Home Page >  Who We Are >  Articles >  Converting The Masses   Converting The Masses (September 2001) What’s supposed to happen once someone has found his or her way to your company’s web site? It’s amazing how many blank stares you get in response to this seemingly fundamental question. The answer is, visitors to your web site are supposed to DO something. If the purpose of the site is online marketing, visitors should be giving you their email addresses for further conversation. If the purpose is online commerce, visitors should be making purchases. Whatever your business is, this process of turning visitors into customers is called "conversion". Without a specific "call to action", visitors will probably not realize what they are supposed to do. Having an uncluttered design, where the call to action can be more easily noticed, helps improve conversion rates. Sometimes, immediate incentives like discounts or extras can work to improve the number of conversions. In other businesses, where the actual sales process may be a long term one (for instance, a professional services company), offering a newsletter, special report, or other useful content can serve as the incentive. Regardless of what form this incentive takes, remember that "what’s in it for me" is usually in the mind of the visitor; an immediate benefit should be offered to them. Getting traffic to your site is pointless unless the site is able to convert visitors into customers. Many times, companies are very concerned with how many visitors they’re getting, while ignoring the fact that much of the traffic is being wasted due to low conversion rates. Given the costs and time involved with building traffic, this is not only unwise, but may actually help drive business into the hands of competitors. For the large number of people that use a search engine to find products or services, the competition is only the "Back" button away. Grabbing the attention of the visitor and getting them to take action is essential before they have slipped away. It is also critical in understanding the overall effectiveness of a particular marketing campaign to track conversions, since this helps to measure the quality of the traffic coming from a particular source. Only by understand this, can the complete customer acquisition cost be measured. And only by weighing that acquisition cost versus the potential value of that customer, can a complete understanding be reached about how effective a particular campaign has been. To summarize, determining the site’s primary objective for visitors is the first step. Improving the "call to action" is the next step. Finally, driving traffic, and measuring conversions closes the loop by providing feedback. Ultimately, increasing sales comes down to converting as many of these people as you can. Following these few simple guidelines can have a significant impact on how well, or poorly, your site affects your bottom line. (c)2001 Zoomdot All Rights Reserved Did you find this information useful? Sign up here for the FREE Zoomdot electronic newsletter!