9+ tips for improving your website's effectiveness (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – March 23, 2012)

We’ve spent some time this week looking at why you should redesign your website and how much a redesign costs. To finish out the week, here’s a round-up of other design and website improvement links from the Thinks archives as well as other sources. Enjoy!

1. If you’re not ready to do a full redesign, but still want to improve your customer’s experience, our Web Analytics Fundamentals Series, looked at ways to learn what’s working on your website. We’ve also highlighted quick ways to identify what’s important to fix on your site.
2. Once you’ve identified the greatest areas of need, you can check out this simple tip to improve your site’s conversion rate and our 6 ways to improve your bounce rate.
3. Speaking of fixing your bounce rate, long-time FOT Linda Bustos (that’s Friend of Thinks, for you new folks), explains that, in addition to improving your website business, bounce rate can improve your search rankings, too.
4. Of course, as you make improvements, A/B tests can help ensure you’re getting the greatest benefit. But if you’re new to A/B testing, check out what an A/B test looks like and our ultimate A/B case study roundup for a better understanding of how A/B tests work.
5. If you’re still not convinced you want to try A/B testing, take a look at why A/B testing is always the right answer.
6. Next, avoid common but simple mistakes on your site by reviewing our e-commerce errors roundup.
7. Check out Whitney Wilding’s thoughts at GrokDotCom about determining, tracking and calculating your site goals.
8. You also might want to review these 4 steps to improving your landing page’s performance.
9. And, finally, finish your day by looking at 5 common mistakes killing your online marketing.

Whether you choose to redesign your entire site, or just do some “spring cleaning,” I hope these tips set you up for loads of success going forward.

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