There are so many features in Google Analytics that make it the best free web analytics package out there, and I want to take a minute to highlight one of my favorites — the often overlooked e-mail feature.

On any page of your Google Analytics reports, you’ll find a small “Email” button at the top of the report. Clicking this button allows you to e-mail the report to your inbox, or even schedule automatic delivery of the report.

Note that the e-mail feature is contextual. If you want to receive the dashboard via e-mail, just click the “Email” button on the dashboard page. If you want Google Analytics to e-mail the traffic sources report to you, click the “Email” button on that page, and so on.

I routinely use this feature to send weekly dashboard reports to my clients. While dashboards don’t take the place of in-depth analysis, the weekly e-mail helps clients identify trends or potential problems.

For a long time, online retailers have focused more heavily on technology, logistics and merchandising than the design of their web sites. That’s not to say that retailers haven’t placed any emphasis on design, but the number of retailer redesigns is trending upward, and the focus of these redesigns is on better product organization and improved navigation according to Internet Retailer.
Some interesting points from the Internet Retailer study:

• 60.3% of merchants have redesigned their e-commerce sites in the past year
• Besides better product organization and improved navigation, site search and product reviews and ratings are top design goals
• Survey respondents say a typical e-commerce redesign takes from 3-18 months
• Only 56% of retailers get customer feedback before or after their redesign

Though many retailers are redesigning their web sites, I’ve found that many are failing to incorporate basic e-commerce usability best practices.

Food company Kashi recently overhauled its web site to include more social and community functions. The new site looks great from an aesthetic standpoint, and the site sports different ways for health-minded customers to communicate with the company and among themselves. But Kashi’s site falls short on selling its product online by ignoring many e-commerce usability best practices.

For example, if you browse into their Country Cheddar crackers page, you’ll see an “order now” button next to the photo of the Country Cheddar crackers. There’s no price or availability/shipping information shown next to the “order now” button. Click “order now” and the resulting page doesn’t let me order Country Cheddar crackers, but instead offers three options — a 4-Pack TLC Sampler, a TLC Crackers Mixed Case and a Custom Cracker Case (which has no explanation of what a “custom case” is). Rather than getting more granular, they have presented more options than I expected and made my choice to buy that much harder.

PetSmart.com also re-launched their web site, but at the most common screen resolution on some browsers I tested, the dropdown menu for “Dog” continues down past the bottom of the browser window, rendering the hidden options completely inaccessible.

It’s good that online retailers are paying more attention to site design, but many of them still fail to concentrate on the basics — effective communication of their value proposition and e-commerce usability best practices.

It’s a fact that even the “big boys” of internet retail leave money on the table, and GrokDotCom does a good job pointing out real examples of how large retailers could improve their conversion rate. My favorite is their latest screencast that shows how one of Petco’s Google Adwords ads clicks to a page that shows no products.

No matter the size of your ecommerce site, you should check out GrokDotCom’s conversion rate screencasts and see examples of how ecommerce sites fail at converting visitors to paying customers. By viewing these, you may get ideas for improving your own site.

Copyblogger has a post today on 5 Tips for Knockout Testimonials. Whether you’re business specializes in professional services or in ecommerce — or any other business in fact — you can benefit from testimonials on your web site.

Web sites are, by nature, impersonal. There’s no one to greet your web site visitor when they arrive at your web site, and your site visitors also come with concerns about whether they’ll be getting what you claim on your site. Testimonials ally those concerns since testimonials tend to be specific, objective and relevant.

In addition to Copyblogger’s 5 tips, here are a few more tips to get effective testimonials from your clients/customers.

• Don’t be afraid to ask for a testimonial. Many business owners aren’t completely comfortable asking for testimonials. Perhaps it’s because they don’t think they need testimonials or they are afraid that the customer will say “no.” In my experience, most clients/customers will gladly share a testimonial.
• Know how to ask for a testimonial. Asking a customer face-to-face is best, but over the phone is good as well. If you ask by e-mail, you’ll want to include some guidelines (see the next bullet point) so the customer knows how to structure the testimonial.
• Know what information to ask for. Be sure to ask the customer to specifically describe what work you performed for them. If relevant to your business, ask them to comment on your adherence to schedule and budget. Ask them to comment on the intangibles of how you did the job and finally, ask them to share results. Some customers/clients might be reluctant to share specific results, but ask them to be as specific as possible.

When people buy something or acquire a service, they are seeking a solution to a problem. If your testimonials can describe the problems your customers had and solutions your company provided, you’re well on the way to convincing prospective customers to work with you.

Looking for a good read on marketing? Ad Age has just the thing for you — its Power 150 media and marketing blogs. Included in the list are some of the more popular blogs (and personal favorites) like Duct Tape Marketing, the SEOmoz blog and GrokDotCom. Our friends at RKG even cracked the list with their blog.

Here are some others that I follow, and while these aren’t on the list, they should be because of the quality of the information they provide:

• Campaign Monitor Blog: This marketing blog primarily features e-mail marketing tips.
• Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog: Ecommerce blog covering usability, design and marketing.
• MarketingVOX: How did they miss this one? Features the latest online marketing news.
• Marketing Experiments blog: A more quantitative look at online marketing.
• Smiley Cat: Christian Watson’s Web Design Blog: Discusses topics in web design.