-Increasing website traffic is only half of the equation-
There is a lot of talk in the Internet Marketing industry about increasing website traffic – after all, if your potential clients aren’t finding your site, what good is it doing you? You can only promote your business’ products and services to those who actually find you online. Because of this, many businesses spend a lot of time and money on increasing traffic to their sites through various Internet marketing initiatives, including pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimisation and email marketing. These are all very effective ways to increase site traffic.
But, is there actually something more important than directing traffic to your site? If you focus your efforts only on increasing traffic, you are doing only half the job.
So, you can get traffic to your site… but so what? If they immediately leave your site without doing anything, the time and money you spent to get them there has been wasted.
The answer: Increasing Conversion. You need to be able to convert visitors to your site into customers – either a direct sale or have them sign up for your newsletter so you can continue your relationship with them long after they have left your site.
Example:
If 5,000 people visit your site each month, and 50 of them turn into actual customers, your website conversion rate is 50/5000, or 1%. If each of those customers equals an average sale of €200, your business has made €10,000. That’s not a bad amount.
However, by increasing your conversion rate to even 100 customers out of 5,000 visitors, your conversion rate has increased to 2%. Using the same average sale amount above, your have increased your income to €20,000 – without increasing the amount of money you spent to get customers to your site! You had the same number of visitors, but your revenue doubled!
Important factors to increase Conversion:
Simple design
Simplicity is important in web design because the more complex the design is, the harder it is for visitors to focus. Complicated flash animation or large images on sites can sometimes cause more harm than good, especially if visitors to your site are unable to load them. If your load time is too long, visitors will leave without a second thought. Be sure that the focal point of your home page and inner pages is what you want your customers to absorb the most: what your business is, why visitors should browse through your site, the benefits you can offer them, and how to become a customer.
Clearly demonstrate the benefits of your product or service
Web surfers are notoriously fickle, so don’t make them read through pages of content and decide for themselves why they should choose your business. If the benefits of your product or service are clearly outlined and backed up with sound content, they are more likely to turn into customers.
Include calls to action
Many website don’t convert visitors into customers for one single reason: they don’t ask the visitor to take action. All pages should encourage visitors to take action – either buy a product or service or sign up for your newsletter or to contact your business.
Use effective navigation
Understand where on your site you want visitors to go most, and make it easy for them to get there. If the goal of your website is to encourage visitors to use your eCommerce functions, link to your eCommerce shopping cart wherever it seems logical – don’t make them search for it. Try to think like a visitor to your site browsing through your products or services and make it easier for them to become a customer, not harder.
Take them where they want to go
As you know, pay-per-click advertising is a great way to generate traffic to your site, but one of the most common mistakes that many business owners make is to forget to “take the customer where they want to go” – if the customer found you for the search term “Kodak digital camera” then make sure that you are directing traffic to your selection of Kodak digital cameras, not your home page. This act alone will greatly increase your conversion rates. Sometimes it is just that simple!
After you’ve made these changes to your website and you’ve increased your conversion rate, imagine the results you’ll get when you implement a marketing plan to increase traffic to your site! If you use pay-per-click or email marketing campaign and optimise your site to make it more visible to search engines, your profits can increase even more. Using the example I’ve given above, if you increase traffic to your site from 5,000 visitors to 7,500 just look at the results:
7,500 visitors with a 2% conversion rate = 150 customers.
150 customers x €200 per sale = €30,000!
WSI, the world’s leading provider of Internet Solutions to small and medium sized businesses the world over, has over 1,500 local consultants in 87 countries who can help grow your business.