Should a small business blog? That’s the question that Bill Slawski, Director of Search Marketing at KeyRelevance, Inc., has answered in a blog post over at Search Engine Land. On all points, Slawski hits the nail on the head. The many benefits of writing a small business blog are covered in Bill’s post, and I highly suggest reading it.

My experience with blogging has been extremely positive. I’ve maintained this blog since April 2005, and other than word-of-mouth advertising, I get more work from this blog than any other source.

By writing a blog, companies can communicate their experience in a practical and helpful way. They are able to share what they do with prospective clients in a way that goes beyond buzzword-laden marketing copy. If you’re thinking of starting a small business blog, I highly suggest reading Slawski’s article.

I truly understand the importance of using a “call-to-action” in web page links and emails. For years though, I’ve tried to avoid using the words “click here” in links and images on web sites. I assumed that if people could recognize a link on a web page or e-mail, they would know it’s clickable.

If the data is right, I am wrong. I read a Marketing Sherpa experiment (via Copyblogger) that suggests that “click here,” or “click link words” as Marketing Sherpa calls them, can lift clickthrough rates by 8% or more. I’ve always been a proponent of writing so that people know exactly what action they should take, but that’s apparently not enough. Using the words “Click to …” or “Click here to …” can significantly improve the rates at which these links are clicked.

Perhaps including the words “click here” draws people’s attention, or maybe “click here” more accurately informs people of what they are supposed to do. Regardless, I’ll now be considering using these “click link words” more frequently in web copy I write.

If your company uses its web site as a marketing tool or sales tool, you can’t afford not to test new things. One powerful technique to help your company make huge site improvements with a relatively small effort is the incremental redesign.

Incremental redesign doesn’t involve a total overhaul of your web site — rather, just a single page or page template. It can involve your homepage, a landing page for a paid search campaign, your e-commerce product page or even your e-mail marketing campaign.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say your company runs an e-commerce web site, and you think you could improve your conversion rate. Use Excel to create a simple spreadsheet and log some “control” information — the date range and conversion rate. Pick one page — in this case, a product page. The objective for this page is to convince the customer to add the product to their shopping cart, so you hypothesize that the add to cart button isn’t large and colorful enough. Make a simple change to your product page template by making the add to cart button larger and more colorful. Next, log the test date range in your spreadsheet, what change you made to the template, and the conversion rate for the date range. Having this spreadsheet allows you to compare the before and after, and make a decision as to whether you’ll keep the new add to cart button. Keep this spreadsheet up-to-date over time and it will also serve as a log of what you’ve done in the past and what results you measured from those changes.

Of course, it may take many tests before you find the right page design, but this low-cost technique can be used on almost any page of your web site or even on a landing page.

It works. Last year, an online retailer hired me to improve their conversion rate. After looking at their site, I deduced that the single biggest barrier to conversion was their product page template. A large product image took up the entire width of the page, the pricing/value proposition wasn’t clear and users had to scroll before seeing any product information. With the old page template in place, the site conversion rate was 0.91%. After the product page was redesigned, site conversion increased to 2.76%, all because we changed a single page on their site!

Often, significant improvements can be made without redesigning your entire web site. I encourage small businesses to try the cost-effective technique of incremental redesigns to improve the effectiveness of their web sites.

Web designers, take note! The folks at Campaign Monitor are undertaking the valiant effort of trying to establish baseline standards that e-mail clients should meet, and they need your input.

Campaign Monitor is asking designers to contribute ideas for what should be supported in baseline cascading style sheet standards. Go leave your comment now.

Notes for the non-technical: If you aren’t a web designer, designing and coding an e-mail is a difficult process that often involves using antiquated coding techniques because e-mail clients (i.e. Outlook, Gmail, etc.) don’t support the same types of code. Establishing standards would not only make it easier to code HTML e-mail campaigns, it would ensure proper rendering in all e-mail clients so your e-mails look as intended.

The folks at Campaign Monitor recently posted 30 free HTML e-mail newsletter templates on their web site. These newsletter templates, while generic from a branding perspective, have been tested in a variety of common e-mail programs (and web-based e-mail apps like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail) so you can rest assured that your e-mail newsletter will render properly and consistently.

Because you’ll also want to include a text-only version when you send out your e-mail newsletter, Campaign Monitor has also provided three well-formatted text-only newsletter templates.