Every web designer who works extensively with HTML and CSS knows that debugging a website in IE (no matter what version) is the equivalent to slowly plucking every hair from your head. There have been endless amounts of articles written on it from the amateur to the influenial - explaining everything from how to hack it (ahhhh!) to how to learn to love the bomb.

To date, perhaps the most frustrating part of cross-browser testing in IE has been the ability to run your websites in multiple versions of the same browser. As the web design world knows, Microsoft has put a cap on how my versions of IE can be running on a windows machine and that cap would be one. Now, there have been many ways around this - all of which have their ups and downs: installing multiple virtual environments that support different IE versions (ick); using a web app that takes screenshots of your site in IE; or using applications that are capable of installing multiple versions of IE thus letting you test to your heart's content.

I've tried all the ways above, the last having up till now been my choice of posion. However, recently (in my terms, not in terms of when the program was released) a new level of multiple IE testing has surfaced for the good of all designer-kind: IE Tester.

This is the holy grail of IE testing that we've all been waiting for - yes, it's alpha; no, it doesn't have debugging toolbars; but all those aside, HALLELUJAH!

Created by the same genius who made the IE debug bar (which has served me in countless ways over the years) this nifty little program installs on your windows system (XP and Vista) and lets you cleanly view the world through IE eyes. It's admitted that it's alpha, so bugs are more than likely probable; however, this little baby packs a major punch now and can only grow finer with time. The interface is sleak and lets you use tabs to keep track of your opened versions of IE. In addition, it supports a wide assortment of versions, including the very beta IE 8. But the creme de la creme for me - it doesn't denote to the highest IE browser setting when you use conditional comments, so IE 6 is IE 6 and IE 7 is IE 7 and the world just became a slightly better place for me to test in.

I'm hoping this cures my IE testing woes for years to come, as I've already seen it work magic in my testing days now, and I'm incredibly excited to see where this progresses in the future.

Before we start, what does "branding" mean to you?

If you're in the advertising/marketing industry, it may mean creating a cohesive look and feel for a particular company, service, or product in order to create a competitive advantage in the market vertical. In English, that would simply translate to "creating a preference for something being sold by a particular company".

Considering that I have worked with a variety of different companies which have ranged in size from small start-ups to global enterprises, I have a very particular take on what branding is and how much of it you can leave at the door when you're growing your business. To be blunt, Starling Interactive plays in the Direct Response arena because it's a solid way of retaining clients. You can measure and compare and calculate any campaign you wish. You know down to a penny what your return on investment is, and from that if it's wise to continue spending. With branding though, everything is really soft. Measurements, reporting metrics, and results are all muddled up with everything else you do. You run a branding campaign anywhere and who knows what the effect is? You have to wait and watch and bet that it will work. Therein is one of the problems I have with companies who with to "brand" themselves.

A brand isn't something you conjure up with your creative team or agency. It's not making a neat-o logo and catchphrase and then watching millions of dollars pour in. This applies to the hot "Web 2.0" ventures as well. No shiny logo with a reflection or big fonts will create market share. No, branding is much more than that.

Real branding, the kind that drives revenue for your company because of a preference, is gained through doing good things. You can spend millions of dollars on advertising, you can have Super Bowl ads and cool placements in movies and still get nowhere if you don't embrace this fact.

If you don't agree with me on this, pick a brand and think about it a little. Let's take the search giant "Google". Google owns a majority of the search market in the world, and has huge competition from companies such as Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and others. These are companies with budgets in the billion dollar range, yet they can't create what Google has. Why? Because Google approached their brand the right way. They focused on their product: a great search engine service. Then they kept focusing on that product to create the loyalty to their product over the competition. That approach is something that advertising and marketing can't buy.

Your "brand" will need to follow the same rules. If your product is lacking, your service sub-par, or your user experience worse than your competition, it will be all but impossible to throw advertising dollars at the problem to make it go away.

I've had the pleasure of running dozens upon dozens of conversion tests in my career for some very well established companies. These tests have covered e-commerce, lead generation, and ad revenue generation, along with every type of creative approach you can imagine.

Through this time I've learned a lot of very interesting things about testing a site to increase performance, along with some other very interesting things to consider when you perform your own A/n or Multi-Variate testing:

1. Park any emotional attachments at the door

Clients becoming emotionally attached to a creative piece is the number one problem that I've seen occur with any type of test. Whether its attachment to a writing style, image, trade dress, new creative, or old creative, it always hurts the test. Before you start any test, any stakeholders need to be aware that increasing conversion is the goal. This applies universally to any test, be it ecommerce driven, lead driven, or ad driven. As the business owner, you must have clarity in your mind about how far you're willing to go. If you ran a test and found that your trade dress and branding elements converted lower than a new version would you be willing to change it? If the verbiage that you yourself wrote - which you feel is the best thing ever written - bombs, would you separate yourself from it enough to allow positive change?

If you don't ask these questions, you can run into some very rocky situations. I've run multiple tests where the client had made up their mind before about the outcome, with highly detrimental results. These clients chose what they wanted to win, and when it didn't, insisted that their "top pick" be used instead. They would explain away hard results with empirical data like someone truly in denial. End result? Their company suffered lower conversions than they could have enjoyed.

2. Don't get too cozy with Rich Media

This goes right along with number 1 above. A client has a simple, straightforward website that immediately offers the cost, details of the product, call-to-action, and other supporting materials. They then decide that they want sexy, they want flashy, they want cool. They end up with a flash driven, AJAX bejeweled site with the production value of a Michael Bay company. Guess what? Unless you're in a very specific niche where Rich Media does work, your site will bomb.

If you are running a direct response website you need to remember what your goal is: sales. This means giving the consumer a positive experience with your site. Old school usability rules. Do they have to wait for a pre-loader, an effect? Do they have to play detective just to get a price or and "add to cart" button? If so, the odds are your shiny new site will bomb.

3. Start simple, then get complicated

You've heard this before in a variety of ways. When it comes to site testing for direct response it means making your website into an online salesman. In all the tests I've run, the two easiest things to try out that add to conversion are bullet points and emphasizing your response mechanism. The first one is straightforward, now for your response mechanism. This is the thing you are trying to get your user to do - it can be filling out a lead form, clicking an "add to cart" button, or watching a video. Adding emphasis to this mechanism to "break it out" of the rest of the page is what you're looking for.

4. Don't stop testing

You can never say that you have the "best" version of a website. You may have a great conversion for a time, but things change, and you can always make things better. Additionally, if you're like most businesses, the seasons of the year will effect you. A time generic page may do great, but why do you think retailers always put up seasonal ads?

You must get into the habit of planning tests for different seasons and events. Just like a retailer you need to find ways to elicit a consumer to purchase using anything you have, which brings us to the final point.

5. Beware anyone who tells you they "know" what's best

We've all met a version of this particular marketer. They will always claim that testing is irrelevant because they've built X amount of websites that drove Y amount of traffic and they "know what people want".

Bogus! If they knew what people wanted, they would be mega billionaires hanging out with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. This person will regularly be disguised as a Marketing Manager, all the way up to a C-level executive. Whatever their title is, they're full of it if they make such a silly claim.

Testing is one of the few ways a business can find out what people want. The others are market testing, focus groups, and a few other highly valuable methods. Making a website based on an over-sized ego is not one them.

I've gone over this point in other places, most notably talking about eCommerce and bad shopping experiences, but I still see many people making the mistake of having their shopping solution as a footnote on their business plan.

While these same people will testify to how great the internet is, and how it's changed the way that traditional mediums process campaigns, many times they've only done a cursory pass at their site and failed to look at it from an objective point of view. That one process right there might be able to give you more insight into a struggling online initiative than anything else. Maybe your site is pretty, maybe it is using up-to-date technologies and you spent a pretty penny on it, but if it's not performing then none of that matters.

What would you think of your site if you were a new user? The answer of "be totally excited for how cool my store is" is incorrect, and I'll tell you why: online users are a cynical bunch, me included. I can't tell you how many tens of thousands of banners I've seen through the years, how many convoluted ordering systems I've been forced into, or how many hundreds of sites I've had to create a password for, only never to return. When you consider that, I can truthfully tell you that I've abandoned purchases for things I've wanted based solely on the pain in the neck it was causing me to buy it.

You spend so much money to convince people to give you money, then you turn around and make it hard for them to hand it over! Really, why do you want to try to up-sell them something through 4 screens? If you have only 10 products to offer, why do you think they'll want to get a user name and password that's been verified through e-mail? What they really want to do is never have anything to do with you again. Forcing them to register will not create loyalty or increase their buying.

Luckily for you, there are tons of great services online that take a lot of the guesswork out of selling online (that was a hint, by the way). There are also a great deal of experts in this field, the team at Starling Interactive included, that deal with the terrors of usability every day.

Whether it's your own common sense, our team, or another team, you owe it to yourself to take a second glance at what you're doing online. Doing so can only increase profits.