Website conversion is a methodology designed to improve your website visitors' experiences on your website and, in so doing, generate desired results for your company. While search engine optimization has become an established method of marketing to potential customers, the newer and potentially invaluable method of website conversion has not received very much attention. In these days of technological innovation when you can order your groceries online, find a date over the Internet, and even most fifth graders have an e-mail address, most people would agree that having a company website is, at the very least, one of the costs of doing business in the 21^st century. However, having a URL and a home page is more than just another line item on the list of ways to demonstrate that your company is legitimate – and it's also more than just another pretty, sparkly marketing brochure. The Internet is unique in that it offers one of the only advertising mediums that is actually interactive, requiring website visitors to engage in your marketing message. This interaction means that, whether you want it to or not, your company's website acts as a virtual sales person, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, convincing potential customers to buy – or, sometimes, not to buy – the products and services you have to offer.

Ensuring that your website communicates the right information to these potential customers can be a critical component of your company's success in terms of both revenue and exposure, and website conversion is intended to do just that. You may have spent hundreds and thousands of dollars creating a state-of-the-art, eye-catching website, but without measuring website conversion, how can you know what your typical visitor's impression is of your company and its products? Some graphics-intensive websites can be slow to load or so light on content that visitors jump ship after just one or two page views to find one of your competitors who might be better equipped to give them the information that they need. Conversely, some websites contain mountains of content but lack the structure that can help prospects locate specific information they need to make an informed purchasing decision.

And the problems website conversion aims to address are even more complicated than that. Your customers may have very different needs. They probably think of your products in different ways and probably have different problems they are trying to solve. Betty might want a vacuum cleaner that lets her get the job done more quickly while Annette wants a vacuum cleaner that offers the most cutting-edge vacuuming technology. Of course, your website probably doesn't sell vacuum cleaners – in fact, you probably don't sell anything directly on your website at all. But whether you are selling high-end banking software and want visitors to take a free demo of your product or selling outsourced IT services and want visitors to register to read a whitepaper about firewalls, your customers have the same problems. How can you create just one website that addresses the needs, desires, and buying habits of all of your customers, all of the time?

The key to creating a website that addresses all of your customer's questions while balancing information and content with navigation and aesthetics lies within the emerging science of website conversion.  Like search engine optimization before it, website conversion uses a combination of scientific metrics, algorithms, research, and good old-fashioned marketing instincts to boost your website's effectiveness as both a marketing and sales tool. However, while search engine optimization aims at pulling more prospective customers to your website, the goal of website conversion is to get those prospective customers to take the action that you want them to take once they are there.

Of course, no one, not even a website conversion expert, can force visitors to take an action, no matter how many algorithms he or she might try in the process. But website conversion can help your website to engage each and every visitor in such a way that he or she will continue along the buying path, asking questions and getting answers. If your website does its job, you'll probably get exactly what you want – and, perhaps even better, so will the customer. At its heart, website conversion is simply about getting into the minds of your customers, figuring out what their questions are likely to be, and giving them clear directions to those answers.

When a human sales person encounters a potential customer, the customer can ask his or her questions directly. The sales person can decide what tone to take or what type of information to give the prospect based on the interaction. The human sales approach can change completely based on the customer's needs and personality. However, when an Internet user enters a search query in a major search engine and lands on your website, your content is the potential customer's introduction to your company and your products, and the hyperlinks on the pages are what help the visitor move through your website to answer his or her questions. Since it would be very difficult to generate a website that could determine each visitor's needs and personality type and change its content and architecture accordingly, your company's website has to try to address all of the possible needs and personality types that a visitor to your site might have, all without ever exchanging even a word