us need to be reminded of the "big rocks" of CRO, and this article has them. Process, segmentation, qualitative research, and mobile.

Your brain works on two systems, one of which is the "adult" -- critical, discerning, investigative -- and the other which is "intuitive." While the intuitive just wants to have fun, the Adult shows up when there is a problem. If you are appealing to the intuitive with your website, don't do things that cause problems, otherwise, mommy will show up and ruin the fun.

If none of this makes sense, please just read this interesting article based on Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

Consistency is key in conversion. Automation helps us stay consistent. That is why I like this article from Christopher S. Penn. Best takeaway: Install "Shortcode Exec PHP"

It is astounding that these rotating hero shots are so common on e-commerce sites. We have seen in the lab that they are a sure way to reduce site engagement and crater conversion rates. Don't believe it? Tim Ash would know and lists the reasons in this eye-opening article. Please read it.

There is more on hero sliders in my most recent Search Engine Land column.

When users look for information, they have a goal and are on a mission. Even before you started to read this article, chances are you did because you either had the implicit goal of checking what's new on Smashing Magazine, or had the explicit goal of finding information about "Navigation Design".

Video has a relatively small part in my book, so I wanted to give you some more depth with this article by Joe Watson.

One of the things that freezes us when we're going to do video is the question, "what will we do?" From a conversion standpoint, the question is, "what will we test?" This implies more than one version of a video. There are ways to cut a video to test for length, style and focus, but testing implies multiple treatments. That's why we've been offering a video piloting service called Video Science.

Storyboarding may be the thing that gets you past considering. I know it works for me.

Barry Feldman @FledmanCreative leads this article off with a most vivid depiction of our end goal: "Start with a dead mouse." This is the ultimate goal of our content marketng. We want to accomplish something. The rest is equally as creative. My new book discusses content in the conversion process at length. I hope it is as entertaining as Barry.

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.

The author of this article lists 12 interesting insights taken from eye-tracking studies. He can't resist qualifying some of the ones he may disagree with. While every audience is different, these tips are excellent places to start on almost any page.

 @KISSMetrics - You don't have to be a psychologist to create good messages and strategies for your business, but it really helps to know the subtle things that make people more comfortable taking action. This article summarizes some of my favorite research on buyer psychology.

If you offer a trial of your product, use email to deliver "mints" of helpful information. This will increase the likelihood that they will buy. See #4.

Design your pricing in clusters around your most profitable offering. See #5.

Be specific in your calls to action. See #3.

Community involvement and social proof are also covered. See #1 and #2.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I do.