More and more e-commerce companies are turning increasingly to offline marketing - direct mail in particular - to drive online traffic. However, even though direct mail can be a highly effective tool for site promotion, many dot com companies find their conversion rate - the percentage of visitors who actually become customers - is depressingly low

Here are some thoughts on turning lookers into buyers:

Firstly, don't make "buy now" the only reason to visit your site. If you do, you'll attract only that small subset of your audience looking to make a purchase at the precise time they receive your message. Instead, use your site to build a community of potential customers by encouraging people to come to your site regardless of whether they're ready to buy immediately.

Secondly, motivate visitors to give you information - an e-mail address at minimum, but better yet: name, mailing address, and areas of interest. This way, you'll be able to re-market to the group over time, remind them about your site, and stand a better chance of winning their business when they're ready to buy. (Otherwise, you're only giving yourself one shot to make the sale.)

Invite people to become a "registered user" (no purchase required) and provide an incentive to do so, like a free gift, access to restricted site content, a discount on future purchases, or advance notice of special promotions. Start an e-mail newsletter of interest to not just customers, but anyone who might be in the market for your product or service in the future.

The phenomenon of Web commerce is founded on convenience. People choose to buy online because it's quick, easy and painless. And most Web shoppers make the decision to purchase *before* they come to your site. An effective offline campaign isn't about convincing people to buy something; it's about getting them to buy it from you. For your site to be their first choice when they are ready to buy, you'll need to capture these potential buyers and then keep your name in front of them.

Focus your campaign on generating visitors, not just buyers. If your site does its job, the people ready to buy will buy anyway. But in the meantime, you'll attract a much larger pool of potential customers who (if you capture the right information and use it intelligently) will buy from you in the future.