Just gaining high search engine rankings does not automatically mean you will convert viewers to you.

Back to the old theme about the way your website looks and the way your potential customers inter-react when they are viewing it. High rankings on search engines will not necessarily gain you conversions into active customers.

The best thing you can do for your site is to set yourself apart from the competition, this can be in the form of superior information about your products, forums and blogs on the site, reviews and the most obviously the way your website looks. Remember some of your visitors do not really know what they want – so you have to make it easy for them and tell them.

Apart from the look and engaging content a few other things that may make people leave your site immediately are:

• If you have an ecommerce site make certain it is obvious, your buy button/links must be easily seen and your shopping cart should work well and smoothly.
• Pop –up windows are old hat now, but some sites still have them – get rid immediately.
• Images are wonderful, but if you have too many on the page it can delay loading – use separate galleries instead.
• Consistency in design – leave the layout, colours and font choices to the professionals.
• If you have adverts on the site – ensure that there is a consistency in size and positioning on every page. External ads should not detract from your own underlying message.
• Page load times – this is a huge conversion killer, if your site was developed with lot’s of Flash, then it’s time to have a look at it again. Flash will slow down loading and (because of this) is not search engine friendly.