As the chart below indicates, during the last major
economic downturn which began in September of
2001, traditional ad spending fell 10 percent in the
overall US ad market according to AdAge. Paid Search
advertising grew more than 175 percent that year. And in
2002 as the economy made a slow but steady recovery,
traditional ad spending rose a modest 4 percent while
Paid Search grew an additional 210 percent.

There are many things that can negatively impact the experience a visitor has at a website. To improve conversion, a busines / merchant has to identify impediments and improve the customers purchasing experience. Some things to avoid include:

1. Requiring customers to register. You should never require customers to register in order to checkout. Doing so will frequently cause massive abandonment from the order process. Customers simply do not want to register to make a purchase and checkout. Give customers the option to register or save their information at the very end of the process-not the beginning.

2. Not having or portraying a secure shopping environment. Customers want to be able to checkout in a secure environment. Having prominently-placed security logos on your site can help assure a shopper his personal data is safe in your hands. Security logos add a perceived level of credibility. The range of conversion improvement achieved through the use of security logos like GeoTrust, Verisign and Hacker Safe fluctuates among ecommerce websites with average gains between 5 percent to 10 percent.

3. Not having clearly-defined exchange policies. Another common reason why people are gun-shy about an ecommerce transaction is they do not feel they are going to get easy return and exchange policies. ( M Bettis)