| Does your website get enough
traffic? And do you measure how many become customers
when they get to your site?
If the answer to these questions is 'no', the good
news is that you're not alone. There are millions of
websites but only a tiny minority of website owners
who manage their traffic building activities properly
- what's worse, even less measure where their traffic
originates and how visitors behave when they get to
the site.
Attracting more customers to a website is therefore
the key - traffic is useless if it's not relevant to
your site's offer.
The difference between visitors and customers
Generating website visitors and converting them to
customers are two entirely different but closely related
activities. There are many strategies and tactics you
can deploy in both fields. To attract visitors you can
optimise your site, pay for clicks through the search
engines, advertise on other sites and in emailed newsletters
and so on. To persuade visitors to become buyers you
can use compelling sales copy, offer incentives, publish
testimonials and much more. But no matter how well you
implement any of these tasks, if you don't test and
measure each activity properly, your results will never
deliver the best return on investment - you'll be shooting
in the dark.
So the first thing to get right before you invest any
money in attracting customers to your website is to
install some kind of web analytics system that will
tell you at a glance how your site and its marketing
are performing.
The next thing to tackle is your target market. Targeted
traffic through the search engines is the place to start.
Over 80% of website visitors now originate from a search
engine - and the keyword is "searching" -
capturing a share of those people who are actively searching
for what you offer is one of the best ways to attract
more customers to your website.
How do you do this? There are two ways - search engine
optimisation (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising (PPC).
SEO is the process by which you get your site well
ranked in the natural search results against the keywords
and phrases that you are targeting.
PPC systems like Google's Adwords are auctions for
keywords - the advertisers who bid highest and succeed
in attracting the most clicks get the top positions.
In both cases, selecting the right keywords and phrases
is critical. Keyword research is essential to eliminate
the guesswork from your search marketing. You can start
by checking your website's log files. These files contain
records of where your traffic was referred from and
what keywords were used. Practitioners of both SEO and
PPC also use tools that capture the search terms used
by people - you may have heard of Wordtracker for example.
Whichever system you use, researching this vital element
is critical for successfully attracting more customers
to your website.
To find out more, call me, Paul Lock, on 01453 873638.
To find out more, call us on +44(0)845
456 5342
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