By Marybeth Frugé

There is a lot of talk in the Internet marketing industry about increasing Web site traffic. After all, if your potential clients aren't finding your site, what good is it doing you?

You can only promote your business' products and services to those who actually find you online. Because of this, many businesses spend a lot of time and money on increasing traffic to their sites through various Internet marketing initiatives, including pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimization and e-mail marketing. These are all very effective ways to increase site traffic. But, is there actually something more important than directing traffic to your site? If you only focus on increasing traffic, you're only doing half your job.

Convert Visitors to Customers
You can get traffic to your site, but so what? If they immediately leave your site without doing anything, the time and money you spent to get them there simply wasn't worth it.

You need to be able to convert visitors to your site into customers. A conversion can be either a direct sale, or convincing them to sign-up for your newsletter so you can continue your relationship with them long after they've left your site.
 
Example:
If 5,000 people visit your site each month, and 50 of them turn into actual customers, your Web site conversion rate is 1 percent. If each of those 50 customers equals an average sale of $200, your business has made $10,000. However, even by increasing your conversion rate to just 2 percent, you will increase your income to $20,000—without increasing the amount of money you spent to get customers to your site!

Important Factors to Increase Conversion:

Simple Design
Simplicity is important in Web design because the more complex the design, the harder it is for visitors to focus. Complicated flash animation or large images on sites can sometimes cause more harm than good, 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 visitors to absorb the most: what your business is, why they should browse through your site, the benefits you can offer them and how they can become a customer.

Show the Benefits
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, visitors are more likely to turn into customers.

Include Calls to Action
Many Web sites don't convert visitors into customers for one simple reason: they don't ask the visitor to take action. All pages on your Web site should encourage visitors to take action, by either  purchasing a product or service, signing-up for your newsletter or contacting your business.

Use Effective Navigation
Understand where on your site you most want visitors to go, and make it easy for them to get there. If the goal of your Web site is to encourage visitors to use your e-commerce functions, link to your e-commerce shopping cart wherever it seems logical and 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.

Give Them What They Want
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 make is forgetting to "take the customer where they want to go." If the customer found you by typing "Kodak Digital Camera" into a search engine, then ensure you're directing traffic to your selection of Kodak Digital Cameras, not your homepage. This alone will greatly increase your conversion rates. Sometimes it's just that simple!

Increase Traffic
After you've made these changes to your Web site, 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 e-mail marketing campaign and optimize your site to make it more visible to search engines, your profits can increase even more. Using the example above, if you increase traffic to your site from 5,000 visitors to just 7,500, look at the results: 7,500 visitors x 2 percent conversion rate = 150 customers. And, 150 customers x $200 per sale = $30,000. That's a $20,000 increase from what you were making in the beginning. So, make your Internet presence pay off for your business by increasing the number of visitors to your site and by converting those visitors into customers..

Marybeth Frugé is an Internet consultant at WSI, a provider of Internet Solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. You can reach Marybeth at , or ( 913) 685-8190.