Internet marketing gurus are fond of saying that “Content is King.” In other words, you’ll eventually win if your website has the best content, because the search engines will eventually figure out that your site is more likely to provide their searchers a better “user experience” if they show your site up high in the search results so you get the click.

There’s a lot of truth to that, but it’s certainly not the whole truth. For instance, if you have great content, but nobody knows about it, you might as well be invisible.

That’s where Internet marketing consultants and PPC experts and search engine optimization firms come in—they help you get traffic to your site, so you at least have a shot at getting the business.

Even if you get the traffic (visitors) to your site, and even if you have really good content—if you don’t capture your visitor’s interest in just a couple of seconds, she’ll bounce off your site and move on somewhere else. So you need to “convert” a visitor to someone engaged with your site.

And even if you keep her on the site for a while, you need to “convert” her to call for an appointment or schedule a consult, or get her to “opt in” to get your free “Guide to Plastic Surgery” or “What’s This About a ‘Non-Facelift’ Facelift?” or whatever you’re offering.

One of the Internet’s most respected gurus, Glenn Livingston, even says that conversion is more important than traffic—that conversion cures traffic problems.

CONVERSION KILLERS

? Poor design, that leads the visitor’s eye randomly over the page, confuses her, and doesn’t direct her to take the action you want her to take.

? Multiple options the visitor can take, with no clear direction as to which she should choose. Tests show that people want to be led and directed as to what will give them the most value.

? Wimpy “Calls to Action.” Again, tests show that it’s just about impossible to over-emphasize your call to action. You want big, bold “Call Now” or “Yes, I’d Like a Free Consult” buttons.

? Too many font sizes and styles, which reduces readability and can drive the viewer off the page. Also, emphasizing too many things ends up emphasizing nothing.

? Unorganized content. Typical of e-commerce sites with lots of products. If not well-organized, your visitor can get confused, and a confused mind leads to no action.

?Poor color combinations. You want high-contrast, and you want dark text on light background.

Note that improving conversion in several areas leads to a multiplying effect. If you improve your page design and increase conversions 50%, and then improve your call to action and increase conversions another 50%, and then improve the organization of your content and get a further 50% bump in conversions– you’ve increased your conversions by nearly 3 ½ times.

Can you get 50% improvements? Oh, yes! Not always, but sometimes you can even get much larger improvements than that.

These are the kinds of things that a good website marketing consultant can help you with, with huge returns on your investment.

Let us know if we can help, and we’d love to know what your most pressing conversion question is…