“We really paid close attention to, not necessarily creating a whole bunch of new ways to work to support these new targets, but really, again, took a lot of care in each of the applications to make sure that we just beefed up the workflows that already existed to where, hopefully… it just feels like a natural extension of the product,” he said.

Adobe CS5.5 brings updates to Adobe Flash Catalyst, Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Device Central, Adobe Acrobat X Pro, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash Pro, and HTML5. The company also rolled out a new pricing plan that not only gives customers more options, but it also helps them stay updated on the latest versions of software.

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 is available through the Adobe Store and through Adobe Authorized Resellers and is scheduled to ship within 30 days.

How does Adobe CS5.5 look to you? Were these the updates you were hoping for?

Scott Fegette, Senior Product Manager for Dreamweaver at Adobe, began by telling Abby Johnson that now’s an exciting – but volatile – time.  He believes the industry’s in a sort of 1.0 stage right now, with the best user interface and input methods undecided, even as the landscape is “exploding exponentially.”

Devin Fernandez, Group Product Manager of the Web Segment at Adobe, then added that there’s a fragmentation of browsers and operating systems, not just mobile devices.  And he thinks we can’t arrive at a 2.0 stage of development until everyone’s established design patterns and best practices.

Questions related to limited network access, repurposing content, and the mobile Web versus native applications are posing challenges to people in the industry, as well.

On the bright side, Fegette indicated that HTML5 is a great way to target a variety of devices at a broad level.  He also believes mobile Web applications will reach the same quality as native apps in time.

That should be encouraging news for businesspeople who are looking for fresh ways to promote their sites and reach consumers who are on the move.

First of all, he points out that visual clutter is a problem. Flash and animations draw people’s attention but not to the point of conversion. Ash calls the graphic designers behind these creations “frustrated art school drop-outs.” Animations also present a problem since they often take a long time to load.

Another “deadly sin” that marketers make is giving their visitors too many choices. When there are links to a business’s partners, affiliates, and more, it does nothing but confuse the visitor. Instead of overwhelming people with these choices, Ash suggests putting just 2-4 options on a landing page.

Thirdly, one size doesn’t fit all with landing pages. Unfortunately, some businesses market through different channels but send all the traffic to the same landing page. This methodology doesn’t work because people are coming from different traffic sources and need landing pages that match their original intent or keywords.

“The best practice is really to have as many landing pages as you need with specific themes or background thought processes that the visitor might have,” Ash said.

A fourth “deadly sin” is when marketers put too much text on the landing page. In this age of technology, people have an even smaller attention span than they had before. For this reason, marketers need to keep it short, simple, and to the point. If they do need to add more information, they should put it in other links.

The last problem that Ash discusses is the sin of asking for too much information. As he explains, marketers often get greedy and try to get names, email addresses, and more for future use. However, he believes that marketers should only ask for the information that is necessary to complete the current transaction. According to him, users are more likely to spread word-of-mouth and influence by their own free will. He also said that if they are pleased with what they received, the chances are greater for them to visit again and even possibly give more information willingly.

For more on landing pages and how they can lead to conversions, check out Tim Ash’s Conversion Conference.

As the emphasis on speed increases, Bill Hartzer of Vizion Interactive predicts that the quality of content will increase as well. He believes the standards will be higher for which content is indexed and which is not.

With Caffeine, Google hopes to identify and focus more on unique content instead of focusing on aggregation sites. Also, the company is expected to improve its duplicate content filter.

To make sure your website measures up to these new standards, Hartzer suggests checking the usability on your site. For starters, test the load time of your site to see if it is efficient. In addition, as you produce relevant content, see that it is crawled first by putting it on multiple social sites. Although Yahoo has not put a strong emphasis on real-time Web content, both Google and Bing have.

Matt Van Wagner of Find Me Faster explains that, in spite of these circumstances, the Web offers every business an opportunity to be found, even with a small budget. First and foremost, a business needs to have an online presence with a website. The site does not need to be elaborate, but needs to be able to operate and provide basic functions.

He recommends utilizing David Mihm‘s site called GetListed.org. This site gives actionable tips and information for small businesses and the best part is, it is free. If you are going to do paid search, Van Wagner suggest being conservative and local in what you do.

Some ecommerce websites are only converting 1-3 percent of their incoming traffic, which translates into 1 conversion for every 100 visitors. For comparison, sites like Amazon are getting conversions at a 12-14 percent rate.

According to Khalid, conversion optimization is where the real ROI is. There are a few basic assumptions that ecommerce sites need to realize about their traffic. The first is that roughly 25 percent of the visitors to your site are probably there by accident. Secondly, you need to understand that another approximated 25 percent of your traffic are offline shoppers simply comparing prices.

You are now left with 50 percent of your traffic to convert. There are a few quick tips for converting such as correcting headlines and images, but Khalid says you have to take a systematic approach to get the conversions that really matter.

Going back to basic marketing, having a thorough knowledge of your target audience is the first step in this approach. Use your market research and translate the data into personas and then determine how they interact with your website.

Here are several common mistakes that ecommerce sites make that prevent conversions:

1.    Neglect to understand what customer is looking for
2.    Shopping cart and shipping costs aren’t clear
3.    Assume customers are “committed” to shopping transaction
4.    Fail to include security seals
5.    Insist shoppers complete forms before shopping process begins

What are some other mistakes that ecommerce sites make that you have experienced as a shopper? From a marketing standpoint, what advice would you offer to ecommerce site looking to improve their conversions?

Matt Bailey of SiteLogic Marketing advises companies to always conduct a “Mom Test” to get a true usability answer. Have your mother test your site to see if she can navigate around it and take action. If she has problems, chances are that your users will also.

In the above video, Matt says:

“Online, people need to have a clear sense of purpose of where to go and what to do.”

Designers should build a site that looks nice, but they also need to be aware of their limitations on the Web. An online companies’ primary objective is for the user to be able to take action. They do not want the user to be distracted by an experimental design or even worse, prevented from taking action.

Another factor that could damage customer usability is when the website is designed from an organizational standpoint and not for your target market. As we all know, everyone has their own method of organization and the one you have chosen for your site might not match that of your target market.

In summary, think about your end user when you plan the design of your website. Don’t forget to conduct your “Mom Test” and make any changes necessary. Also given the current state of the economy, now is an excellent time to make your site better. It is inexpensive and the return will be substantial and fast.

PubCon has something for everyone. It doesn’t just feature SEO, marketing, IT, or social media – it’s a combination of all those and more. In the above video, Brett says how they tried to focus on quality sessions at this year’s show.

People pitch topic ideas and the PubCon staff matches speakers up with the topics they are most passionate about. This not only makes it easy for the speaker, but also gives the user a better end product.

Brett had an interesting session this year based off of a Webmasterworld thread that has been going strong for nearly seven years. The thread entitled 26 Steps is a step-by-step guide to building a successful and sustainable website. Brett says the key is to making it sustainable. Anyone can build a “one hit wonder” as he puts it, but it takes skill to make it sustainable.

Brett echoes the words of many others in the industry that we should expect changes in search in 2009. He said search is now in a “mature” state and that Google led the way to this point through universal search.

These great minds have come together on two projects geared toward developers. JaneandRobot.com is a site they created that discusses the fundamentals of search engine optimization from a web developer’s perspective.

The second is the O’Reilly Found Conference. With this event, Vanessa and Nathan hope to change the historical idea that search is a marketing activity since it is now just as critical to technical architecture. The target audience for the conference is designers, IT professionals, and entrepreneurs.

Most of the search conferences such as SMX and SES focus primarily on the marketing angle of search. Marketers go home and pitch all their new ideas to their IT departments who have trouble believing the changes are necessary. Vanessa and Nathan want to help bridge that communication gap and allow the marketing and the IT departments work together.

In the above WPN video, Nathan gives a couple of examples of the type of issues that will be addressed at the conference.

1.    What is the right design pattern for my website?
2.    Information regarding what you need to know to be successful using any platform.

The conference will be held in Burlingame, California, June 9-11. Nathan and Vanessa are currently accepting speaker and topic proposals and ask if you need more information to contact them.