How to Increase Website Visits AND Conversions
If no one visits your website consistently your company’s sales and revenue will never increase. However, if you can’t convert those visitors once they arrive at your website it does you no good anyway. So which is more important, website traffic or conversion rates?
Attracting the Right Type of Website Traffic
Everyone knows website traffic is important. If you can’t get traffic to your site, there’s really no need for a website in the first place. Even though webmasters, business owners and marketers love to see gigantic leaps in website traffic, is it possible they often place too much focus on the quantity of the traffic more than the quality? Let me explain a situation to further clarify this point.
If you’re selling clothes on an ecommerce website you’d want to begin your digital advertising campaign by selecting keywords that relate to the items you’re vending. Some examples might be “discounted clothes online”, “clothes for sale”, or “buy clothes online”. Using these keywords in your ad copy will let people know exactly what you sell on your website and ensure they’ll find what they’re looking for if they decide to visit. However, if you decided to use keywords like “used snowboards” or “snow skiing tips”, you might get visitors, but those visitors will be thoroughly disappointed when they find a site selling clothing instead of snowboards and skis. If visitors aren’t finding information that is relevant to their initial search, you won’t ever see those visitors again. If a visit has no chance of converting to a sale it’s completely worthless. So how do you focus on the right type of traffic for your business?
Summoning the Power of SEO
SEO is great for a lot of reasons, but its greatest benefit lies in its ability to drive the right type of traffic to your website.Research shows that 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine and additionally, 75% of those users will never scroll past the first page when they browse the results. The takeaway: if you want to capture visitors that are looking for the products and services you offer, you need to do seo so well that you appear on the first page. It doesn’t mean you can’t capture traffic if you show up on the second or third page, but your chances decrease significantly. Keep in mind that you won’t magically appear on the first page for all your keywords overnight, but if you’re persistent and learn the tricks of the trade you can do it. If you have no experience with seo and you want to learn, I highly suggesting reading the SEO Beginner’s Guide found on Moz.
The Power of Conversion
Once you begin attracting the right type of traffic to your website it’s time to convert those visits. Getting relevant traffic does not guarantee conversion, but there are a few things you can do to make sure you’re prepared.
1. Check Your Site’s Load Speed-
If your site takes forever to load people will hit the back button before they even get a look at your site. Hubspot revealed research showing that 40% of internet users will abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. They also showed how the change in a website bounce rate raises to 100% if the page takes more than 4 seconds to load. Check out the Google page speed tool to evaluate how quickly your site loads
2. Eliminate any Broken Links
-What happens if a customer is ready to make a purchase, but can’t finish the task because the purchase button is actually a broken link? You just lost a sale and a potential customer simultaneously. To check broken links on your site, download Screaming Frog software or visit internetmarketingninjas.com and look at the image and link analyzer tool.
3. Ensure Your Site is Easy to Navigate-
Visitors will bounce immediately if they find your site is difficult to navigate. Make sure you don’t clutter your site with advertisements and excessive clutter. Make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for. The more simple and clean your site looks, the higher your conversion rate will be. To see how users are interacting with your website, look into click-behavior tracking. I recommend Crazy Egg.You may also consider doing some online user experience testing. Hubspot recently reported that only 55% of companies are currently doing this to improve their website layout.
4. Optimize Your Site for Mobile-
When deciding whether to optimize your site for mobile or not, look to the research. Recent data from a study conducted by eDigital shows that 62% of companies that optimize their site for mobile will have an increase in sales. That same study revealed that 84% of internet users have browsed websites with their smartphones and 74% regularly use a mobile device to browse and shop products online. If that’s not reason enough to optimize for mobile, I don’t know what is. The number of mobile users will surely increase in future years, so it’s better to jump on the bandwagon now.
OK, So is Traffic or Conversions More Important?
The answer is they’re equally important as long as the traffic you’re attracting is quality traffic. It’s smart to make sure your site is ready for the quality traffic before it comes in to prevent a negative user experience. You can accomplish that by performing a quick preliminary audit on your website to make sure it’s functioning properly. Then, once the traffic begins to pour in you’ll immediately see an increase in the conversion rate. For everyone out there that weighs traffic and conversion against each other, realize they’re on the same team. You can’t have one without the other and run a successful business.
If you have questions about print or digital advertising contact Local 360 Media today. We offer a free consultation to any individual or business. We specialize in ppc advertising campaigns, online presence management, print advertising, and mobile marketing.
