Best Practices In Conversion: Our New Site

April 17, 2007

Our new site doesn’t look that different, but we made a lot of changes (to the site and the company) — I got tired of telling customers the “right” thing to do, and not doing it myself.

  • We converted the whole site to .php and added a WordPress blog (see? you are reading it.) I was getting so much link love over at Blogger, and it was such a split strategy. It will take a while until we have the kind of links here that we had over there, but it will come. Especially if my friends help and change our address on their blogrolls to www.lunametrics.com/blog
  • We created great onsite search and onblog search. Go ahead and give it a test ride. Lots of people go to sites and start with the search box; I just wanted ours to be as good as it could be.
  • We now have a custom 404 error page, so that visitors don’t feel chastised when they ask for a page that has moved. Whether it’s your mistake or ours, we’ll take the blame.
  • We moved our email marketing sign-up (which is only one by one, very small) above our contact form, on every page. That way, both of them are above the fold.
  • Our form now includes a captcha (“the human test”) so that the robots and bots don’t spam us with fake forms all day long.
  • We changed our secondary navigation to include both Google Analytics and Multivariate Testing. And we moved KPIs and Software selection off of our navigation. This is because all the people who asked for KPI help wanted help with key performance indicators on the factory floor. It’s because people would call and ask such easy software questions that it broke my heart to charge them. And of course, it’s because LunaMetrics became a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant. (GAAC)
  • And speaking of the whole GAAC thing, we have three new hires! We have a new summer intern, Heather Dezayas, we have Stephan Mack, who is going to become an expert at Urchin and configuration of Google Analytics; and Shareen Jordan is going to join us as Director of Web Analytics. I think Shareen will have her work cut out for her in analytics AND multivariate testing AND conversion science. Both Shareen and Heather are starting right after the Summit. Where I hope to learn more about all the things I haven’t had two minutes to learn about WordPress, which is mostly everything. (Like all those plugins that Justin sent; I haven’t had time to touch them.)

Robbin
LunaMetrics