There are a lot of sites out there that get tons of good traffic through search engines but don’t get their fair share of leads or sales.
Most visitors search, land up on the site and just leave.

I often get asked if it is even possible to get better conversions on a site? Or all you can do is work on getting more visitors by investing in SEO, PPC and all the other forms of internet marketing.

Well, it is important to keep working on the internet marketing campaigns that you’re running but it is definitely possible to improve conversions.

Some simple mistakes that I often see on sites is -

1 - No clear message -

If you’re offering a service or product build your website around it. Don’t confuse a visitor by offering him tons of irrelevant data.
2 - Passive Goal Marketing -

You want the visitor to fill up a form, or click on the Buy button? Well, actively tell them to do that. Don’t hide your contact or buy buttons and hope that people will notice and click. Be extremely clear about what you want the user to do and then make it easy for him to do it.

3 - Trust Elements -

Everyone thinks twice before giving out their payment and personal information. Tell them that it’s safe. Use those trust elements like the Verisign secure certificate, Anti-Hack symbol, etc that you may have purchased to re-assure potential buyers.

4 - Browser Compatibility -

Check your site with the popular browsers. Often, designers don’t bother to do that and it can affect conversions. No one is going to purchase stuff from a site that they can’t view in their browser.

5 - Use soothing Colors -

A professional website cannot be bright red and black. You may be fond of these colors, but if it is a professional service you offer stick to the safe blues and whites or a color that’s associated with your professional service.

I hope these tips help you. You can check out the articles’ section at Convonix for more detailed articles on website usability and internet marketing.
 
- Vishal.

Was just chatting the other day with a close friend and her tag line said, “When in doubt Google”.  I gave this a decent thought and came to the conclusion that Google actually runs our life. We query Google for every small thing, from finding information on a travel destination to looking for that perfect recipe which will make your dinner a class apart.

Surprisingly though, Google always finds a way to give the right results. You can also make an argument that we believe Google is right because we follow it and do not turn to other search engines like Yahoo, Live, Netscape (yes, they do exist) to cross check the results thrown in by Google.

This gave me a thought and I was curious to know how much of the world market does Google dominate. Not surprisingly, I “Googled” for this too. Anyways here are some results as per the Market Share stats

Google is making a killing with almost 78% of the market share (was shocked to know this).  Yahoo is second with 12.21% and MSN is third with just 3.27%.

If this trend continues then Search Engine Optimization (SEO) would have to be soon re-coined as Google Optimization or may be as one of my colleague puts it – Googlization. Think about it???

With Microsoft announcing that it no longer wishes to persue the acquisition of Yahoo, what promised to be the year’s most talked about blockbuster deal may have ended in a little more than a whimper. But… has it really ended or is it a ploy by Microsoft to wait till the Yahoo stock plunges and then rebid at a lower price?

If major newswires are to be believed, at Yahoo, Jerry Yang is most likely to face several angry share holders who believed that he should have accepted Microsoft’s offer. On his part, Jerry Yang has been quoted as saying, “with the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history”. I wonder what that transition is?

From a paid search advertising perspective one only hopes that they improve their own offering instead of selling out to Google’s Adwords program. If they do decide to tie up with Google, then Google Adwords will have a virtual monopoly in the paid search advertising space and that would be quite sad.

Whatever it is that ultimately happens… the future promises to be interesting!!!