Increasing conversion rate is an extremely powerful way of increasing your online earnings and sales. If you have a 1% conversion rate (100 visitors where 1 person actually places an order), all you have to do is get one more person to buy and you can double your sales with the same traffic. Then once you get your conversion rate high enough, you can try to draw more traffic.
If you know the CONVERTING KEYWORDS for your business, if you optimize for those words thru SEO, and/or buy them through SEARCH MARKETING, you can sometimes get a higher grade for customers.
1.) Harvest your CONVERTING KEYWORDS. Converting keywords are the words that folks type into the search engines that actually turn into sales. Not just traffic, but words & phrases that end up with someone buying something from your online store.
2.) Use these CONVERTING KEYWORDS in your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Note which products these words sell, and then optimize these PRODUCT or SECTIONS pages for these words.
a. Optimize factors both "on the page" and "off the page."
b. Add the converting keyword phrases both to the NAME (or PAGE-TITLE), the CAPTION, and in your HEAD-TAGS field with META-KEYWORDS and META-DESCRIPTION tags.
c. Optimize factors both "off the page" factors by using the converting keyword phrases in your anchor text (the underlined words in the links pointing to this page). Make sure other pages use these words in links to your page.
3.) Use these CONVERTING KEYWORDS in PPC for Google Adwords (Google, AOL) and Overture (Yahoo!, MSN). You have to pay because it is reported that 40% of Search Engine traffic from the major portals (Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, & Google) comes from pay per click advertising from Adwords or Overture.
4.) Think in Buckets of these keywords. Create BUCKETS of keywords around products or groups of products. For instance, Make the ADS have the CONVERTING KEYWORDS in the title of the ads so when someone does a search for "ipod mini charger" your ad says "ipod mini charger - free shipping,".
5.) Prequalify your prospects with better headlines and ads. Do you have expensive terms with high click though rates that seem to have a low conversion rate? I've seen the ROI increase by simply adding the word BUY to the headline. "Buy {converting keywords here:ipod mini charger}" Fewer clicks from tire kickers means the same ad budget goes further.
6.) Track everything, test everything. If you are not tracking your online advertising, you have no idea how much money you're wasting. Track ONLINE ECOMMERCE STATS like online sales, total shipped sales, "customers" (sessions), completed carts (click trails > carts > orders), conversion rate, or revenue per visitor. For advertising track your PPC spend, # clicks, average click-through-rate, average cost per click, # Conversions, cost per order, and so forth. Then watching for changes over a 90 day period or more to see long term trends.