A great conversion rate is not a destination—it's a journey. To get the most out of that journey, you need to try different things to increase the usability and conversion rate of your web site. One tool to help you do that testing is Google's Website Optimizer. Google Website Optimizer allows you to test and optimize site content and design by simultaneously deploying two different versions of your web site. It's not as hard as it sounds!

For example, say you wanted to test two different calls to action on your home page. One call to action (we'll call it A) is to download a white paper. The other (we'll call it B) says to call right away. Although you could program Drupal to detect and display different blocks for different sets of users, it would be a difficult task and nearly impossible to track properly in your analytics suite.

Instead, load up the two different sets of HTML as options in Google Website Optimizer. In Drupal, paste in the Optimizer's javascript code. That code will dynamically pick one of the versions of your block from Optimizer to show to each visitor. Then it integrates with Google Analytics so that you can see conversions goals based on which version of the site the visitor was viewing at the time.

Using Google Website Optimizer is not for the faint hearted. It takes quite a bit of initial setup. You can make that setup a bit easier with the Google Website Optimizer module for Drupal. This module speeds up the placing of the blocks of code that you'll need on your testing and conversion pages. This module was written and is maintained by Nick Schoonens—username Schoonzie on www.Drupal.org. Half of you buy Nick a beverage and the other half send him some cash. Let's see which one he responds to more. That's a bit of A/B testing. Get it?