Bloggers Digest March 2010

Bloggers Digest is our monthly ritual that highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers.

• Avinash Kaushik’s 10 Fundamental Web Analytics Truths might just set you free from the bondage of analysis paralysis (and just bad analysis).

• Want to import your Facebook stats into Google Analytics? Here’s 5 steps to make it happen. Or, track your email campaigns in Google Analytics.

• Jakob Nielsen’s latest research on attention above and below the fold using eye tracking studies is eye opening. Yes, people do scroll, but it appears there is an 80/20 rule where 80% of attention is given to content above the fold, and the remaining 20% below, waning more and more the further down the page one goes.

• Many ecommerce category pages use pagination to show only a certain number of products per page, whether for usability, SEO or performance reasons. (I always recommend including a “View All” link.) If you use pagination, check out SEOmoz’ best practices.

• Want to improve your web form usability? Here’s a golden tip from Luke Wroblewski: use flexible inputs that allow the customer to enter credit card (or telephone and zipcode) information in the format they choose (dashes, brackets, spaces or none), rather than forcing only the format the database recognizes.

• On the topic of forms, how can you improve form usability on mobile devices?

• If you’re chasing the holy grail of conversion rate improvement, Dr. Pete brings you down to Earth with When Conversion Rate Isn’t Enough. Don’t sacrifice your traffic, margin or loyalty simply to boost one KPI.

• Information Architects are From Mars, SEOs are From Venus explores 3 ways SEO-centric site architecture can mess up your user experience.

• The new battle cry for conversion rate optimization is “test it!” But are there hidden costs in landing page testing?. Yes, according to Tim Ash.