Increase Conversions by Optimizing for Your Visitors

It may sound obvious, but many people forget to optimize their website for their visitors. Instead of focusing on their visitors, many people let their personal preferences take precedence when deciding on specific web design and formatting elements. Although this may seem harmless, it can dramatically decrease your conversion rate. I've included some useful tips for ensuring that your website is actually optimized for the people that are going to be looking at it:

Ad Units
Ad units are a very common feature of the element. Unfortunately, this has resulted in many internet users becoming banner blind. If you want to ensure that your visitors are actually looking at the ad units on your website, you should place them within your content or at the top-left area of your website.

Articles
-If you weren't already aware, most internet users scan the content of website instead of reading it word for word. To ensure that you grab their attention, you should write a short introductory paragraph that touches on the main points of the article that follows it. Additionally, you should always write a headline that will grab the attention of anyone that sees it.
-Instead of writing extremely long paragraphs, make sure that all of your articles are made up of shorter paragraphs with relevant subheadings.

Fonts
-You may think that underlining your headlines is a great way to grab the attention of your visitors, but in reality, most internet users quit reading when they see underlines. The only things that you should underline are links (you should also stay away from using horizontal lines or other visual line breaks on your web pages).
-Even though you want to ensure that your visitors can read the content of your website, don't fall into the trap of thinking that bigger is better. You should always stick with reasonable font sizes for all the elements of your website (even headings). As long as you use proper CSS to control the font sizes on your pages, visually impaired users will be able to easily increase the font size of your website to accommodate their needs.

Navigation
Don't make people think! People are used to seeing navigation at the top or top left of websites, so keep them happy and place your navigation menus in one of these prominent areas.