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It's like 1995 on the mobile web right now. In the 90s, we were feeling our way through the process of defining what a "web page" should be, mostly by just launching things.

Now we find ourselves in our own 1994 on the mobile web, trying to figure out what a "mobile experience" is.

Right down to how the navigation should work.

If you're struggling with how to present menus on a small screen, this article should help. My partner in CRO, Joel Harvey, will be spilling the beans on what we've been finding in our tests at Conversion Conference 2015.

Do you have a ticket yet?

So, should you use a carousel, those rotating hero images now found at the top of most B2B and B2C websites?

The answer is "carefully."

This clever little site illustrates the reasons rotating banners are so frustrating. The timing, the amount of text and the order all come into play.

We have been able to tune a rotating hero on an ecommerce site so that it outperformed a static image. But it took several test cycles and didn't work in every case.

Have a little chuckle at yourself and enjoy the content on this site -- if you can read fast.

 @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.

PayPal is a preferred method of payment for many of your visitors. Even if you've got a merchant account and gateway all setup, you should consider PayPal as an alternative source.

However, measuring transactions through PayPal is problematic. Or it was.

Here is an excellent post on how to configure your PayPal account and Google Analytics for full-transaction tracking, includkng Ecommerce tracking.

 @eConsultancy brings the excellent teaching of Claude Hopkins Scientific Advertising into our online world. It's almost conversion steampunk until you realize that we haven't invented very much original.

And we've left some smart ideas behind.

Enjoy these nine tips and you should be able to find a free PDF of Hopkins' book somewhere on the Web.

If not, email me.

 @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.

If you're a frequent reader of our blogs, you won't be surprised by this report from Custora stating that email is a more effective marketing channel than social networks.

In fact, I say in my book that email is the biggest social network on the planet. Business people plan their days by their inbox. They program audible notifications when new items come into their inbox. It's not smart, but it's true.

Of course, this doesn't mean that you should send self-promotional crap. That won't work in email, mail or social media. But certainly don't eliminate email from your marketing mix.

Keep these things in mind I'd your doing AB tests on SEO traffic. And you should be.

@_EricElliott makes a strong case for choosing Web apps for your mobile users over deploying native apps through the app stores. We can add to this that AB testing Web apps (Elliott calls them progressive web apps) is easier with the tools we have. Many advanced tools don't yet support native applications.

However, responsive web designs aren't enough. You should still put the effort in to craft a mobile-centric web app, as if you were developing a native app.

We can detect pages with low scroll rates using click-tracking software like CrazyEgg. When we see a page with poor scroll performance, we have two options: Move key content higher on the pageAdd cues to increase scrollingHere are some ideas for how to increase scrolling.

WORD OF WARNING

Use of animations and parallax should be used with extreme caution. Test into these treatments as they may detract from your content, and introduce technical problems on certain devices and browsers.

I frequently say that there are thousands of ways to increase your conversion rate, lead generation and revenue. With that thought in mind, you should be less intimidated by this little list of 40 ideas from @KISSMetrics.

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.

 @KISSMetrics - David Ogilvy is experiencing something of a renaissance these days as his experience and research in offline marketing are proving true in online marketing. And we need him. Images are an abused medium on the Web, and this article points out mistakes that you are probably making.

There are some real nuggets here, such as "Captions under images are read on average 300% more than the body copy itself" Ask your designer what research he has for his decisions.

This is an important article, and you should read it before you blindly follow the advice of lazy designers.

If all problems are opportunities, then error messages and error pages are generally missed opportunities. Marketing should be policing the errors reported on their website, messages that are usually written by a techie in IT. John Ekman give us five steps toward writing error messages that say "Yes!" instead of making the visitor feel like an idiot.

How is this touching video different from your corporate press release? In every way. "The Human Voice is Unmistakeable." In Your Customer Creation Equation (coming in June) I make the point that your business should be using the content it naturally makes to feed your audience.

Clearly Michael Lazerow is good with an iPad and Keynote.

What are you good with?

"Enclose" the checkout process.

This means to create a distraction-free bubble when your visitor has decided to take that bold step and buy your product.

The psychological thing you're working against here is that, when asked to let go of something of value -- like our money -- we are more than happy to delay that decision.

Maybe we'll just shop a bit more. Maybe we'll check one other place for the right price.

That is why any distraction in your checkout process can be an out for a buyer, an out that they may never return from. I've seen checkout processes that have social media icons in them.

Really? Is this the right time to remind someone that they need to check Facebook?

Go buy something on your site and just look for all of the distractions you find. You might feel a bit embarrassed.

@pallavkaushish offers a nice check list for things to test. However, you should use this list to develop a list of hypotheses. Rather than just testing these, use your analytics to see if these might really be the problem.

I would add one more to the top of the list: headlines and copy around calls to action. This has proven more effective than testing CTA buttons for us.

While Kickstarter isn't a typical landing page, this Kickstarter project does a great job of using video in a persuasive way, and including a call to action tied into the page.

If you're using video on your landing pages, you should point to or reference the form on the page in the video.

While we never do tests to achieve social virality, I think we can learn something from how people interact with images on social networks.

Don't take the results of this report as meaning that you should make the images on your website animated or vertical or eliminated. You may find the exact opposite for more engaged audiences.

Instead, add this bit of information to your knowledge base when testing social campaigns. You may want to test image orientation, brightness or animation.

But always test to the bottom line.