It’s little touches that can make all the difference for an online merchant’s bottom line. For example, consider an online retailer who gets 20,000 hits per month, and has an average order value of $75 – that is to say, customers are spending $75 on average per order.

If that store’s conversion rate – the percentage of customers who become buyers – is one-percent, then that store can expect to make about $15,000 that month from about 200 orders. With a two-percent conversion rate, profits double as well to $30,000. Likewise, profits plunge when the conversion rate does.

Increasing conversion rates should be a primary goal of any online retailer. Unfortunately, there’s no magic formula; no easy, guaranteed way to do it. Some marketers with a narrow focus on a particular niche market might enjoy conversion rates as high as ten percent, while others, who employ identical marketing strategies, might struggle to see even a tenth of a percent. Thus, boosting conversion rates is a bit more like an art than a fine-tuned science or mathematical discipline.
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