There are very few businesses today that do not maintain some kind of web presence and most are doing everything they can to increase that presence as best they can.  Whether through SEO, PPC, or other methods the goal is to drive as much qualified traffic as possible to your website. But, what do you do once you get the traffic to the site. This is where well defined conversions play an important role.

When you plan your website or website upgrade you should think about what points of conversion you are looking for from visitors to the page.  In other words, once you get them there – what do you want them to do.  If its a simple sales site where a visitor can purchase and item and have it shipped or just download it, then an obvious point of conversion would be the completion of the sales transaction.  However, these sites would be short sighted to only utilize this one action as a conversion goal. A satisfied client is likely to return for future purchases, but life can be very distracting. If only you had an email list for newsletters or sign-up list for special offers. Then you send periodic emails or updates to clients to make them aware of happenings with your site such as sales or new products etc…  These types of sign-ups are excellent conversion goals with almost as much value as a purchase. Many visitors will visit a site several times before actually commiting to a purchase. These other points of conversion on your webpage will help encourage this process while gathering important information about your marketplace.

There are many types of conversions that can be of benefit to different businesses.  Here are few that may be of use to your business:

• Newsletter Sign-Ups
• Creation of  a User Profile
• Filling out a Contact Form
• Registering for a Course or Seminar (free or paid)
• Purchasing a Product or Service
• Request a Quote
• Forward Info From Your Site to a Friend
• Tagging Content To a Social Bookmarking Site (Digg, Delicious, Reddit etc…)
• Posting Comments to your Blog
• Downloading Coupons
• Clicking on Ad Sense Content

These are just some possible points of conversion. They are many more that can be very useful to doing business on the web. Think about what would help grow your online business and see if you can implement additional point of conversions to your page to help accomplish those goals.