According to the so-called experts, a decent conversion ratio is right around one percent. In other words, one out of every one hundred visitors to your website converts to a sale.

Personally, I think you should ignore what the experts say, and strive to achieve as high a conversion ratio as possible. You should never be satisfied. You should always be looking for ways to improve your conversion ratio. My website consistently converts anywhere from 3 to 5 percent, and often converts as high as ten percent!

Unless you're selling a big-ticket item and making $100 or more per sale, it's extremely difficult to make any real money with only a one percent conversion ratio.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and if your website is attracting hundreds or even thousands of visitors a day, then obviously you can do quite well with a one percent or lower conversion ratio.

But what if you don't have that kind of traffic--and most websites don't. Then what? What if you're selling a $20 e- book and you're only attracting a hundred visitors a day to your website? With a one percent conversion ratio, that means your website is making a measly $20 a day. And believe me, that's much more common than you realize.

However, what if you could improve your conversion ratio to 3 percent? 5 percent? All of a sudden, you're making $60 to $100 a day with the same amount of traffic. Improve your conversion ratio to ten percent and voila, that $100 a day turns into $200 a day!

So, how do you go about improving your website's conversion ratio? Here are some tips that should help:

1. Make sure your visitors know what you do, the instant they land on your website. Don't make them have to guess. Tell them right up front with a benefits-laden headline.

2. Make sure the design of your website is up to par? Make it easy to navigate. Get rid of distracting flash or stupid, meaningless graphics that are a waste of everybody's time and take forever to load? Simplify your website. Get rid of the flash, graphics and pop-ups!

3. Use psychologically effective colors. The color blue suggests quality, trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness--the perfect choice for sales pages. Avoid purple, which connotes uncertainty and ambiguity, and only use yellow to highlight key words and phrases. In addition, try to have as much white space as possible. This makes for a much cleaner looking, easier to read website.

4. Get your own domain name. URL's that contain names like, "Geocities", "Angelfire" or "Tripod" have amateur written all over them.

5. Prove what you say. Back up your claims with cold, hard, indisputable and verifiable facts?

6. Put your name, telephone number and street address on your website?

7. Use authentic customer testimonials, complete with first and last names? Just make sure you get your customers permission first.

8. Offer a fair and reasonable money-back guarantee? Thirty days is good. Sixty or ninety days is better!

9. Make it easy for your customers to pay. And offer a variety of payment options. I can assure you, if you're using Paypal only, you're losing sales. There are a lot of people out there, myself included, that just won't do business with Paypal. It's too much of a hassle!

10. And last but not least, make sure you have a powerful sales letter. A strong and effective sales letter can blast your earnings into the upper stratosphere!

If you aren't capable of writing that type of sales letter yourself, hire a copywriting expert to write it for you.

Follow the 10 steps set forth in this article, and your website's conversion ratio will improve dramatically--and so will your profits!

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

About the Author
Dean Phillips, Herndon, VA, USA
dean@lets-make-money.net
http://www.lets-make-money.net
Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net Website: http://www.lets-make-money.net

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