When driving traffic to a website , it is of course imperative to get a high volume of visitors be it via organic SEO techniques or targeted advertising. However, merely focusing on this statistic is not enough and it is vital to insure that the conversion rate, i.e. the percentage of visitors who actually buy something, is as high as possible.

It is often the case that a website has huge amounts of traffic but relatively low conversion rates which may be an indication that not everyone who lands on a site is a potential customer. For example a site selling American Football memorabilia may find that a large percentage of European visitors do not buy goods when compared with visitors from the US because they are searching for products related to soccer (which is called football outside of the states). While it can be difficult to account for these types of anomalies, the extra visitors are not necessarily a bad thing. They will afford the site some ‘Google Juice’ but in terms of visitor stats in relation to sales, they have little value and can ‘flatter to deceive’.

Improving conversion rates

It is a far better strategy to try to focus on the visitors who may actually be interested in spending money on the products and services on offer and there are several easy steps that can be taken to improve the conversion rates of these visitors.Be user friendly – A site should be easy to use, if not potential customers will quickly click to another site. The best ways to do this are;Ensure user friendly navigation

Optimize for all browsers

Optimize for all devices and screen sizesHave highly visible call to action buttonsBe seen to be trustworthy– Many people still worry when giving credit card details online so it is important not only to be trust worthy, but also to be seen to be trustworthy. A full, real-world business address should be clearly displayed along with a phone number, a privacy policy and an accreditation such as a SSL certificate.

Up-sell  

Do not be content to have single products on a page, instead show similar items as well. This insures that if the product being viewed is not quite right, alternative options are easily available which will increase the likelihood of a sale.

Cross-sell  

Once a product is added to the basket, be sure to have related products on display also. While this may seem like a pushy sales technique to some, as long as quality, relevant products are being displayed, it is actually doing the customer a service by offering products that may improve, enhance or maintain the initial purchase.

Further Reading:

http://dailyseotip.com/why-conversion-rate-is-an-important-metric-for-your-site/1738/

http://www.addedbytes.com/articles/online-marketing/ten-ways-to-improve-your-website-conversion-rate/

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=162http://video.mit.edu/watch/designing-your-site-for-conversion-rate-optimization-cro-ben-finklea-5798/