What is more important - more traffic or more sales?

For an online business there are two ways of making more money - increase your web traffic (get more customers into your shop) or improve your conversion (get more of the customers in your shop to buy from you).

Let me illustrate this:

A site has 10,000 visitors per month generating 50 sales, equivalent to a conversion rate of 0.5 and up to 2-3 equals 150). Alternatively the site could forget about increasing traffic and instead concentrate on increasing its conversion rate from 0.5, which would also result in 150 sales (10,000 times 1.5.

A lot of the web marketing related articles and information are focussing on increasing traffic - the best strategies for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), how to select the best keywords, how to run PPC (pay per click) campaigns and so on. Very few people are focussing on conversion strategies, how do you convert the 98-99% of people that are leaving your site without buying.

In the following we will discuss some of the most important aspects when it comes to conversion. One word on the term ‘sales’. We will use ‘sales’ throughout the document but you may be in a different business where the aim is to generate leads by convincing people to sign up to something (a newsletter for instance). However, the principles we will be discussing apply to both lead generation and sales.

So how do you improve your conversion? Well, there are four main things you need to focus on:

Web site usability Usability is the art of creating convenience for the visitor's interaction, the structure or skeleton of the site. A site with strong usability enables a frictionless customer experience where intuition instead of thinking drives the visitor's movements. This includes intuitive and instructive navigation, clear call-to-actions, clear value propositions, credibility-building communications, convenient order process - all of which create a smooth process for the visitor's movements .

Website Design Design is the front end to the technology and to the structure/usability of the site. It is the first impression of the website and directs the visitor towards a desired path. Great design directs a visitor's actions through the effective use of colors, graphics and lines. With the average visitor spending 10 seconds or less determining your website's relevancy to them the design is crucial in the early stages of the visit.

Technology Technology is the website's foundation that must work seamlessly supporting the customer experience. Visitors should not notice the technology and typically only do so when it is broken.

Content - call to action The last, and to some extent most important part, is the content - the copy writing and how to get a clear call-to-action message across to the visitors. When it comes to copy writing there are two simple tips - headlines and special offers.

Headlines are crucially important to the success of your website. Testing has proven that headlines can increase your sales significantly and professional copywriters consider the headline the most important part of an ad. On average, five times as many people will read the headline as the actual body copy, which means it is important to spend time creating headlines.

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