The idea of conversion rate is nothing new, but I’m always surprised by how many businesses with a web presence are ignoring this key metric in their business. If your website is a key component of your sales and marketing process, figuring out and optimizing your conversion rate can paint an accurate (and often surprising) picture of what’s really going on with your website.

If you’re wondering what a conversion rate is, here’s the simplest answer for a complex topic. It’s the percentage of visitors to your site that complete a specific goal. For example, how many visitors to your site purchase a certain package, sign up for your newsletter or book a consult.

You can calculate your conversion rate using this quick formula:

# of Goal Completions/ Total # Visitors = Your Conversion Rate

Now that you have figured out what a conversion rate is, here’s a list of the many ways to increase conversion rate, along with an example for each case of how somebody did it. Also remember that what worked for someone else, might not work for you. If this was that simple, everyone would end up becoming Amazon. So use this list as a guide and test & optimize along the way.

In no order.

1. Find and communicate proof. Adding proof to the home page contributed a lot to the 400% boost in voices.com conversion rate.

2.Use proactive live chat – initiating live chat with the visitors. Intuit got a 211% boost just by using this tactic.

3. Live chat in general can have a positive impact. Abt Electronics has found that live chat boosts conversion rates — which are 10-20% higher on Abt.com for shoppers who engage live chat, compared to those who don’t.

4. Change the headline of your site. CityCliq got a 90% increase in conversions after changing their positioning.

5.Provide your leads more middle of the funnel content: case studies, eBooks, more email marketing. Content that would push people down the funnel. Diteba Research Laboratories did that and soon they saw a 3x increase in conversion rate.

6.Focus on your key traffic referral source. Quanticate focused on Linkedin, posted more and better content there, used Answers and Groups, and achieved a 10x increase in traffic and a 10x increase in conversion.

7. Add Google Site Search to your site. Waterfilters.net increased their conversion rate by 11% by doing so.

8.Use a guarantee security seal. OrientalFurniture.com increased their conversions by 7.6% by employing a seal that shows it guarantees the delivery of purchases up to $500, offers up to $10,000 of protection if a consumer’s identity is stolen via the site and ensures that if the retailer drops the price they will pay the difference up to $100.

9. Use red color on your call to action buttons to establish a sense of urgency. BMI, a leading UK airline, increased their conversion rate by 2.5 percent by adding a red background behind their message “Hurry! Only XX seats left”.

10.Design a clear user flow. Zen Windows increased their conversion rate from 0.75% to 2.95% by redesigning the website flow so that it was easier for the user to find what they were looking for.

11. Show product videos on product pages. Ice.com got a 400% lift once they started to do it.

12.Change the color of your major CTAs to red. Performable changed it from green to red and got a 21% increase in conversions.

13. Use testimonials. WikiJob added testimonials to their site and improved their conversion rate by 34%.

14. Try a different image. HawkHost multiplied their conversions just by changing the image on the home page.

15.Use a different way of presenting your pricing. BaseKit made their pricing page “Bolder, brighter, clearer, nicer, more obvious” and a 25% increase in conversions was achieved.

16. Add reviews to your site. Figleaves improved their conversion rate by more than 35% by adding reviews to their website.

17. Put a trust seal on the site. Petco.com increased sales by 8.83% after adding the Hacker Safe seal to their site.

18.Change the wording of your call to action button. TextMagic changed their button text from “Buy SMS Credits” to “View SMS Prices” and saw an 37.6% improvement in conversions.

19. Simplify your home page. Preceden made their’s simpler and got a 37% uplift.

20. Show a discounted price. The Corkscrew Wine Merchants got a 148.3% improvement on product page after they featured a discount sticker.

21. Improve the usability of your site. Following a usability “best-practice” (of having a navigation menu) increased conversions by 34% for Slideshop.com

22.Place the call to action with a price within the content area. Nature Air added a contextual call to action within content and witnessed a whooping 591% increase in conversions (from 3% to 19%). Easy-to-find and clear calls to action do work.

23.Reduce the number of fields in your forms. ImageScape reduced the number of form fields from 11 to 4. The number of forms submitted increased 160% and the conversion rate increased 120%.

24.Selling an e-book? Use a 3D virtual cover. Code Monkeyism got 43% more downloads from the page with the 3D image version.

25. Use a stronger command with a literal callout. Dustin Curtis got 173% more clickthroughs for his Twitter link after using a stronger command to invite followers.

26. Improve your value proposition. The Sims 3 website did that and got a  128% increase in game registrations.

27. Have a single page checkout. Official Vancouver 2010 Olympic Store changed their multi-step checkout into a single page checkout and saw a 21.8% improvement.

28. Use huge customer photos on your homepage. At least it worked for Highrise.

29. Focus on a single action. The Weather Channel watched conversions jump 225% after decluttering their home page and presenting a clear, single action.

30.Have the call to action on the left. Less Accounting test showed that a layout with calls-to-action on the left hand side worked better than a reverse layout.

31. Make the copy action oriented. L’Axelle changed the tone of their copy – “Feel fresh without sweat marks” became “Put an end to sweat marks” and so on. The wording of headline and copy had a huge impact when it came to converting – a take-action feel performed 93% better.

32.Use bullet points to outline benefits. Unionen tested mentioning benefits in a bullet point list vs paragraph of text. Bullet points resulted in a 15.9% improvement.

33. Increase the size of your call to action button. SAP BusinessObjects turned their regular blue link into a big button, and improved conversions by 32.5%.

34. Make your signup forms a single column. This eye tracking study showed that single column forms work better.

35.Try a Mad Libs style form. Vast.com increased conversion across the board by 25-40% by doing that.

36.Use buyer personas. RightNow Technologies increased their conversions 4x by building a persona focused site.

37. Don’t ask for the sale too soon. One company removed the sign up call to action from the top of the homepage, and sign-ups increased 350%.

38. Add a phone number to your site. LessAccounting saw a 1.8% increase in conversions after placing a phone number on their site.

39.Put a video on your home page. Dropbox boosted their conversions  over 10% by doing that.

40. Test a different video thumbnail. Yobongo got a 70.9% conversion uplift after changing their video thumbnail.

41. Make the video short. Think Vitamin replaced an example tutorial video (5:50) on the homepage with a 50-second overview of the service – and increased conversions by 24.4%.

42. Show product images in site search box. After BrickHouse Security added an automated drop-down menu of textual results that appear when shoppers enter terms into its site search window, it boosted conversion rates.

43. Do a radical makeover. This is when you go beyond testing one element to create an all together new and different version. SEOMoz got 52% improvement in sales and $1 million dollars increase in revenue after a radical change.

44. Show product videos. Product videos boosted jewlery site conversions by 247%.

45. Use badging on your products. Sheplers got a 1.63 percent increase in the “add to cart” rate with badging and curation.

46. Add a “Free Trial” button. Email marketing software GetResponse showed a “Free trial” button instead “Buy now” and increased trial signups by 158% (while not decreasing paid signups).

47. Use popup sign-up forms. Popups are known to boost email subscriptions, but Visual Website Optimizer got 50% more signups thanks to a popup signup form.

48. Cut some content on your landing page. AssessmentDay cut the amount of content on their landing page, and sales went up by 62%. Don’t cut too much – insufficient information is a conversion killer.

49. Offer next-day shipping. SmileyCookie increased sales by 41% by promoting next-day shipping (Order Today > Ships Next Business Day).

50. Make your links red. Usability studies say that blue link is the best, but Beamax boosted their link clickthroughs by making the links red.

51. Show (real) humans. Using photos of real people (not stock photos) on your landing pages boosts your conversions.

52. Use aspirational imagery and copy. A nutritional supplement company realizes a 50% sales conversion rate lift by including benefit-oriented copy, images reflecting the target market engaged in aspirational activities, and a large call to action button placed visibly above the fold.

53. Beef up on credibility factors. An American Express travel representative got 48% more phone calls after testing a credibility focused version.