Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 1: Driving Traffic, Driving Sales

In This Chapter

• Calculating the visitors-to-sales ratio at your site
• Discovering your high-volume traffic periods
• Marketing your site to drive traffic through the roof
• Getting customers to make the decision to buy

You've probably heard the old saying “Build it and they will come.” And JH you probably know by now that this particular theory doesn't necessarily apply to your Web site. Instead, your site is competing with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of other sites for visitors. If that's not intimidating enough, consider that you have to not only figure out how to get people to come to your Web site, but you also convince them to stay long enough to buy something from you.

Both challenges pretty much boil down to your conversion rate — how many browsers become buyers. In this chapter, we show you why your site's conversion rate matters, how to calculate it, and then describe some strategies for increasing it.