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

Getting Customers to Buy

Driving traffic is certainly one approach to increasing your rate of success. After all, if it's a numbers game, the more site visitors, the more buyers you will convert. Your actual conversion rate may remain the same, but if you now have 4,000 visitors per day (instead of the 1,500 we used in our earlier example), your 2 percent conversion rate should bring in 80 sales. Right?

Statistically, your odds for gaining more sales should increase with a greater number of visitors. But consider the cost of increasing those odds. Using paid keyword searches and online advertising, you could end up spending thousands of dollars for that increased traffic count. A different approach is to increase your rate of conversion by getting more of your visitors to buy. For example, by increasing your conversion rate to 4 percent with your existing Web site traffic, you essentially double your sales, without spending the money required to double your traffic.

How do you get people to click that buy button more frequently? According to research, the following factors influence the conversion of browsers to buyers”

• Your site's security: Buyers prefer to make a purchase from the site that is most secure. This means keeping your SSL certificate updated and clearly displaying privacy policies and including recognizable trust seals, such as those from the Better Business Bureau.
• Multiple options for payments: Customers want and need choices when it comes to making a purchase. ...