In general, I would say that the best way to improve the experience and increase conversion is to test and see what works. By that, I mean, change something, and see how it affected your user's experience. This assumes that you are tracking user activity on your site, with something like Google Analytics. Also, assumes that you have have enough traffic so the measurements are statistically significant.

Another place you can possibly improve on, is to make sure the content is what the user is looking for. There is the experience of consuming the content, and there is the content itself. Does it make it compelling for somebody to spend the time on your site. For this, I would do testing as well, by talking to your potential users and understanding what they need.