Bricks-and-mortars retailers understand the importance of product positioning to maximise sales - magazines, chocolates and chewing gum at the supermarket checkout for example. They make it easy for their customers to buy.

In the same way, if you make your site easy to use, and position your products and offers well, it stands to reason you are likely to make more sales. This is conversion optimisation and it requires the knowledge of how to consciously make the buying experience as easy as possible for your customers.

An example of this is Amazon.com. Have you seen their one-click buy it now functionality? That functionality was built specifically with conversion optimisation in mind. Prior to optimising your site and increasing conversion rates however, you will first need to understand why you are NOT currently achieving the sales you would like.

• What in fact are your real conversion rates as a percentage of unique page views?
• What are your shopping cart abandonment rates?
• Where and when do the customers drop out of the purchasing process?
• What are your current campaigns and what impact are they having?
• What is your average order size?
• What success have you had in the up-sell and cross-sell components of your campaigns?

While many won't admit it, most in the Australian retail industry would be lucky to be achieving a 12 month average conversion rate of 3%. The reasons for this are numerous but we suspect that the number one cause is know-how. Or more precisely, lack of know-how.

While e-commerce has been around for about 15 years in Australia, it is only now beginning to be mainstream and as such the competition is becoming fierce. While users are becoming more and more comfortable with purchasing online, we are also seeing that they appreciate the merits of shopping around. Because of this, savvy online retailers must learn to make the buying experience as pleasant and as easy as possible if they are to convert web traffic to real revenue.

At FourFires, we would welcome an opportunity to demonstrate our know-how to you. Contact us now to discuss your needs.