Sure we’ve all been taught that part of winning the game of e-commerce rests on how much Website Traffic we receive. Select the right keywords, advertise, offer a good product or service, and people will click on our URL, right?
Well, yes, you may be getting lots of traffic, but are you getting any paying customers? Not all traffic is equal, high page ranking doesn’t necessarily equal a profitable business.
Take a look at some of the ways you can determine if your website visitors are actually converting to customers.
Look At Your Statistics
The first place to start is by reviewing your website analytics. This will give you an overview of your total visitors, but more importantly how they found your site, i.e. what keywords or phrases they used, and where they came from. You should also be able to see how long they stayed on your site, and what pages they visited. If a visitor simply clicked on your home page then promptly left, they obviously did not find what they expected to.
Pay particular attention to the keywords being used to get to your website. Are these valid terms that accurately describe the content on your site? This is the number one reason why Website Traffic does not convert to sales.
Some think it clever to use a popular keyword like “iPhone” in your content and meta tags, even though you don’t sell iPhones. Did you get a lot of people to click on your site? Sure. But did they stay and make a purchase? Probably not. This is the kind of deceptive practice that is not only bad for business, it frustrates your visitors and gives your company a poor reputation. Your online reputation is everything, so be very careful with it.
Look At Your Website
If you’ve determined that your keywords are good and valid ones, then the next problem may be with website. What are visitors seeing when they click on your home page? You have only a few seconds to impress them enough to stay and take a look around.
If your site has flashy graphics it may look like spam. Perhaps it is just poorly designed and hard to navigate. Maybe it hasn’t been updated in a long time (and an old copyright date at the bottom will give it away so always remember to change that when you add new content). Then again, your online content could be poorly written with lots of spelling and grammatical errors. All of these offer examples of the kind of site most people will run from.
Ask an expert mentor or friend in the biz to review your website and give you an honest opinion. Sometimes simple changes can do wonders for making a visitor’s first impression a positive one.
Consider whether or not you are actually selling something your target market wants to buy and whether or not your sales copy and keywords appeal to someone that is ready to make a buying decision.
If your Website Traffic isn’t resulting in sales, then look first at your keywords, second at your website, and third at the overall demand for whatever it is you’re selling. These factors will impact your site’s success and a few minor tweaks could increase your conversion rates substantially.
See you at the top of Google!
Sean Rasmussen
SEO Australia Pacific
AussieSEO.com © 2007 - 2010
Hi Sean,
My website traffic is definitely not resulting in sales. One of my biggest problems is I didn’t choose the right keywords. But, I’m currently working on changing them and I hope to see a difference.
The next thing I’m going to change is the way I write my posts. I just think it’s not interesting enough to keep people’s attention or to get them to bookmark it for me.
So, I have lots to do on my site and hopefully, I’ll start seeing an increase and a change in the behaviour of my website traffic.
.-= Jazz Salinger´s last blog ..Learn and Earn – It’s a Marathon Not a Sprint =-.
Hi Sean
There are quite a few very important messages in your article here and most important it seems is that we need to be converting browsing customers into buying customers.
A big mistake is to use popular keywords which are irrelevant to my blog just to attract customers in the first place. When they go into my blog they will see that I don’t have what they are searching for and leave, possibly irate and not wanting to return. Point taken here……..most of the population don’t like dishonesty!
I particularly like the way you sum up in the last paragraph with three key points to look at if you want a higher conversion rate. I have definitely noted this article for future reference.
Thanks Sean
Blessings,
Elly
.-= Elly´s last blog .. =-.
This is a spot on helpful review – and timely, as I am reviewing my KWs in both sites and ads. KWs not reflecting my content – hopefully not – but I need to check.
I can definately see the importance of having targeted traffic to your site so they will hopefully purchase the item from you. Also having a nice easy to follow site is paramount as if it is to hard to navigate people won’t stay for long.