When you start to get website traffic, it can be exciting. Getting people to your website is a big step — particularly if you are in a competitive industry. But once they are there, traffic isn’t the only thing you want to think about. You want conversion, too.
It can take time to get traffic to a new website. Some sites don’t get much traffic at all, despite being online for a very long time. It can take real effort to obtain traffic and to keep it coming. And, it can take money to get traffic to your website. There are many ways to do it, such as through organic SEO and / or pay per click campaigns. But beyond the important focal point of getting your website noticed online, you want people to follow your desired call to action, whether that is to click a ‘buy now’ button, to click and fill out a form, or to follow another course of action that will mean success for your website.
Traffic vs. Conversion
What’s your website’s conversion rate? Your conversion rate is the % of people that convert from a visitor into a customer. Sure, traffic is great but if they’re not converting into buyers, they’re not doing much for your business. Some sites get hundreds or thousands of visitors a day but those visitors don’t do anything on the site that benefits the site owner.
Conversion isn’t always easy and contrary to popular belief it doesn’t have to, necessarily, be a sale the first time that visitor arrives. If you get visitors to click an ad, sign up for a newsletter or hit the “subscribe” button to be notified of new posts, or push a button to bookmark a page on a social media tool, these can be conversions, too. A new blog subscriber or a Facebook conversion, for instance, could open up the doors to many future communications that could lead to a sale.
Measuring your conversion rate on a regular basis can be very telling. It can tell you whether or not your website is optimised for customers. Being optimised to receive traffic is a good thing. But having the ability to make that traffic mean something equates to success. Analysing your website traffic reports can make a whole lot of difference in your success as it’s valuable information about how you are doing with getting traffic and turning traffic into leads or sales.
Hiring an SEO and marketing firm to help you with conversion is a smart move. You can get help designing for optimal traffic and optimal conversion and plan and then execute a website marketing campaign that can encompass paid advertising, organic search engine optimization, video marketing, social media marketing, and more. A strategic approach can result in great success and a continually climbing rate of traffic as well as making that traffic really count.
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