The ever changing world of e-commerce is always exciting! No, really, it is.  There are constantly new and innovative ways to create a better shopping experience for your customers, ideas on how to increase your conversion rates, and ultimate how to make your e-commerce site better.

There are a few different ways that we have found to keep up with e-commerce.

eCom Experts Podcast

During the day I need the ‘extra’ noise, and podcasts are the answer to my prayers.  Podcasts and audiobooks seem to be a constant on my itunes, but let’s face it, free podcasts are better for the budget.  Shawna Fennell hosts a weekly podcast, eCom Experts.  The eCom Experts is fairly new, debuting in November of 2009.  She is very enjoyable to listen to and breaks down theories and ideas, so they are easy to understand.  Subscribe to eCom Experts to hear her weekly podcast.

Get Elastic Blog

This blog is a must if you are involved in any way with e-commerce.  Linda Bustos authors this awarding winning blog with the idea of helping e-commerce sites in every aspect of their business.  You can find information on marketing, technical, and the latest trends in the e-commerce world.  In addition to writing on the blog, Linda also has guest writes, to mix up the flavor.  There are daily posts, and I have found them very relevant to our everyday operations of our e-commerce sites.

Anything Avanish Kaushik

I know – it is a little broad.  Avanish is the author of Occam’s Razor Blog, the best-selling book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, and the new book, Web Analytics 2.0.  He has also hosted analytics webinars, and is very involved with analytics education.  He has his finger on the pulse of analytics!  Following him on twitter, and keeping up with his publications can be very helpful.

These are my favorite three ways to keep up with e-commerce.  Let us know where you find your update to date e-commerce information!  I would love to expand this list.

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The XXI Olympic Winter Olympic Games are also being called the “Social Games.” Based on sponsors clever ways of gaining the spotlight, more consumers will have their eyes glued to their iPhone and computer screens, than the actual broadcast on TV. If major sponsors can motivate 500 million Internet transactions as a result of the Super Bowl (a one-day event), can you imagine what sponsors, apps, social networks and search engines can gain from sixteen days of sporting events in Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics?

Reaching out via social media, this Olympics may rival China in attention, if not in spectacle. On the months leading up to the event, the marketing teams of a hundreds of brands have been strategizing as to the most effective means to advertise its product and services using social media distribution. Both social networks will be covering the events in Vancouver closely and may prove to be a more informative source than even TV.

With Twitter’s more than 23 million hits and 1.2 billion tweets per month, Twitter will no doubt have a direct effect on Olympic information and viewership in 2010.  Another feature released by Twitter just in time for the Olympics, is a Verified Tweeting Olympians resource page where you can cross-reference what the athletes are tweeting about in real-time from one source. Presently this site is following 100 athletes from Apolo Ohno to Joannie Rochette.

On Facebook, the International Olympic Committee has created an Olympic Games Page, which already has more than 1.2 million followers. The page plans to feature updates, photos and videos submitted by the athletes. The International Olympic Committee is also using Facebook to conduct a fan photo contest, awarding free tickets to events to winners, and has created an Olympic Mini-Games on their social network.

So the Social Games are in full swing in the social media space and it will be interesting to see how Vancouver fares as a result. Eighteen months after the spectacular opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, the organizers of the Winter Games in Vancouver are challenged to top the Chinese. Stated as the first-ever “Social Games” the excitement created by social media might be the stepping stone to make the opening ceremonies and subsequent competitions stand out from previous Olympics.

As a result of all of us getting social, let’s hope the 2010 Games are one of the best organized and most enjoyable Olympics ever. So rev up those mobile phones/ laptops and let’s hit the slopes!

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The weakest point of most online accounts are their passwords. This potential security threat can become just that much worse if your password is stolen and you happen to use the same password for a lot of different services.

It is hard to memorize good strong passwords which is why they are seldom used.

Ask yourself if your passwords have the following:

• 12 or more characters
• Lowercase
• Uppercase
• Numbers
• Symbols

If the answer was no for most of the above you need to  dramatically improve the strength of your passwords, thus making it much harder to be guessed or hacked.

Luckily there is free software to make this easier on you, such as LastPass.com and PassPack.com among many others.

These allow you to securely store your passwords, and you only need a single master password to decrypt and access your information. Make sure it is a good one though or you will defeat the purpose.

Once you have software like LastPass in place you can start using very secure passwords for all of your accounts.

How do you remember quality passwords:
Step 1: color: yellow
Step 2: symbol: *
Step 3: noun: horse
Step  4: number: 138
Step 5: capitalize one letter: H
Final Password: yellow*Horse138
By doing the password this way you will find you can actually remember it and it is very secure.

How often do you change passwords?

It is highly recommended that you change passwords of importance, atleast once every 3 months,  consider making it even more frequently if the data related to the account is of any value to anyone.

Own a website? Ask your server admin when the last time your key server passwords were changed? You may be surprised. You really should make a list of important passwords to change and set an email reminder to change them every few months.  Quickbooks, Email, Bank, Server, Paypal, Credit Cards..you get the idea.

Most people do not start thinking about password security until it is too late. Nothing shuts down business like your company bank account or server being compromised. So act now and save yourself the trouble.

Bonus Tip:
The best password in the world is no good if the security questions (for password recovery) is way too easy. In what city were you born? Anyone can find that out! Make sure to write a custom security question whenever possible or at least pick the one hardest to guess.

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On January 12, 2009 Google Inc. posted a very important blog post about reviewing their business operations in China. In 2006 Google.cn went live in attempt to increase access of information for people in China. However, the Chinese Government censored a large amount of information on Google.cn. Until now, Google allowed this type of censorship.

In December of 2009 a highly sophisticated cyber attack on Google had originated from China. Google launched an investigation for these cyber attacks. During the investigation, they found evidence that suggested the goal of the attacks were to access control over Gmail accounts owned by Chinese human rights activists. After further review, only two Gmail accounts were accessed by third parties. Only the accounts profile information and subject line were read, the content of the actual emails were left untouched. Because of this problem, Google has decided they will no longer censor the results for Google.cn.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has come out strong in defense of Google’s threat to pull out of China unless Beijing permitted it to “operate an unfiltered search engine”.

However, a new report from Fox News has suggested that Google is in “delicate” talks with the Chinese Government about trying to keep business open in China. The main business would be the new Google phones, advertising sales team, and its research center.

After Google’s decisions, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmar has announced they will continue censoring information for the Chinese Government. In an interview with ABC Bill Gates stated that China’s censorship is“very limited”. A large number of the Chinese media supported Mr. Gates statements.

It will be very interesting to see how this situation will play out in the next few months.

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I love getting coupons.  The thought that I could save money on anything gets me very excited.  Call me crazy, but I am that person that keeps a plastic bag full of coupons in my purse and a folder in my e-mail box entitled “coupons”.  Just in case I am near a Chick-fil-a, I can use that coupon for the free chicken sandwich that they e-mailed me last week, or if I decide that I cannot live without a new jacket from J.Crew.  I have a coupon code ready to be used for just about any occasion.  To keep up with my love affair with coupons, I will freely give my e-mail address to just about any organization.  Therefore, I receive an enormous amount of e-mails from a wide range of companies on weekly basis.

This past year the world of e-mail marketing has truly taken on a life of its own.  The top three trends over the past year have to do with frequency, quality and social media.

Frequency

The frequency of e-mail marketing has sky rocketed in the past year.  The once a month e-mail blast has developed into a very precise weekly, or some times daily e-mail with the upcoming sale dates, coupon code, or new product arrival information.  Every occasion is proceeded with an e-mail marketing campaign.  E-mails from J.Crew have almost become a staple in my inbox.  They have developed an almost daily e-mail marketing campaign, mainly targeting sales due to the current economic climate.

Quality

Each of these e-mail marketing campaigns are designed with brilliant images, targeted information, and are tested in all e-mail formats.  Direct links, and specific questions are being answered in the e-mail.   Pottery Barn has consistently raised the bar with their quality of e-mail campaigns.  Rotating images, nearest store locations, direct links to sale items, and catchy subject lines make Pottery Barn one of the better e-mail marketers.

Social Media Presence

The abundance of Twitter and Facebook Fanpages was not unnoticed in the e-mail marketing world.  The footer of all most all of these e-mail campaigns you will find a “Follow us on Twitter” and a “Become our Fan on FaceBook”, along with a small incentive to do so.  Land’s End made a big push this holiday season by sending out an e-mail campaign letting their customers know that if they signed up to become a Facebook Fan of the Land’s End Facebook Fanpage, they would be registered for a drawing of 3 $500 Land’s End gift cards.

As we begin 2010 review your e-mail campaign strategies, and evaluate the trends of 2009.  Are your e-mail campaigns matching up with the competition?

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Back to Basics

As we face a blank slate and think about what we want this year to look like, we like to make ambitious, complex New Year’s resolutions.  But one thing I’ve learned through the years is that in order for complex to work, the basics have to be firmly in place.  So today I am going to go back to basics when it comes to having an SEO friendly website.  Yes, I know this is SEO 101 and for those of you who are old-time SEO’s, please forgive me. But sometimes it pays to go back to basics and even I will sometimes forget basic elements that can contribute to the success of a website. Without further ado, here is what I always look at when building or evaluating a site:

SEO friendly URL’s.

It is not always possible to include a keyword in the domain name, but if it is possible, it is very beneficial.  Ever wonder why a site that has the keywords in the URL ranks above sites that have more and better links?  If it is possible and makes sense and creates a brandable domain, try to include your keywords.  If you are more interested in having a brandable domain or the keyword domain is not available, do your best to use keywords when naming the pages of your site.  If you have a category page about Buttons, and the product pages is about Blue Buttons, then the URL’s should read /buttons/blue-buttons.php or something similar.

Incorporate Keywords into your Pages

The following are the areas where you always want to have keywords:

• Meta title
• Outbound anchor text
• At least once or twice  in the body of text
• H1 and/or H2
• Page name (used in the navigation menu)

Having your keywords in these areas of the source code of each of your pages will tell Google what you want to rank for and will increase the density of that page for the particular keyword.  I like to assign a Primary and a secondary keyword for each page that is used in the areas mentioned above.  The primary keyword is the main phrase that I’m trying to rank for, and the secondary keyword is a semantically relevant phrase that supports the primary phrase.  I like to create a site map in excel where I write out the URL of all of my pages, and then I assign a primary keyword, with that primary keyword I write the title of the page.  In this way I can keep track of what words I’m using throughout the site and how often.  Obviously this is only viable with a small site.

You also want to consider density.  For example, if your primary keyword for a page is Blue Buttons, and your title is: BlueButtons.com is your premier source for blue buttons!  The density for the keyword “blue buttons” will be close to 50%.  In some cases where the keyword is competitive this may be perfect, in other cases it may be too high.  Compare the density for your competitors and try to get your density to fall within the same range as your top ranking competitors.  Each area has its own density, so you’re not looking for overall page density, you’re looking for meta title density, body text density, h1 density, bold density, etc. of a single keyword.

Dynamic site map & Google site map

Using some of the tools offered by Google or online, create an xml site map according to Google’s standards and upload it to your webmaster account.   This will help get your site spidered and all of your pages indexed.

Additionally, create a dynamic site map with links to every page of your site using keywords in the link text.  As new pages are created, the site map should update dynamically.  Most large editorial sites using this protocol use the title of the page as the link text, which ideally will have been written with keywords in mind.  If possible, the site map should be broken down so there are no more than 30 links per page.  Then, all of the site map pages should interlink with each other.   You may be wondering why you’d need a site map if you already have a Google site map uploaded to your Google Webmasters account?  Creating an on-site site map creates another opportunity to support internal pages with links and to use keywords in anchor text for your internal pages, so it adds a little bit of extra punch to your SEO.

Anchor Text

This is one of the important areas where Google looks for keywords.  Whenever possible, take the primary keyword for a page and link it to another page.  For example, if your page is about the benefits of blue buttons, you should have the keyword “blue buttons” linked to another page on your site.  Sometimes this gets tricky because the page you are on may be the only page on your site about blue buttons.  In that case, you may want to link that keyword to the same page, although it may not be terribly usable.  My workaround for this is to create a breadcrumb and then link the last link on the breadcrumb to itself.   In any case, the key is to find something that makes sense, and it’s well worth it as this is something that Google really likes.

Pyramid Interlinkage

Determine your main categories and what pages go within each category, and try to interlink categories to categories and subpagese to subpages and categories.  This way, every page is supported by links from internal pages relevant to the same topic.    Based on the size of your site, if possible all main categories should link to each other in the template.  This is a very complex topic and is very site-specific so I won’t waste a lot of time trying to explain; what I will stress is the important of not leaving “orphan pages” on your site – pages that have no inbound links from any other pages within or outside of your site.  My rule of thumb is to make sure every single page of any site I work with has at least 2-3 inbound links from other pages within the site (including the site map).

301 redirects

If at any time you are switching domain names or changing a page’s URL, use 301 redirects to tell the engines where the new page is located. You can read more about this here:  http://www.authoritydomains.com/blogs/seo/how-to-change-your-domain-without-the-pain.php

Also, check to see how Google has indexed your domain name, and if they have indexed both your www and non www version of you domain, do a redirect for the one that has the most pages indexed.

Footer

I’ll often use a footer as a way of including the primary keyword phrase in anchor text.  Footers tend to be out of the way of the flow of the page so it’s a great way to add something that has SEO benefit but doesn’t disturb the user.  If my site is about Blue Buttons, my footer will say: BlueButtons.com – where you can find blue buttons at affordable prices!  It may also work as a way of having an additional set of text links, which is especially useful if you are using images for links as your main navigation.

Main Navigation

Ideally, your main navigation links should be spiderable.  If you are using drop down menus, try to use div tags so the search engines can easily read your anchor text and links.  Google is now spidering and indexing javascript so this is less important these days, but it is generally still simpler to use div tags.

Link Equity

The more links you have the less value each has, so be conscious of not adding too many outbound links while supporting the most important pages of the site.  If you add links that have no SEO benefit, you may want to consider using rel=nofollow as part of the link.

Code

Keep your code clean! Use external JS and CSS  - link to the file – not within the header.  Also, keep the code to content ratio low – as much spiderable content as possible

Content Update Ratio

Try to add content often and on a regular rhythm.  Don’t add 20 pages one day, and none for a month.  It’s best to add a page a day.  Establish a realistic content update ratio and try to maintain it.  To find your ideal ratio, find out how often your top ranking competitors add content, and try to mimic their update ratio.

Optimize your Home Page!

This page has the most potential for rankings, so use it as much as possible with keyword friendly information and optimization.  Of course it needs to be usable so you can’t just keyword stuff it, but try to add links to your most important pages from the home pages, as well as you rmost important keywords within the pages.  Some suggestions that can help maximize the benefit of you rhome page:

a.       Add a box with changeable content so has fresh spiderable content

b.      Add as many keywords in anchor text as possible

c.       Link to popular pages as well as pages that need a boost

Page Titles

Every page should have a unique page title.  This is essential.  Keywords in the meta title of the page is still one of the most important aspects of SEO.  Never repeat the same title on more than one page of your site!!!

Conclusion

If you follow these basic principles, you will have a greater chance of establishing good search engine rankings.  Of course all of this is worth nothing without quality inbound links.  But having quality inbound links without good on-page SEO elements is also counterproductive.  Very large authoritative sites may be able to get away with it, but if you are in smaller competitive niches, you need to cross all your T’s and dot all your I’s and following these simple elements will give you an advantage over other sites in your niche.

Once you’ve covered your bases, you will be free to work on other more important aspects of the development of your business.

If you enjoy our post follow Authority Domains on Twitter @authoritydomain

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SEO has come a long way since its early days in the 90’s. Back then website owners woke up to the idea that having highly visible sites in the search engines brought valuable business results.  Today we continue to see that importance and SEO continues to expand past its horizon. New tools are driven from the demands it creates and it continues to deliver the results. SEO has an endless ground for expansion and growth. Here are some possibilities of what we may expect for SEO in 2010…

Google’s Real-Time Search will disappear. It’s still too buggy and distracting, not to mention cannon fodder for spammers. We’ll be seeing less of it in 2010.

The value of links from status updates is increasing. Influencing factors will likely include relevance and reputation of the link source(s).

Personalized Search is the new reality. Get used to it. Branding is more important, it’s harder to gain (and lose) rank, and there is no such thing as “normal ranking” anymore.

It’s a two-engine war in 2010: Google and Bing. (The battle begins!)

SEO tools from Yahoo! (such as Site Explorer) will disappear. When the Microsoft-Yahoo! agreement goes full throttle, these handy tools are unlikely to stick around.

Spending on search marketing and SEO will go up. As businesses become more aware of the importance of SEO — in terms of Strategy, Engagement and Optimization, rather than just old-school link building and on-site optimization — we’ll continue to see a trend of them turning to agencies and consultants for help.

There’ll be more focus on conversion.

Many queries won’t result in traffic driven to your site. Google and Bing are doing a fair job of including referential content in the search results directly. Weather, flight times, sports scores… questions that were previously answered on individual sites will now be answered within the search engine itself.

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This guide helps you avoid the serious damage that can occur to your website rankings & traffic by improperly moving your content to a new domain name.

Step 1: Traffic Loss

Be prepared for a dip in your overall traffic. It is going to happen! However, if you do everything right you can keep the pain to a minimum. Usually your traffic will dip for 1 week to 1 month depending on the size of your site. If the risk of temporarily losing traffic does not reward the benefit of moving to a new domain name, stop right here.

Tip: Because you know your traffic will dip it is a great idea to open or increase budget on a PPC campaign. Target your top performing organic keywords and use exact keyword matches so you don’t pay for non converting clicks.

Step 2: 301 Redirects

301 redirect your old domain to your new domain. Do not use a 302 redirect. 301 tells the search engines that this is a permanent move while 302 would mean the move is only temporary.  You need to 301 redirect each page to its corresponding page on the new domain. Do not simply redirect all pages to the new homepage. The only time you should redirect to your homepage is if no other content on the new site is a good match.

When moving a large site you may want to move one section to test that you are doing it correctly before messing up the entire site only to find out too late that you missed a step!

Tip: Google recommends that you keep the 301 redirects up for at least 180 days. I would highly suggest you simply keep them live forever. You can remove your images, videos, etc.. off the server but keep the 301’s live.

Tip: You should also create custom 404 pages that suggest the user visit your new site.

Tip: In Google Webmaster Central go to Site Configuration > Change of Address – It will tell you to add and verify your new domain; once completed you can alert Google of your domain change.

Step 3: Update Sitemaps
In your webmaster accounts resend a copy of your OLD sitemap to Google, Bing & Yahoo (For Yahoo use the Site Explorer Tool). The submission pages are within Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center. The search engines will crawl your old urls and be notified of your move much quicker than waiting to be indexed again.

After that is done, create and submit a sitemap for your new domain on its webmaster accounts as well.

Tip: Use sites like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ if you do not already have an xml sitemap created.

Step 4: Update Your Links
Make sure that all your internal links were actually updated to the new domain. This can be more of a pain if you used absolute instead of relative file paths. However, most editing tools like Dreamweaver have a find and replace function for mass edits.

Once your internal links are in order start updating external links that are pointing to your old domain. You are never going to get everyone to switch but if you prepare a nice stock email you will be surprised at how many will update their link to your new domain.

Use  Yahoo’s Site Explorer & Google Webmaster tool’s “Links To Your Site” section to find external sites that link to you. Both sites allow you to export the data to excel which is very handy.

Also, do not forget your paid directory links. Make sure your Yahoo Directory and Best Of The Web Directory links are pointing to your new domain.

Tip: Your analytics package is also a great source to find external links. Export a list of the top 100 (or more) sites sending traffic to your site and reach out to them.

Tip: Free tools like ISS Toolkit (Super Sweet) and the Xenu’s Link Sleuth should be used to make sure there are no broken links or images on your site and a whole host of other issues that may have happened in your move.

Step 5: Monitor
Be sure to monitor your webmaster accounts for search engine crawl errors and correct any issues you see immediately.

Step 6: Link Building
You really would be smart to start a link building campaign to coincide with your new domain launch. At the very least you should do the following as well as updating as many old links as possible in step 5.

Write and Distribute an Article – (low cost) easily net 20 to 40 links to your new domain.
Use Social Bookmarking –  (Free)- Google some “Do Follow” bookmarking lists and add your site.
Submit a Press Release – Use PR Web or another distribution service. Go with the basic package all you really care about are the links.
Use Web 2.0: Create or update your blog on Wordpress.org, Squidoo, Hubpages…etc. to include a link to your new site.

These simple and low cost techniques should easily net you 60 to 80 new links to your site and that is being conservative. Link Building and SEO Experts can of course offer you a more robust and custom made campaign.

Tip: Focus a good portion of your new links to internal pages. Search engines will have no problem with your homepage but can always use a good reason to dive deeper into your site.

Step 7: Pat Yourself On The Back!
By doing the steps above you will have made moving to a new domain name a piece of cake.

If you have any questions about a step or anything that was not covered please post in the comments bellow. I hope this helps save you from some of the domain change horror stories I have heard over the years.

If you enjoyed this article please RT and follow us on twitter @authoritydomain

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LinkedIn recently added a Twitter status update functionality to their interface! Smart! So is there a reason to add your Twitter updates to your LinkedIn status? The answer is yes, I added it then contemplated the value add. Here are 3 reasons why you as any professional should utilize this functionality.

1)      Stay On Topic- Over the last 24 hours I have thought more about my tweets and staying on topic. I still do posts on my interests, but have made sure to keep it more PG.

2)      Additional Opportunities To Beat Your Chest – If you are currently using LinkedIn to network and find a new job, posting your Twitter posts is a great way to be King Kong & show what you know. Especially if you are in the Social Media and SEO fields. It is important to be intelligent in front of your peers and prospectus employers.

3)      Gives LinkedIn Users Reasons To Return To Your Profile – Let’s be honest, Facebook is a far more personal application while LinkedIn is used for more professional reasons. I also looked and I only follow 40% of my LinkedIn contacts on Twitter. So adding this app is a no brainer and has already led to 8 new followers because of the use of the application.

I am sure there are more reasons to use the Twitter Status functionality on LinkedIn. But these are a few I found within the first 24 hours. Feel free to add yours in comments! Happy Tweeting & Linking!

@derekshowerman

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You know you should be doing usability testing on your websites. But how often do you? My guess is that an overwhelming majority of people fall into the never/rarely camp (myself included). So why are so many of us neglecting something we KNOW we should be doing? Because in the past, it has been an expensive, royal pain in the butt!

I wanted to share with you some fast, simple and cheap (yes cheap) ways for you to dive into usability testing. Each review you read are actual case results for this modern crib bedding site.

Paid Results:

Site: http://www.UserTesting.com/

Cost: $29
Verdict: Fan-Flipping-Tastic!

For  $29 UserTesting.com will match you up with a video & audio recording detailing user experience as well as written summary.

Information provided for the test:
Demographics: Female, 18-34, United States, $40, 000 to $100, 000
You are a parent, expecting a child and you are shopping for items to furniture the new nursery.
-Look for a crib bedding set that you like. Review the features to ensure it has a fitted sheet, bumper, blanket, & skirt.
-You already have the Two Wide Changing table, and you would like to submit a product review on this product. you like and give it 5 stars.
-Look for a changing table. You want to send the link to your friend of two changing tables that you like. use the “send to a friend” link to do so.
-Look for a crib that you like. Before you add this item to you cart you have a quick question about the return policy. Review the return policy, and determine if you can return this product. (please note in response if you found this information).
-Add the Crib to your cart.
-Look for a rocking chair that you like and add this product to you cart.
-Once you have added all of these items to you cart, you decided you do not need a rocking chair, and remove this product from your cart.
-Complete the online checkout, using random (fake) information for the billing, shipping, and credit card details. The order will not fully process, as the site is in testing mode

What we got back:

Usability Testing – UserTesting.com Review from aj ghergich on Vimeo.

UserTesting.com matched us with an actual expectant mother who shops at similar sites! She provided a 20 minute video review and completed all tasks required and then some.  I was personally floored by the quality!

Site: http://www.EasyUsability.com/

Cost: $15 per review
Verdict: Worth The Money
For  $15 EasyUsability.com will provide you with a detailed written summary of your user testing questions.

What we got back:
http://www.easyusability.com/usability_tests/363/final_report
You can actually see all qualification questions and answers by clicking on the link. For $15 a user we got some pretty detailed feedback to our questions. I was not as blown away by the feedback, but did I get my money’s worth? Easily!

Site: http://www.FeedbackArmy.com/

Cost: $10 for 10 reviews
Verdict: Worth The Money
For  $10 FeedbackArmy.com will provide you with 10 answers to a list of questions you create.

Information provided for the test:
1. Can you return crib bedding sheets that have been washed once and you have had them for 30 days?
2. Can the Nurseryworks Two-Wide Changing Table be returned 15 days after it has been received?
3. Try to find the Lulu crib bedding set made by Glenna Jean (brand). Did you feel it was difficult to locate on the website.
4. Is there free shipping for the Studio Crib by Nurseryworks (brand)?
5. You need to contact BabyAuthority. Did you find it easy to locate the phone number, email or another method to contact BabyAuthority?
6. If you order a Central Park Crib Bedding Set by Glenna Jean (brand) today, when would this order ship out?

What we got back:
http://www.feedbackarmy.com/get_feedback.slp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.babyauthority.com&code=ed11171d63b5afe2fd1a507a01762d5c
You can see the 10 unique sets of answers to our 6 questions by following the link. Again, nothing earth shattering but I think this was a really great value. 10 different people saw the site and gave us (for the most part) detailed answers to each question. This is very valuable feedback for $10.

Free Results:

I have tried a bunch of free usability sites in the past and mostly got back what I paid for..nothing! I do not want to slam anyone for providing a free service so I will just direct you here.

http://www.conceptfeedback.com/ – I have found this site to be a good place to get a review from “graphic design” types. It is free of charge and a good place to post screenshots of a site before it is live.

The only negative is that they force you to review 5 sites before you get a review. I understand why of course but this leads to comments left by others that “feel” forced. All in all it is one of the best free sources out there. Use it!

http://fivesecondtest.com/- This site is great but I use it more for banners & graphics on sites or actual posters vs an entire site.

Summary:

Ok, no more excuses. These sites will provide you with a low cost of entry and fast turnaround (most of these test were done same day). If you are not doing, or rarely doing usability testing now is the time to start. It is addicting and will provide some of the best ROI you have ever seen.

If you enjoyed this post please RT, Sphinn or Comment. Thx!
Special thanks to @babyauthority

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