CUSTOMERS WANT TO BE CONVERTED...

By Kim Wingate


An excerpt from "Turning Visits Into Action - Proven strategies,
tactics, and techniques for improving Web site conversion ratios."

Newbies to the Internet still surf a fair amount in their
introductory period, but after a while we are all in the same
boat. We just don't "surf" as much any more. Time is something
most of us today just don't have enough of. When most of us get
online, we are usually doing so for a reason. Most people who
visit your site do so with a specific purpose in mind. (Unless of
course your marketing efforts are very untargeted - but everyone
knows better than that, right?)

When you begin converting more and more of your existing site
traffic into sales, leads, or whatever your site's key action is,
it is a signal that you are satisfying the specific goals of more
and more people. When you help people achieve their goals, it has
a powerful effect. They tell their friends and family about their
success. They recommend your site to others who have similar
goals. Soon your business is growing exponentially by
word-of-mouth alone!

For most people, finding what they are looking for on the Internet
is still a challenge. This provides an opportunity for those who
are willing to exploit it. Think about it. One day, you decide to
go online and find a memory upgrade for your computer system. You
go to your favorite search engine and begin "hunting". You visit
site after site without being convinced that you have found the
right product from the right vendor. Your goal is to find that
memory upgrade. You want to spend your money. But no one is
stepping up to the plate and convincing you that you have found
the right place. You become increasingly frustrated.

Then you visit a site that has done a lot of work to improve
their conversion ratios. The site quickly walks you step-by-step
through a simple process to find the exact upgrade for your
computer. The site design is professional and fast. All the
information you need is placed right where you can find it easily.
The content on the site convinces you that this specific product
is exactly what you are looking for; this vendor is the right
vendor to do business with; and the price for this product is
very reasonable. The site encourages you to order through a very
simple process and you order.

Success!

This site has helped you to achieve what you initially set out to
do. You wish that you had found this site to begin with. You will
recommend this site to your friends because it helped you to be
successful in your quest. Of course, a bad "after-the-sale"
experience will lead to buyer's remorse. But by making the user
successful at this stage, you have achieved a high level of
positive feeling that will be very difficult to erase.

This is an important point to drive home - conversion ratios are
not only a measure of how well your site is satisfying your goals,
they are also a measure of how well you are satisfying your
visitor's goals. By improving conversion ratios, you are creating
a win-win situation for you and your site's visitors. You win by
increasing the number of desired actions taken by visitors coming
to your site. Your visitors win because you are enabling them to
achieve their goals more easily.

==================== About the Author =====================

Kim Wingate is the founder of AvidSurfer and publisher of
"Turning Visits Into Action - Proven strategies, tactics, and
techniques for improving Web site conversion ratios."

This in-depth report, complete with hundreds of tips and real
world examples, is now available at:
http://www.avidsurfer.com/takeaction.asp?src=1330

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