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We are always looking for alternative experience to test on mobile. It's clear now that we can't move desktop features to mobile and be successful. Here is a list of great alternatives to the strained hamburger menu.

 @peeplaja - This is about as complete a summary of home page best practices that I've ever seen. Peep could have made this an eBook. There are some great examples, specific recommendations and tons of links to other resources. This ambitious post covers:Map out buyer personasCraft a value propositionBuild a connectionUse proper visualsDefine most wanted actionCreate call to actionWrite user oriented copyAdd trust elementsTest lengthCheck load speed

It's great to optimize  high-traffic websites, but the traffic brings it own set of analysis problems. In particular, the number of things you can test goes up, the amount of data goes up and finding insights becomes more and more difficult. Excel is a great tool, but I'm looking for some tools to help cut the analysis time. Here is a nice list of free tools that I will be exploring over the coming weeks.

The question to ask on a landing page is, "Will WOW increase my conversions?" Some of these "WOW" features have proven to reduce conversion rates.  Rotating banners of any sort attract the eye away, and can pull readers out of the "meat" of the page where they are more likely to convert. Accordian menus and tabbed content may prevent scanners from quickly consuming the page. It's a bit of a Catch 22: they may not have the patience to click on each item until they've scanned the content... which is hidden. Social widgets can deliver social proof and increase conversion rates. However, social media chicklets that let the visitor go off to Facebook or Twitter work against the purpose of a landing page: to keep visitors on the page until they make a decision. Why send traffic that you've paid for off to Mark Zuckerberg? Lightbox popovers are universally derided if you ask people. However, they almost always increase conversion rates. 

Every audience is different, so test these WOW features with your own crowd.

Imagine if you were given six months of identity protection by Target or Zappos or Neiman Marcus before they had an online security breach. Imagine if the identity protection was valid for any purchase you made. This is the promise of AllClearID. They are a client of ours and are at the forefront of revising the way we look at online security.

If you run an ecommerce site, this is a value proposition that will increase your conversion rates. We've done the tests.

@unbounce - Writing headlines and subject lines and tweets all have something in common: You have a limited number of characters to get a prospect's attention in a very noisy environment.

Steve Young gives us some tested subject lines to consider in our campaigns.

Have some fun with your subject lines and don't take yourself too seriously!

 @conversionIQ has a list of ecommerce sites that seem to be doing things right. These are sites that follow best practices, and thus we would assume they are enjoying high conversion rates and strong revenue per visit.

Of course, if we were to make a list of 50 ways your site could improve its conversion rate and RPV, we'd be right on about 25 of them. That's why we always back our recommendations up with a series of A/B or split tests.

Nonetheless, it's always good to look at those online athletes that are at the top of their game.

Would you like a free strategy session with a Conversion Scientist?

 @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

Marketers have it tough. Just look at all of the things we can optimize! Where do we start?!

Well, we can start with these 25 articles, including one from yours truly. Search Optimization Social Optimization Local Optimization Email Marketing (No Optimization?) Mobile Optimization Content Marketing Conversion Optimization Reputation Management

Conversion tools and tips from the Performable guys

Wonder which sites are the top-converting sites on the Web. Here they are, with some reasons they do so well.

Five Conversion Case Studies

Testing is a competitive advantage, much like the innovations of Paul Brown. Whoever does it first get's first mover advantage.

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

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.

This is a great overview of Landing Page best practices complete with examples. You'll find a lot in common with our Chemstry of the Landing Page presentation. Headlines and Ad Copy Clear and Concise Headlines Impeccable Grammar Trust indicators Call to Action Buttons Lose the Links Visuals (images) Above the Fold Always be testing

 @getelastic Linda Bustos sees what I see: that the state of mobile websites is like the state of desktop websites circa 1995. What will we look back at and laugh at in five years?

I think we'll laugh at the "hamburger" menu, what Linda calls the Adidas menu.

I also think we'll laugh at responsive designs for small screens, like phones. Small screens need a custom design.

The good news is that we have better tools for testing, and I expect Mobile 1.0 to have a short life relative to Web 1.0.

Linda's article is full of examples for you to not emulate. It will be seen as a harbinger of change in mobile.

The analytics at one of our clients indicated that some 40% of the visitors did not have Javascript enabled. This was a shock, and something we hadn't seen before. We needed a way to verify that the analytics was reporting accurately.

Our development team found this interesting approach to setting up a test of how Javascript is used by your audience.