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With the increase of use of the web today there is a large availability of research results that can be used to refine the usability of web pages. However, the large quantity of these results can be intimidating when trying to apply them to your page. Also, unless applied to your site, these research results will not do any good.
The first step in bringing more revenue to your site is understanding that research findings do reflect what users do and think. It is not enough to assume what users want, you need to find out through research exactly what it is that they want. To not become overwhelmed by the large amount of findings it is a good idea to process the information in small bites. Some good ideas are to print out a copy of your page and go through a checklist of usability findings and circle the problem areas on your site.
When you come across research results it is not uncommon to not completely agree with all the results. There are two basic reasons that people usually disagree with results. First, if you did your own research, it could possibly show differently then other results that you have found. If this is the case, double check your research to make sure that there were no flaws. In a rare case, you could be dealing with a special case in which your research is correct. Second, you could possibly disagree with findings based on your own opinion. In such cases you need to understand that these are studies of real users, showing how they react in such cases, and such studies are usually more efficient then a mere opinion. However, there again is always the chance that your are right, on a rare occasion