The answer: Increasing Conversion. You need to be able to convert visitors to your site into customers – either a direct sale or have them sign-up for your newsletter so you can continue your relationship with them long after they’ve left your site.

Example:

If 5000 people visit your site each month, and 50 of them turn into actual customers, your website conversion rate is 50/5000, or 1%. If each of those customers equals an average sale of £200, your business has made £10,000. That’s not a bad amount.

However, by increasing your conversion rate to even 100 customers out of 5000 visitors, your conversion rate has increased to 2%. Using the same average sale amount above, you have increased your income to £20,000 – without increasing the amount of money you spent to get customers to your site! You had the same number of visitors, but your profits doubled!

Important factors to increase Conversion:

Simple design

Simplicity is important in web design because the more complex the design is, the harder it is for visitors to focus. Complicated flash animation or large images on sites can sometimes cause more harm than they’re worth, especially if visitors to your site are unable to load them. If your load time takes too long, visitors will leave without a second thought. Be sure that the focal point of your home page and inner pages is what you want your customers to absorb the most: what your business is, why visitors should browse through your site, the benefits you can offer them, and how to become a customer.

Clearly demonstrate the benefits of your product or service.

Web surfers are notoriously fickle, so don’t make them read through pages of content and decide for themselves why they should choose your business. If the benefits of your product or service are clearly outlined and backed up with sound content, they are more likely to turn into customers.

Include calls to action

Many websites don’t convert visitors into customers for one simple reason: they don’t ask the visitor to take action. All pages should encourage visitors to take action – either to purchase a product or service, sign-up for your newsletter or to contact your business.

Use effective Navigation

Understand where on your site you want visitors to go most, and make it easy for them to get there. If the goal of your website is to encourage visitors to use your eCommerce functions, link to your eCommerce shopping cart wherever it seems logical – don’t make them search for it. Try to think like a visitor to your site browsing through your products or services, and make it easier for them to become a customer, not harder.

Take them where they want to go

As you know pay-per-click advertising is a great way to generate traffic to your site, but one of the most common mistakes that many business owners forget to do is “take the customer where they want to go” – if the customer found you for the search term “Kodak Digital Camera” then ensure you’re directing traffic to your selection of Kodak Digital Cameras, not your homepage. This act alone will greatly increase your conversion rates. Sometimes it’s just that simple!

After you’ve made these changes to your website and you’ve increased your conversion rate, imagine the results you’ll get when you implement a marketing plan to increase traffic to your site! If you use a pay-per-click or email marketing campaign and optimize your site to make it more visible to search engines, your profits can increase even more. Using the example I’ve given above, if you increase traffic to your site from 5000 visitors to just 7500, just look at the results:

7500 visitors with a 2% conversion rate = 150 customers.

150 customers x £200 per sale = £30,000!

That’s a £20,000 increase from what you were making in the beginning. So, you can see that just increasing the number of visitors to your site is not the answer – you need to convert these visitors into customers to make your Internet presence pay off for your business.

You can get a whole shedload of people to design you a pretty website, but the number who can actually draw traffic to your, and more importantly convert it into leads or sales is far less.

I always like to quote Red Adair, the Texan who puts out major oil fires in relation to this subject: "If you think it is expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur."

WSI, the world’s leading provider of Internet Solutions to small and medium sized businesses the world over, has over 1,500 local Consultants in 87 countries who can help grow your business. To find out how you can convert more customers through the power of the Internet, contact Gordon Diffey at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 01572 495007