There are only two ways to make more sales with your Website. You can drive more visitors to the site using the latest traffic generating techniques or you can convert more of your existing visitors to customers which is known as "increasing the conversion rate".

In this article I am going to show you how to increase the conversion rate (and profitability) of your web site by using Direct Response Techniques that have been around for many years. These methods do not rely on the temperamental search engines or the latest technology, they rely on something that never changes; Human Psychology.

Let's say that you buy 1000 visitors to your site using a method such as pay per click and you are paying 20 cents per click. For those 1000 Visitors you would pay $200. Now let's assume that you make $10 on each Sale. If you get 1 out of every 100 visitors to buy your products (1% Conversion Rate) you would make 10 Sales. You would make $100 in Gross Profit but you paid $200 for the visitors so you have as Net loss of $100!

But what if we can Increase the conversion Rate? What if we got 2 out of 100 customers to buy? Or 3 or 4 or 6? Well if you got a 2% Conversion rate you would get 20 Sales for a Gross Profit of $200 and a Net of "Break Even" If You got a 3% Conversion Rate you would Net $100, 4% would net you $200 and 6% would net you $400 .. all with the same amount of traffic!

Here are 5 Elements that will make your web site more profitable by increasing the conversion rate

1 - A Powerful and Gripping Headline

The Headline is without a doubt the most important part of any ad, sales letter or website. From the time a visitor get to your web site you have 7 Seconds to grab their attention before losing them forever. The best way to think of your headline is . "The Ad for Your Ad" . If your headline connects with the prospect they will read further . if not they will click away into cyberspace .. Never to be heard from again!

If you get nothing else out of this entire article make sure your site has a powerful and compelling headline. I go a lot into developing powerful headlines in my newsletter so feel free to subscribe to it on my website. A free tool for developing powerful attention grabbing headlines can be found at http://www.FreeHeadlineCreator.com

2 -Compelling Copy

The job of the headline is to stop your prospect in their tracks and get their attention; it's the job of your copy to keep them interested and make the sale. Great copy will engage the prospect, get their interest, touch their hot buttons, and ask for the sale. A top notch copywriter may charge $10,000 or more to write a sales letter for your website, and they are well worth it . If you can't afford $10,000 for a Sales Letter I might be able to help you..

Good Copy uses the AIDA formula

A - Attention (Get the prospects Attention, with a great headline!)
I - Interest (Get their interest with some great Copy)
D - Desire (Whip them up into as frenzy so that they DESIRE your product)
A - Action (Ask for the Sale!)

3 - Testimonials

There's a phenomenon known as "Social Proof" which basically means "If it's good enough for him its good for me"! By having testimonials on your website it shows your prospect that he is making a good decision to buy your product because "Everybody else is doing it" Testimonials are very powerful, the more the better!

When giving Testimonials the more details the better:

Bad Testimonial: "I loved the Product" J.R, Texas

Good Testimonial: "This Product is great!, I Lost 21 pounds in 30 days and I have a lot more energy" John Roberts, Police Officer, Houston Texas

4 - Defined Course of Action

You should have a course of action that you want to lead you prospect to ... either to buy something, opt-in to your list or whatever . If you have a bunch of distracting links such as "About Us" , Our Staff" etc your just going to distract the prospect from your real purpose which is to get him to purchase your product or opt in to you list!

5- The Fortune is in The Follow-up!

No matter what you do it's more likely than not that your prospect will not be in a "buying mood" when they come to your website. The worst thing that you can do is let them leave without even knowing that they have been there. Even if they don't buy anything immediately you want to capture their information for later follow-up.

The best way to do that is to have them fill out a form that takes their information and puts it in an auto-responder. Once you have the information the auto-responder will do all the follow-up work for you automatically. This will free you up to do other things . like going to the bank to deposit money!

In order to induce your prospect to leave their information you will have to offer them something; it could be a free subscription to your newsletter, a free report or a free e- course. It must be something of value and it should have the same theme as your website.

For example, If you have a site that caters to dog owners you could offer a 7 part course on how to Groom your dog. You could set up 7 Lessons in advance and put them in your auto-responder. The auto responder I use is Aweber Systems. I have been using them for years and have been very happy with them. At the time I am writing this they have a Special where you can try the system risk free for 30 days, their web site is http://freetrial.aweber.com

I hope you enjoyed this article and put it to good use converting those visitors to cold hard cash Copyright