How are you measuring conversion rates? That can make a huge difference. According to Bryan Eisenberg (
www.grokdotcom.com), the best way to measure is orders per month divided by unique visitors per month. This helps show true conversion rates as some people will visit several times before buying. Also, make sure you remove spiders and other bots from your counts.
The other thing that I would have to add is that .5 - 1% isn't that uncommon. I know that you want everyone to buy, but some people are in the comparison mood, some doing research, some are going to be your competitors, and some just trying to figure out what kids these days are talking about ;-). As an average, 1.5% is quite normal, with niche products varying anywhere from .25% or lower to 10% depending on the level of
SEO.
I would really wonder, as a matter of comparison, how much free or reduced cost shipping would increase your orders. $1.00 over UPS rates is pretty high any more. We charge UPS posted rates or less, and with the discounts UPS gives us we still make money most months on shipping after figuring in the cost of printed boxes. We've lost our shorts one month, but most months it covered just fine. Lower cost shipping gave us an 80% boost in conversions on our tools site, so it is certainly a valid thing to at least try out and see if it works for you. We have used a percentage of profit from the order credited back to the standard UPS charges as our method of lowering cost, but see what makes sense for you.
You have a very professional looking site (unlike ours for the moment, but that's mostly because the more polished we made it, the lower our conversions were. We deal with construction workers by in large, so this seems to be a better feel to them.) You seem to have most of the bases covered, so the only other item to look at is
SEO.
When I say
SEO, I'm asking if you're covering phrases that people generally use when describing your products - specifically when they want to buy it. I can't figure out what your products are really, so I can't tell. Mike makes a good point that he doesn't konw anything about your product, but he is absolutely not alone in his ignorance. Tell us what we can do with your things and that alone can start showing you some other key phrases that you should be targeting. Just getting traffic doesn't mean it is the right traffic, which is why this whole online business stuff is so hard to make a profit at.
Best of luck,
Brian.
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