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While good UX (User eXperience) does not always translate into higher conversion rates or revenue per visit (RPV), these trends point to excellent hypotheses for what MIGHT increase the performance of your site.

Single Page Sites: Simplicity is often a great way to increase conversion rates Infinite scrolling: Consider this for category pages. I haven't tested this yet. Persistent top nav: I am very curious to see if this increases CR and RPV. Let me know if you've tested it. Web 2.0 Aesthetics: I hope this includes the rotating banners at the top of so many sites. Typography Returns: Your message is the most important part of your conversion optimization plan. Typography can help... or hurt

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

Retargeting Emails - Do E-commerce customers like or loathe them? March 10th, 2011Leave a commentGo to comments By Charles Nicolls, SeeWhy At SeeWhy, when we first launched our remarketing service in 2009, Randy Stross wrote a piece about email remarketing in The New York Times suggesting that while remarketing might be a great idea for ecommerce websites, it's not a great idea for consumers. He likened emails following up on abandoned shopping carts to a salesman chasing you down the street if you didn't buy from his store. There are major differences, of course. We've long argued that remarketing emails, when done well, not only drive conversions but also build brand trust. They can deliver great service and provide customers with the confidence to return to buy-either online, by phone or in store. If Randy was right and customers universally resented the intrusion, then these emails wouldn't work. In aiming to answer the question more substantively, I turned to data, and specifically email marketing benchmarks. The key metrics to look at to determine whether customers like or loathe remarketing emails are: the recovery rate the open rate the clickthrough rate the unsubscribe rate Frankly, the evidence is overwhelming: Remarketing, when done well, is appreciated by customers. Here's the evidence: (1) The recovery rate The recovery rate is the percentage of visitors that abandon shopping carts, and remarketed visitors thatthen return and purchase following remarketing. At SeeWhy, we measure recovery rates across all our customers, and currently the average is 20 percent. So, one in five shopping cart abandoners come back and buy, having being remarketed. In some cases, the recovery rate is as high as 50 percent. Moreover, when remarketed customers buy, they spend on average 55 percent more than customers who didn't abandon their shopping carts. (2) The open rate The average email open rate for remarketing emails is currently 46 percent, m

We are honored to be on the list of Ecommerce Platform's top 100 Business Blogs. There are some amazing blogs on this list. You should check them out and add them to your Flipboard.

I love the way The Conversion Scientist looks on Flipboard.

Now, you can get your marketing advice from the same part of the country that your favorite team plays. If you're a fan of the Dallas Mavericks or the Chicago Bears or Oklahoma University, you'll want to get your learning from one of these ten blogs from the middle of the country.

These are the top 10, and we are proud to come in at number 7.

When calculating your conversion rate, the bottom half of the fraction is visits. The lower this number is, the high your conversion rate. That's right. You can increase your conversion rate by lowering your traffic. Likewise, you can destroy your conversion rate by driving lots of unqualified traffic to your site. AdWords and SEM are designed to get only qualified traffic to your site, traffic that is likely to increase your conversion rate.

So, I'm pleased that my column on the Backward Landing Page was included in this roundup of AdWords and SEM guides. After all, the top half of your conversion rate fraction is the number of conversions. Landing pages have everything to do with that.

For those of us with short attention spans, here is almost every best practice in conversion each described in two sentences or so.

I particularly appreciated the distinction of "Lift Versus Shift."

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.

 @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?

@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.

The greatest threat to the accuracy of your analytics data is inconsistent implementation. Too often, Javascript "Tags" are left off of some pages, put on some pages twice or simply implemented wrong. And, as your site changes, more inconsistencies are created.

This affects more than just analytics tools. Advertising networks, ratings and review systems, user feedback systems and more rely on properly implemented javascript tags.

The promise of "Tag Managers" is that you can put one set of code on all of your pages, and then control, monitor and edit the javascript for all of these tags in one place, using rules to determine which tags get placed on which pages. It's another way for marketing to monitor the implementation of online systems without being beholden to IT.

Yay!

So, how are the biggest ecommerce companies using Tag Managers? Here's your answer.

We've had the privilege of working with several colleges to optimize their websites. The lessons laid out in this article cannot be overstated. According to SpyFu.com, of 5,050 websites in the "University" and "College" industries who spend more than $5000 per month on search ads, only 275 have split testing software installed. However, 4,208 have some form of web analytics software installed.

The bottom line is that those universities who are involved in testing their sites are going to win more top students to graduate and undergraduate programs.

"Many private universities spend upward of $2,000 to recruit each student who enrolls." A little optimization will go a long way.

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

Greatg collection of tools from MarketingExperiments for testing plans.

The Conversion Scientist is #23! 

I find it very refreshing that "Conversion Rate Optimization" made a top ten list for a successful search startup. "Conversion Rate Optimization is Essential, not Optional." These principles are helpful for any business that depends on the Web for leads or sales.

I rarely find "Top Ways" lists for which I agree with everything. This one is spot on, 12 times out of 12. If you are running a blog, these are the things to look at (and I need to make some adjustments to The Conversion Scientist blog).

There is more and more a tension between IT and Marketing. New tools put IT prowess in marketers' hands. The quotes from the CIO-CMO Forum show us an emerging strength in marketing. But IT is our friend in the process. They just need to realize that they can materially impact revenue in the enterprise. Marketing is a way IT can assert itself as a profit center, not just a utility. Great quotes.

Great page for lead generation.