The easier it is for visitors to read your website content, the more likely they WILL read your content, click on your ads, subscribe to your newsletters, buy your products or take other actions you want them to take.

Which begs the question? How readable is your website? Juicy Studio offers a free readability test to let you check this.

Ed Dale’s Melbourne Challenge Conference will take place on February 25, 26 and 27, 2011 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, in Melbourne, Australia. Aimed at beginning-to-advanced Internet marketers, conference organiser Ed Dale says the event will include presentations from top-notch speakers including SEO expert, Leslie Rohde, super-affiliate Lynn Terry, and copywriting expert and NLP master, Harlan Kilstein. The event is a must-attend for Australian based Internet marketers (normally starved of quality Internet marketing events) and highly recommended for overseas visitors. Just be sure to bring swimwear and sunscreen to get the most out of gorgeous Melbourne in summer! Go here for all the details including how to get tickets.

Internet Marketing Events Calendar »

Formstack, which provides tools to help you build web forms, reckons it knows exactly how the ‘perfect’ landing page should look and work. In fact, the company has posted a page that displays, dissects and explains each element of the perfect landing page which you can view here.

Basing its dissection of the perfect landing page on the work of Performable, Color Matters and KissMetrics, Formstack provides the general layout of the perfect landing page, along with recommendations about such items as the headlines, copy, buttons, images, videos, calls to action, colors and more.

Want to create the ‘Facebook’ of your niche? If so, according to Gina Bianchini, your success in creating a profitable social network will depend on the extent to which it meets seven key design principles.

Gina should know. As the founder of Ning – a platform for creating niche social networks – she’s seen people and companies build literally thousands of social networks. Right now, Ning has around 70,000 paying customers and draws more than 80 million unique visitors per month across its sites.

If you want to maximize website conversions – whether a ‘conversion’ is getting a web visitor to click on an ad, fill in a form, buy a product or perform some other action – split-testing web pages is a must.

By conducting even the simplest A-B split-test – where you randomly display one of two different versions of a given web page to your website visitors – you’ll be able to see which elements work best to elicit conversions. You can then modify your site accordingly, leading to higher overall conversions, sales and profits.

Back in the 1990s, I started my professional career as a junior copywriter at Grey Advertising. Working at Grey was the most fun I’ve ever had in a job, outside of building my own companies (which nothing can match). I also learned a lot about advertising and the advertising industry… including why an ad agency that is obsessed with winning awards is NOT an ad agency I’d want working for me. Instead, I want an ad agency that can do math…

You see, ad agencies that are obsessed with winning awards are not obsessed with marketing clients’ products. At the very least, marketing clients’ products comes second on their list of priorities. This isn’t exactly good for clients that are paying ad agencies a ton of money to create effective marketing campaigns.

A few years ago, during my development as a copywriter, I was told that good advertising copy should be written as if it was going to be read by the average 12 year old.

At first I didn’t get it. I could understand if the target market WAS the average 12 year old… but I didn’t see why I should write for the average 12 year old if my audience was, for example, college professors. Wouldn’t I be speaking down to such an audience and turning them away? Actually, no…

So you’re writing some web copy – maybe a headline – and you want it to attract as much attention and interest as a bunch of words can possibly attract. You’ve worked out what to write, but you’re stumped over a word. Or, more precisely, you’re stumped over which word, out of a few possibilities, to choose.

I often face this issue.

In fact, just recently, I found myself choosing between the words ‘usual’ and ‘typical’ for a headline I was writing. I had no particular preference for either; I just wanted to use the word that would resonate the most with most people in my target audience.

Now that audiences have all kinds of technologies and techniques for avoiding or ignoring conventional advertisements… has the good, old fashioned sponsorship message made a come-back as the most effective form of advertising?

If you don’t remember the initial days of radio when radio announcers delivered ‘a word from our sponsor’ (before ad agencies took over to produce slick, creative 15, 30 or 60 second spots)… well neither do I. I wasn’t around then either!

Here are 10 tips for improving your website usability and conversions. Unlike some tips – which are based on someone’s opinion or their own limited (and hardly statistically relevant) experience – these are all backed up by multiple research studies, courtesy of a recent article by Cameron Chapman on Six Revision.

Cameron’s article makes for fascinating reading. In particular, some of the research findings directly contradict conventional wisdom. Is it true that web visitors get frustrated if they have to click three or more times before finding whatever they’re looking for on your site? You’re about to find out…

Here are my take-outs, in the form of tips for improving both the usability of – and the conversions on – your website. I’ve also added a couple of insights and a helpful tool.