I've been working to develop some good content and managed to rank on the first page for a keyword with decent traffic (Google keyword tool reports 3600 avg monthly visits for the specific keyword), but have gotten very few actual visits. Any ideas on what i could work on to generate more visits from the listing?
Unless you are top 3 for your keyword, don't expect many clicks. Also Google displays different results based on where in the world you are. If you are searching in Mexico, you would get different results compared to searching in the US. You might also have to work writing more appealing page titles and descriptions. If your listing doesn't stand out, people may ignore it. Also if the websites above you are already providing what searchers are looking for, they might not have a reason to also check out your site.
My guess is that if your page title and description arent matching your keyword then this could be hurting you as far as traffic from that particular keyword, you may want to try to better tailor the title and description but keep in mind that changing anything on that particular page may have positive or negative effects on your current ranking position. Good Luck!
Yes, searchers will read the site description before actually clicking on the link from the SERPs. If your meta description sucks compared to other sites in the first page, guess what, they won't be going to your site.