Conversion as a term is appropriate for business websites that desire a completed action to be accomplished by its visitors. These websites have a typical purpose: sell. Whether it is a product, a service or even an experience being offered, closing a sale is the fundamental goal.

The context of conversion differs a little between those who manage Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns and those who have brochure sites. For PPC advertisers, conversion refers to the percentage of visitors who completed your desired transaction (or informed you of their intention to do so in the future) against the total number of people who clicked on your ad and basically did nothing. When it comes to brochure sites, conversion is simply the number/percentage of people that completed your desired transaction from the overall amount of traffic.

As a process, conversion obviously starts with traffic generation. Your websites online visibility will contribute hugely to this step. You then inform that traffic on what youre all about and have them complete the ultimate transaction of purchasing your product, making a reservation, filling up an inquiry form or requesting for a quotation. For something that sounds very simple, however, many websites surprisingly complicate matters for their beloved clients.

Here are 12 proven effective ways of increasing your websites sales conversion, if not boosting its marketability.

1. Use Landing Pages (and use them wisely!). While there are many ways to spruce up a Landing Page (LP), a whole lot of webmasters shockingly include everything else on theirs. Remember, LPs are created to provide focus on selling a product or service “ capturing attention with the exact information required by the visitor and nothing more. If you bombard your visitors with everything else, the purpose of leading them towards completing your desired transaction will be defeated, thats a guarantee.

2. Maintain the focus towards your goal. When you have many offerings, it is easy to be tempted to disseminate them throughout your pages. Unfortunately, some online businesspersons include links to other of their products on highly specific pages such as Contact or Order forms. Imagine you are the customer already in the process of entering your credit card number for a purchase and your eyes suddenly take you to a link to something else you would definitely want over what you were about to buy.

It is not too bad at all for you to cross-reference your products within your site, but there is a fine line between being sensible and going crazy on this strategy. For example, promoting your best-sellers is best done on the pages where customers are supposed to search, something that can actually give them the motivation to begin shopping or at least keep browsing.

3. Keep your content simple yet relevant. Whats worse than a badly-designed website is dragging copy. On the Internet, your “quality time with a visitor will only average 10 seconds at best. Getting to your point quickly will be very noble when trying to increase your websites conversion rate. Of course, when you make your titles/headings and content relevant, the search engines will send you some love through the rankings, too.

4. Be honest with your product descriptions. While the previous tip talks about keeping your content simple yet relevant, it is also wise to include details such as your products histories, strengths, limitations, even flaws. Perhaps the best way to combine both approaches flawlessly is to create short but extremely marketable versions of your products descriptions “ maintaining your websites sales momentum. You can then just employ sub-pages or pop-ups to put other details on should your visitors seek for more.

5. Dont make your visitors think. Once you have groomed your content well, it is time to make sure that you dont end up requiring rocket science from your visitors. Flash is a big no-no as we have discussed on our previous entry. Place your “Call to Action” link or button on strategic locations such as above the fold of the page, the upper right corner or somewhere near the middle of the screen. You can also utilize vibrant colors for Calls to Action so they can be more noticeable on your page/s. The idea is for them to be immediately seen that your customers would already know where to click for your desired transaction as they read your copy.

When creating Calls to Action, you can also gently inform your visitors on what they need to do or whats going to happen when they click it. If potential clients should contact you via phone, your Call to Action can definitely say Call us now for a free quote instead of plain Get your free quote here. Never forget that vague instructions turn Internet users off.

6. Get to your point in less than three clicks. Product search, product details, purchase. In an ideal world, these three steps should be followed. Instead, online entrepreneurs get caught up in too many strategies coming from their peers and professionals that they end up jumbling their techniques on their websites pages, therefore confusing the customer. By limiting the road for customers to complete your desired transaction to a maximum of three clicks (in addition to directing them to your Call to Action easily), you minimize the possibility that they will just abandon the canvass process altogether.