Google announced on its Inside Adwords blog recently that the quality of your landing page affects your ad’s position.

Since I have a creative background, I’ve been a proponent of landing page testing all along. Now, it pays off. Having a landing page that is relevant to the terms for which your ad is served is of paramount importance.

How does this affect Google Adwords advertisers? If you’re already sending your traffic to a relevant landing page, you’re ahead of the curve, and your ads may appear before those advertisers/competitors that send their traffic to their homepage. Many advertisers simply send their traffic to their homepage, which is not necessarily a relevant page.

Take the term “widgets.” Advertiser A bids on “widgets” and sends his traffic to the homepage of his site, while advertiser B bids on “widgets” and sends his traffic to a page about widgets. Advertiser B has a better chance of appearing first, all else equal.

I advise my clients to tailor their landing pages to their ads, and test different landing page designs to find the best solution for their business. The placement of key page elements can dramatically affect response rates, as can color and relevance to the search term.

If you pay for search engine advertising, let me show you how your landing pages can bring better results. Contact me and we can talk about your goals, your current landing page design, and how you can get better results.

Not long ago, I read an article on steps you can take to convert visitors to buyers on your online retail web site. This 5-point checklist for increasing conversion made a lot of sense to me, and I wanted to share some thoughts on the first item on their list — checkout.

Simplify your web site’s checkout process

One of the top reasons that users abandon their shopping carts is because the checkout process is too long. Other reasons cited in a Global Millennia Marketing Study include requiring too much personal information, poor navigation, poor download times, confusing checkout process, and requiring registration to purchase.

Checkout is a key area of your online retail site because when people decide they want to buy, your site shouldn’t prevent them from doing so. Here are some ways to reduce checkout complexity and make the user experience better:

Don’t make a user log in or register

People don’t use your site every day, so chances are they will not remember their login or password for their site account. Allow people to bypass this step, but let them know that they may be losing advanced capabilities like order tracking or viewing order history. Instead of requiring registration pre-sale, incent them to create an account after the sale.

Keep it simple

Ask for the minimum amount of information it takes for the user to complete the sale. Anything that distracts your user from the task of checking out is taking money out of your pocket.

Additionally, you’ll need to find a balance between the number of screens you’ll need in your checkout flow and breaking the information up into manageable chunks. Hint: don’t make your checkout flow one long screen since this requires scrolling through many pages and reading through cluttered text. Also, seeing one large form may scare a user away — remember, they don’t want to have to fill in a bunch of personal information. Breaking up screens can give the perception that you’re collecting less information.

Finally, now’s not the time to ask a user to fill out a marketing survey. Information that users fill out during checkout should be mission-critical data only. Save the survey for after the sale.

Reduce download times

Make sure your server is equipped to handle the demand that people will put on it, and make sure your pages are “lean and mean.” Reduce graphics as much as possible. Many sites do this effectively by simplifying their navigation at the top of the page and not displaying what a user would see if they were outside of checkout. Pages should load in two seconds or less.

Measure checkout effectiveness

So how can you measure the effectiveness of your checkout flow? The most common measure is called “cart conversion,” or the ratio of the number of people that order and the number of people that begin the checkout process. Theoretically, you would expect 100% cart conversion, but this isn’t the case. High shipping costs and other factors cause cart abandonment in checkout, and you’ll have to find ways to combat these barriers elsewhere.

Higher cart conversion has a direct effect on your bottom line — it’s not hard to monetarily justify investments aimed at improving the checkout process.

Examining your checkout flow and correcting even small issues and usability problems can have a positive impact on your bottom line.

If you’re a web retailer, one of the most important metrics for you is your conversion rate, or the rate at which your site converts browsers into purchasers. I recently found a site called Conversion Chronicles that contains in-depth information on conversion rates.

While the site breaks down average conversion rates for each industry, the average conversion rate for all sites is 2.3% and varies widely among verticals. If your site isn’t achieving the average conversion rate for your vertical, you should look at the design and usability of the site, as well as pricing and merchandising. It also would pay to examine your search engine marketing strategy‚Äîperhaps you’re targeting the wrong keywords.

Another ecommerce find today is a study by ForeSee Results. The finding is that factors other than price have a significant impact on the buying decisions of online shoppers.

This study examined consumers’ satisfaction with different online retail sites and considered these factors: price, available selection, and overall experience (look and feel, navigation, function, performance and site capabilities).

Netflix.com, Amazon.com, QVC.com, Newegg.com and LLBean.com were highest in customer satisfaction and had a 36% higher conversion rate than retailers with the lowest customer satisfaction.

The study did not find a significant correlation between customer satisfaction and overall sales, but noted that customer satisfaction measures were an indicator of the future success of the online retailer.

A study out today says that many novice online buyers are concerned with credit card security, with only 23% believing that their purchase is secure. As an online retailer, you should be very careful about security‚Äîthat goes without saying. You should also be sure to let your users know your site is secure. I’ve done this in a variety of ways. I’ve posted a security policy on the online retail site I operate, and this policy is linked together with the privacy policy. Another way to instill some trust is to get approved by Verisign or Trust-e, and display these logos on your site.

You’ll notice that many established online retailers have moved these logos or security badges from their homepage to another page on their site (maybe a security page or customer service area). While I feel this is an acceptable practice, this latest study suggests that if you’re selling something low-tech to new internet users, you should probably keep that security badge on the homepage.

There’s a thought-provoking article for you ecommerce folks out there over at Ecommerce Times called “Stop Experimenting on Your Customers.” The purpose of the article is to argue against A/B field testing on your web site and to instead intercept customers while they’re on your web site and ask if they will participate in a customer experience test.

The argument the author of the article makes is that A/B field testing will reveal what test variable is better than the other, but not why. Other downsides to A/B field testing that the author provides is that sales can decline from a poor-performing page and that testing without customers’ knowledge can damage your trust for your brand.

With this proposed participatory research method, you, the web site operator, can find out why one test variable works better than another. Customers that know they are participating in a test will readily tell you what their goals for the visit are and what they are experiencing.

Frankly, my opinion is that both methods have their place, but I much prefer traditional A/B field testing. For starters, revenue is not sacrificed because in a well-designed test, the test sample (the B version) is a small percentage of site traffic. Also, in a well-designed test, there is only one variable on the page (the A version is the control), so you can actually get at why one design is preferred to another.

Personally, I’ve been involved in many A/B field tests over my career, and I’ve seen great results and learnings. I’ve used them for e-mail marketing communications, site homepages and landing pages. In fact, Google makes it very easy to set up A/B tests on your Google Adwords.

I’ve also used a testing technique similar to participatory customer experience testing. We contracted Usability Sciences to deploy their WebIQ product, where a customer is asked a host of questions when entering the site and then when they complete certain tasks on the site. Only about 10% or less of people asked to participate actually participated, and the results were not statistically significant due to the low participation rate.

We all know that offers and promotions change so quickly in today’s ecommerce world that a method that produces quick results is needed. As for me, I’ll stick to the traditional A/B field tests for ecommerce sites. In many cases, the only cost of the test is the time it takes to develop a new page and analyze the results.