Sometimes it is downright embarrassing. These folks are getting WAY more traffic to their site than I get to mine. I'm tempted to write back and say hey, I'll fix your conversion problem if you will show me how to get all that traffic.

Low conversion rates (the number of visitors who become paying customers) are a common situation caused by a few simple problems. Fix problems and you can expect your conversion rate to jump. There aren't many instant fixes in life, but better conversion can immediately help pay bills and put more money in your pocket.

1. Start off by putting your most popular products or services on front page. Don't make people hunt and peck through your site to find good stuff. Let them know right from start you've got something that will make them drool.

Take a look at Meredith Pond's http://CheapWriting.com She promises you good, low-cost business writing, then clobbers you with a ridiculously big promotion package you can buy for pennies on dollar.

Even if you don't go to Meredith's site to buy marketing packages, she gets your attention. You immediately understand she knows your situation and has good offers for you. That's enough to keep most people looking through her site.

2. Can you put up a delicious photo of your product? How about a picture of you or your staff providing a service? We humans are very visual beings (that's why we see color and dogs don't.)

Give average shopper nice photos of what she is looking for and you can expect a sale. I always come away hungry when I see pictures of chocolate at Nancy Davis' CandyGold.com.

Take same scenario online and imagine you have same simple question to ask someone. Now what? You most likely just abandon shopping cart and leave store because you can't imagine spending that amount of money without knowing whether your sweetie will break out in hives because white gold allergy affects her wrists so badly.

Abandonment of shopping carts online is blamed on everything from fear of using credit cards on web to privacy concerns.

My theory is as follows: If you have any questions about any product or service you are purchasing online, ecommerce sites expect you to either look up answer in their FAQ's (frequently asked questions page) or just search out their 800 number from site somewhere and call them yourself to find out. This can be a ridiculous process on some sites as they simply don't want to be bothered with expensive phone calls and leave their number off of shopping cart pages.

They don't want to devote customer service reps to those fickle shoppers that abandon online shopping carts at rates as high as 90% at some ecommerce sites. I'd propose that most online shoppers abandon those carts because they need to know something that could never be considered for those FAQ pages like term of product guarantees or how long battery life is. If there were a simple way to have your questions answered, I'd like to suggest that those shopping carts would rarely ever be abandoned.

I've found solution and can't believe brilliance of idea behind answer to this thorny question. Customer clicks a button labled "CallButton" and gets a pop-up screen asking for their name and phone number so a representative can call them at their convenience to answer any questions and/or concerns!