On one of my sites, I am selling a product directly from the home page with just one additional page for a related product. I have been testing various ideas but just one or two at a time. It is important for me to get their attention above the fold. The last change I made was a step backward so I am going back to a previous version and tweaking that. Have been fortunate to rank highly with organic traffic and no PPC.

Another thing to consider is to have the right tools to be able to test and make changes easily. I have been using NVU for all of my sites but very recently purchased another product that is going to take my sites to a new level with much less effort. NVU works but the amount of time I spent making changes (and stripping all of the extra code generated by NVU) was holding me back from being much more productive. Getting out of that rut was just what I needed. Everyone should look at what they are doing and how they are doing it to see where improvements can be made.

Too soon old, too late smart.

Roger

that’s a lovely post..
i feel my blog design is good but if it looks like an expert. Seriously i am not sure. I would focus on your tips for sure.

Shiva

Tell me, how do like a famous cartoon character being a mascott?

Igor

The most difficult part is blending this with methods to increase search engine rankings.

For example it is important to keep website levels no further than 3 levels deep. This means you start with the home page and then every page is within two links to the home page.

Testing is what will make the biggest difference. However changing your website content without consistent traffic is not going to provide you with solid results.

I often recommend that people hold off changing their content until they have solid traffic, then they can get the most out of the results.

Andy Beard’s tip is a good point too

Also from a search point of view a well defined navigation system for visitors often is what the search engines are looking for as well.
If a user has to click 5 times to reach your content, it is often the case that the content won’t get indexed, or only appear as an afterthought on long-tail searches.