Last week I presented at “Visa’s Big Thinking Conference” (Thanks to “Rick Spence” for the opportunity). My presentation was called “30 Quick Wins for Any Site That Sells”.

One of my basic premises is that most every site should “sell” — in the sense that it should be built to help people take an action — and because of that the presentation is fairly different from the typical “a bunch of stuff to think about for your e-commerce site”. In the spirit of sharing, I’ve decided to post all 100 slides along with my speaker’s notes here at One Degree for the benefit of those who were unable to attend. You can download 30 Quick Wins For Any Site That Sells as a 100 page, 7MB PDF file here.

<download lost to link decay>

In case you’re curious, here are the 30 quick wins (although I don’t think they make too much sense without the rest of the stuff in the PDF):

1. Build the right tools for the right people.
2. Say “no” by default.
3. Don’t use apples to make orange juice.
4. Don’t make me think.
5. Tell them to “Start Here”.
6. Be memorable.
7. Add spell-check to your domains.
8. No dub-dub-dub? No problem.
9. Have a list, a blog, and a feed.
10. Build for all three browsers.
11. Don’t make a splash, make a gateway.
12. Think “Landing Page”, not home page.
13. “What’s the next action?”
14. Link on verbs not nouns.
15. Design from the bottom up.
16. Tell them “You are here”.
17. Put search everywhere.
18. Simple.
19. Use a high-contrast palette.
20. Never make people do what computers can do.
21. Don’t be so nosey.
22. Optimize for speed, but support broadband.
23. No ads.
24. Design for disaster.
25. Cancel the cancel.
26. Put your site on Atkins.
27. Write like your audience thinks.
28. “Lady, that is one ugly baby.”
29. Track from day one.
30. Build tweakable sites.

Enjoy the download and feel free to pass it around.

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Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on June 18, 2006.