Mike H
Re; photo's
I went to an internet marketing seminar way back in 2006.
They showed us taguchi split testing on a site (testing variables) and it was surprising how different photo's affected the conversion rates.
That said, the site was a medical one (I think it was arthritis treatments) and the photo's were of different doctors (some old, some younger) but the conversion rates were significantly different. The older, more experienced "doctors'" photo's converting better, probably due to the age range of the visitors.
The problem with carpet cleaning sites is the low number of visitors can make meaningful testing difficult (the arthritis site was getting thousands per day).