A Website Conversion Rate is defined as the number of visitors or potential customer leads to your site that perform a desired action measured against the total number of visitors in within a specific timeframe (ex. 30-days). 

 A website’s Download Conversion Rate measures how many of your visitors (in percentage) are downloading your newsletter, software or ebook offers or whatever else you have presented for download. The download conversion rate is obtained by dividing the number of downloads by the total number of visitors to the specific page. 

 So let’s say you had 4000 visitors to your download page for the month and 300 people downloaded your offer therefore your conversion rate is calculated below: 

 300 downloads / 4000 visitors x 100 = 7.5% (website download rate)

Several lead – sales management tools are available to help you monitor the download conversion rates.  Do you know your site's conversion rates? What do you take into consideration when making changes to your site's design?

Research has shown that 60% of websites do not know their conversion rates. By regularly measuring the websites effectiveness it will increase your sales in comparison with most competitors.  Many bloggers and business organizations mistakenly believe that posting several websites can be more effective. 

Not necessarily. Consider how much will it cost to double your visitor count? If you post more sites the cost of maintenance, design and optimization could increase significantly. What if you instead, you worked to double sales from your existing customers that visited the existing website? How about bumping that 5% conversion rate up to 10% or higher?

What if I have plenty of visitors yet very few of them take the desired action? Clearly define what action you want visitors to perform. What is the next step for your visitor after taking the desired action?  The desired action could be purchases, survey, or click link buttons.

A visitor to your site should immediately feel comfortable with your site. First impression as they say matters a lot. For conversion to take place you must hold the visitor's attention once he/she lands on your site. 

1.    Your website should load fast. The next site is a click away.

2.    State your case quickly. Let your visitor know what your site is about in a few words.

3.    Arrange your content in an easy to understand way for quick clear navigation.

4.    Include your Privacy Policy, Phone Numbers, About Us information that builds some element of trust.

5.    Do not irritate your visitors with poor quality, bad grammar or typos. Check and crosscheck your content.

6.    If you must use banners use them sparingly. Do not allow your banners to distract your visitors from the desired action to be taken.

Next let’s tackle, the Sales Conversion Rate. This not only measures the visitor downloads but also gives you an idea of how many visitors are spending money i.e. buying your product or services out of the total number of visitors to your site.  The sales conversion rate = number who bought / total number of visitors x 100.

Elements that will help improve your sales conversion rate include; easy and consistent navigation to your ORDER page, free shipping offers, limited graphics for faster web page loads, effective color combinations, and customer service contact telephone numbers that actually connects to a live person. Be aware of what your audience wants. The odds are customers are telling you what they want, are you listening?

One effective way to improve conversion rate is to put the hyperlinks in the text content. The text link flows with your write up. Visitors are more likely to click on such links than one that is not embedded within the content.

In the event of partners, consider that affiliate sites need two conversion rates to succeed. One on the affiliate's site, the other to your merchant website. The first is within the affiliate's control while the second is not. So to succeed in affiliate marketing the affiliate has to choose a merchant with good conversion rates. Conversion on affiliate sites is largely dependent on traffic volume.

Start measuring your website conversion rate today. The more you experiment, the more you will learn and the more opportunities you give yourself to improve your sales results. Get in the habit of testing, measuring and tracking constantly. There's always room for improvement.

About Author

 Mr. Rickman is a respected analyst, innovative expert in business content and web development services with over 30-years experience, published worldwide. He is also the author of several books including Eight Billion People.  Mr. Rickman holds advanced business and technical degrees. For more information visit : http://www.sustainablevirtualbiz.com  , call (503) 621-4953 http://www.sustainablevirtualbiz.com/sustainable_business_news_source