In 1999, The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants released some research about security and ecommerce after customer information was compromised on certain popular websites. I can already hear you questioning its relevance in 2009. But before you dismiss it, you should know one thing: it’s just as applicable today as it was then. Some may say that it’s even more so.

Take this excerpt:

“Consumers are looking for better ways to research and buy online, all the while requiring a reasonable amount of assurance and trust that the sites are safe and secure and that their information is …

These are troubling economic times. That much can’t be denied. Consumers feel the pinch as they find that it costs more to buy things. But now businesses are hurting, too. It’s also expensive to sell things.

Skyrocketing fuel costs have turned consumers to the Internet for their shopping needs. After all, it can be easier, quicker and cheaper to order something online if you find a good price and if shipping is cheap or even free. But therein lies the problem. While expensive gas has made shopping on the Internet more attractive to fuel-conscious consumers, it’s also made the …

Note: this post is a guest post by Ms. Katie Gatto . Your feedback is really appreciated.

When most people think about how they will measure the success of their blog they look to the numbers that are provided by their analytics.  While these numbers can be a helpful in figuring out your blog’s traffic and its sources, far too many people rely on the measures provided by analytics as a sole source of data.  By doing this you are cheating yourself out of a complete measure for your blog’s success.

Barack Obama has lead a very unique, successful online campaign that I believe has helped him achieve the popularity, excitement, and buzz this past year. However, last week, when I browsed to his website I found that his site may be falling into what we like to call: creating FUDs (fears, uncertainties, and doubts).

On most ecommerce websites category pages and their categorization schemes are driven by a business process giving very little attention to the heart of any transaction: the online visitor.

Ultimately, a category page plays an important supporting role in funneling traffic to product pages. Amazon.com, for example, expects the visitor to navigate to the product page to add an item to your cart.

Content is King!

The statement above has become the holy grail of blogging. No matter what we do content still is and will forever be the main catalyst to drive your blog to success. Without an eye catching, attention grabbing content it is hard to persuade readers to “hang” around your blog and compel them to subscribe. We have all seen blogs that have been launched around the same time but one hits the rock bottom whereas the other reaches the heights of success. They both might be expert in the same field, but one rises and the other fails. …

Most websites do not pay close attention to the design of their top navigation bar. Yet simple changes made on this location of the page can make huge differences in conversion optimization. Prior to going bankrupt, Tower reported that they were able to double their conversion rates by adding a new navigational feature to their site.

While there are no concrete rules on what elements you should include on your top bar, there are several elements you should consider.

Redesigning an existing ecommerce site is much harder than you may think. However, there are a couple of things that you can do to organize your ecommerce site that will immediately increase your conversion rate.