Welcome to our next post on how to increase your website design conversion rates. Unless you’re selling something through your online shopping cart, your site shouldn’t be expected to increase sales.  Now, I’m not saying that your site can’t assist with the sale, but I think that we need to reassess and determine what the website’s real purpose is (if you’re not selling something online.) I’m probably going to get a lot of pushback on this, but I believe that the website for most companies should be used as a tool to begin to build rapport.  If your site can set the stage for you to pick up the phone and the person on the other end is already familiar with you, then you have a much better chance of closing a sale.  After all, people often do business with people that they know so why not let people get to know you through your site.  Rather than speaking industry jargon, why not try being conversational, just like you would speak if you were face to face with that prospect?  Consider putting your photo on the site.  List your cell number.  Do everything you can to be personal.  Just talk to the person like they’re a friend.  Remember, you wouldn’t act like a salesman if you were offering your services to a best friend.  You’d speak to them like a friend.  You’d use simple language.  You’d use lots of contractions like “don’t” or “he’d.”  You wouldn’t speak like a salesman telling your friend that you’ve “been serving the Northern Colorado region since 1985 with the highest quality customer service and a dedication to superior products through strategic relationships with preferred vendors and channel partners and an overall cost containment solution based on analytical blah blah blah,” would you?  Of course not.  You’d talk to them like you normally talk with your friends.   So why then do we feel the need to pull out a thesaurus every time we sit down to write for our websites?  Why do we ponder what a better word for “stuff” would be.  If you would use the word “stuff” when speaking, then use it when writing.  Don’t look for words with more characters if a short word will suffice.  Hope that helps.