7 Best Website Monetization Articles of the Week: March 29, 2013

With April Fools’ Day just around the corner, we’re back with another load of great no-nonsense monetization articles from around the Web. This week’s highlights include an update from Google’s AdSense team, tips for nurturing leads, and a bunch of in-depth conversion rate studies.

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Display Advertising

• A new look for personalized ad unit optimization recommendations in your account. There’s a new post up on the AdSense blog highlighting a recent addition you may have noticed within your account. Google is now making recommendations to AdSense users–specific suggestions on changing ad unit types or formats for individual ads. A must read if you run AdSense on your sites.

Email Marketing

• What Email Cavemen Can Learn From the Dinosaurs. Dave Hendricks has a new post at ClickZ on the evolution of email marketing, noting that users are now “voting with their thumbs” and demanding changes to the way messages are framed and delivered.
• After You Capture A Lead, What Comes Next? Juliette Kopecky has a good post up at Marketing Land reminding us that leads need to be nurtured after they’re captured. (She also includes some pretty detailed suggestions on how to do just that.)

Conversion Rates

• How to Use Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Persuasion to Boost Conversions. ConversionXL has a great post on using principles of influence to drive higher conversion rates on your site. (Spoiler alert: read to see how Kim Kardashian is used as an example of great execution on the principle of Authority!)
• 10 Call-to-Action Case Studies w/ Takeaways & Examples from Real Button Tests. Michael Aagaard at ContentVerve.com recently put up a killer piece with 10 real-life case studies of relatively minor changes to sign-up buttons that had a huge impact on conversion rates.
• B2B E-Commerce: Redesigned online form increases quotes 67.68%. David Kirkpatrick at MarketingSherpa has an in-depth summary of a substantial site redesign project

Ecommerce

• Why Ecommerce Sites are Getting Slower [Infographic]. GetElastic’s Linda Bustos has a great infographic with some pretty interesting facts about ecommerce sites. The biggest surprise to us: load times have slowed down 22% over the last year.

That’s all for this week! Happy monetizing!