To state that Yahoo’s in trouble doesn’t begin to describe the company’s status.  Its stock is at a level that it also reached about four years ago, and a powerful investor and huge corporation are breathing down its neck.  There’s a saying about the sum of something’s parts, though, and Yahoo’s Roger Park recently offered some good conversion tips.

Park started by pointing out that a conversion isn’t always equal to a sale.  Any number of lead-generating moves - registration, requesting a price quote - qualify as desirable outcomes that you should pursue.

Then, since the path to those outcomes will usually start with a visit to your site, his specific tips for landing pages included “[o]ffer multiple ways for customers to contact you,” and “[m]aintain good server availability and remove any broken links from your site.”

Next, it’s time to focus on navigation.  Physical retailers have gigantic signs that help customers find whatever they’re looking for; you need to make sure obvious pathways exist within your site.  Also, even as retailers tend not to put lots of writing front and center, you can stick non-commercial content and information below pages’ folds.

Once all this is taken care of and a little time passes, analytics data will help you determine which moves worked best.  Refine, revise, and as poor Yahoo-employed Park suggests, “With just a little maintenance, hindsight and monitoring, you can more consistently turn your web site visitors into actual customers.”

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