Timberline Interactive

Alicia Morga is a leader in Hispanic marketing -- especially in using online media to reach U.S. Hispanics. She's the founder and CEO of Consorte Media, and before that she earned her stripes in the VC world and as VP Operations at Napster.

"I have a JD from Stanford Law School," she writes, "but last week I found myself outlining a banner ad strategy to test different images of women leaned over cars as a means of driving traffic to an auto site."

Her blog post Sex and Autos makes excellent reading for online marketers and A/B testing geeks like us. I'm sorry to have given away the ending with my headline, but I couldn't resist.

And the winner is...

My i-merchant column this month is on the benefits of honkin' big add-to-cart and checkout buttons. Size matters, baby!

I just finished re-reading Steve Krug's usability bible, Don't Make Me Think, which I recommend highly for anyone responsible for making their website a success. Not only is Steve's design and navigation thinking impeccable, he's also a lively and hilarious writer, and the book's snappy, well-illustrated look is a conscious example of the web best-practices he preaches.

I also read Avinash Kaushik's Web Analytics, An Hour a Day which is a passionate, smart and at times funny book. Now I need to drill down into a technical, hands-on Google-Analytics and Website-Optimizer-specific tome.

I'm in Dallas, Texas, right now, delivering a Google Analytics and Website Optimizer training to the brilliant and terrific team at Fifth Food Group.

You can make any website better -- lots better. The footprints of failed pages, bad usability, are all over the analytics. And when you identify and roll out a change, do it in Google Website Optimizer, so you can document a lift (or, in some rare cases, prove to yourself that your brilliant gut instincts weren't brilliant after all.)