How do you convert online advertising traffic into customers? The key is a phenomenon of human behavior that only comes into play on web.

You won't read about this phenomenon in books or articles on general principles of advertising or direct marketing. In fact, traditional advertising professionals and direct marketers often create only so-so online advertising campaigns simply because they've never heard of this phenomenon, even though it's essentially first law of human web surfing behavior.

How to convert your online advertising traffic into customers Ready to find out what that all-important first law of web surfing is? Prepare to be not very amazed. You see, everyone who surfs web already knows about this phenomenon of human behavior because we all do it--even you.

So here it is, first law of human web surfing behavior, which you absolutely must take into account when marketing your website: While surfing web, almost everyone will hit "back" button if they think there's a chance--even a small chance-- they've come to wrong web page.

The corollary to this law of web surfing behavior: Anyone who clicks through to your site via an online advertising link needs to know they've arrived at right place as soon as they get there.

Immediately. Within a second. From a click glance. Without having to read anything. The average human attention span on web has been measured at eight seconds, and you'll have already lost a few seconds while page downloaded.

The Key(word) to Converting Advertisement-Clickers into Customers How do you make absolutely sure visitors feel like they've arrived in right place?

Make title and first heading of your landing page (the page on which a visitor "lands" after clicking on an advertisement) same as headline of advertisement that brought your visitor there. If landing page links to a banner (image) advertisement, use same pictures and color scheme as advertisement.

The landing page absolutely must immediately remind visitor of advertisement.

The advertisements, in turn, must flow logically from keywords they are targeting. Even if your advertisements are appearing on websites rather than search engine results, you need to be thinking in terms of keywords people are using to search for your product in order to speak language of your prospective customers.

That's why it is very important both your advertisement and landing page incorporate target keyword prominently, in headings as well as page body. That's also why it's so important you don't send your visitors from online advertising to your homepage--it's unlikely you could optimize your homepage for all your possible advertisements. Visitors who arrive via advertising need to land on a special "landing page," or they may crash and leave your site.

Conversions: your advertising campaign's goal But what happens once visitors land on your site and decide to stay more than ten seconds? It's no use if they just hang around. They need to convert.

Important definition: In online advertising parlance, saying a website visitor "converts," means he or she has taken a desired action toward becoming a customer, either 1) buying something or 2) contacting you for more information, thereby becoming a lead.

When you think of world's most successful businesses, what names come to mind? Most likely, consumer-oriented giants such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Sheraton, Disney, IBM, General Electric, and IBM. Not only have they spent billions on advertising to buy their way into your head. They offer convenient products and services that have made them a part of your life.

But when you think of most successful web sites, what names come to mind? Names like Google, Yahoo! Amazon, AOL, Kazaa (for better or worse), and Hotmail.

The late-1990s mantra about web being a disruptive technology that would destroy traditional companies may have been overstated. But a decade and a half into web's existence, it is clear that world's leading corporations have been sidelined on web.

The biggest shopping site is not walmart.com but amazon.com. The biggest map site is not randmcnally.com but mapquest.com.

Established companies have usually only been able to buy their way into this market through acquisitions (as with Microsoft's purchase of Hotmail, which it used as a base for creating MSN).

Why, with few exceptions, were world's most successful web sites not launched by world's most successful corporations?

Many Big Name Companies' Web Sites a Vast Waste of Time for Visitors The McDonald's web site talks about food, but has no real menu. The Coca-Cola USA web site has no clear ingredients list or nutritional information, no recipes for floats or mixed drinks, no company history, and nothing else useful to people who like Coke. All that information has been inexplicably located on “ company” page, which on every other web site is used for investor relations. The Johnson and Johnson web site has useful information if you can access it—when author attempted to open it, it crashed two different web browsers (Internet Explorer and Mozilla) before finally yielding (to Opera browser).

Many big-name companies' web sites offer lessons in what not to do in web design. The biggest lesson by far is not to sacrifice usability in an attempt to look cool, and never forget why your users came to your site in first place. McDonald's may be world's largest restaurant chain, but it didn't get that way because of its web site.

Why Big-Budget Websites Are More Often Bombs than Blockbusters The web sites of many successful corporations (both B2C and B2B) are like big-budget Hollywood movies that spend millions on stars and special effects, and a quarter of a percent of budget on script. Worse, special effects of blockbuster web sites are far more annoying than impressive.