Great questions! On the first one regarding Google Optimizer, I have found that the level of expertise to set up the tests can make it a little too difficult to use and that the ease of implementation, as well as the straightforward reporting makes Optimizley worth the cost.

For clients on a shoestring, I usually just split the cost of the testing on Optimizely amongst clients and that really makes it a lot more affordable.

As for Personas, I think any exercise that helps someone think about their specific target audience is a great idea. While this might be a good starting point, over time the audience will shirk the underlying assumptions in something like user-centered design (see “god complex” above). If there isn’t enough traffic to test empirically in the beginning, then a second option is a lot of qualitative beta testing.

Okay, but if you just change the width to something larger, the image only pushes to the right of the header not across the entire top of the banner. For example, changing the width to px 1234 (<a href=“/”><img src=“%7B%7B%20site.header_image_url_960%20%7D%7D” width=“1234” border=“0”></a>)

Looks like this: http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/makingwaves/pages/1/attachments/original/1380323568/width_of_banner.jpg?1380323568

How do we make it so the banner runs full width all the way left and right.

Also, then how to make the tab bar also run full length so it corresponds to the width of the new header width?

Life is just more questions than answers!

Anyone, anyone? Kind of annoying that this is marked “completed” when it is not.

If your text is sitting directly below your image, highlight the image, go to image property box and choose “align left”. The text should now move up the side of the image. Also, choose a border of around 5px so the text is not butted right up against the image.

If that doesn’t work, got into HTML mode and see if there is some weird extraneous code that is messing up normal functionality.

Hope that helps :)

A radio button option on the donate page to specify monthly v. one-time is much more likely to convert donors than directing them to a new page. At least in past A/B testing it has on other sites I have ran. Impossible to A/B test on this particular site given that one of the options (an on page radio button) cannot be implemented. Will implement the alternative and cross fingers that it doesn’t lower conversions.