I have been doing some studies on website traffic and seeing how different designs have effected the traffic. I use google analytics to do all my tracking for all my websites. This offers a very detailed reports and also offerers an optimization tool. The tool is very useful but is really made for landing pages and not complete site redesigns, so in this case I didn’t use it.

I have noticed that after changing one of my sites to a new web 2.0 look with glossy icons and large font my bounce rate went down and  my conversion rate went up. I thought maybe it was a fluke but the traffic held steady! I know every sites traffic will react differently but I am convinced that people like the look of new web 2.0 websites.

Some things you should focus on is your navigation and readability. Old websites are very cluttered with small font. Make your websites really easy to use. Don’t put too much information on one page. If it could be split into multiple pages then do it, and don’t have too much advertising on your site. If you are planning to monetize your site through offering products or services then I would consider  not having any advertising on your site at all unless it is closely related to your product or service and will be of value to your visitors.

There are tons of tutorials for web 2.0 techniques so dive right in!