In real estate, we are told that “location” is of paramount importance. In the virtual world of the Internet, many people believe value is created by the “position” your site claims on the web. Are you positioned first or last in a web directory? Do you come up on the first or second page when someone uses a search engine such as Google? Everyone wants to receive the most “hits,” but is that all there is?

With everyone so obsessed with positioning, we sometimes fail to realize that our success is determined by how many people contacted us and not by how many people arrived at our website.  What we’re talking about here is “conversion rate” or the ratio between how many visited your site and how many actually bought your goods or services.

Your online success is predicated upon a number of factors, such as the search term optimization, look of the site, content, ease of navigation, and how people actually surf the Internet.  All of these impact your visitor conversion rate. Two websites can have identical content; however, the design and optimization of those sites can produce significantly different sales results.  An experienced, marketing-savvy webmaster will concentrate on that conversion rate while building or redesigning a website.

By increasing your visitor conversion rate, you will actually need fewer contacts to maintain your sales goals.  Maximizing your conversion rate will pay off in higher dividends and at a lower cost than mere advertising.