Your Website Doesn't Need More Traffic... Just More Customers

Does this sound like you? You’ve SEO’d, you’ve social bookmarked, maybe started a Pay Per Click campaign, you’ve got tons of traffic...and your conversion rate is miserable.

At this point, you need better results. You want your customers to order from you, or subscribe to your newsletter, or join your website membership club. And although they’re swarming to your sites like ants at a picnic...they’re not biting.

One thing to do would be to start ramping up your efforts to get traffic. Pay more for pay per click campaigns, outsource more articles for article marketing, digg and stumble and social bookmark every post that you make on your blog...

After all, more traffic equals more sales, right?

Not necessarily.

All the traffic in the world isn’t going to help you if it isn’t converting.

At this point, it would make more sense for you to step back and examine WHY your traffic is not converting the way that it should.

As Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results”.

There are a number of areas that you’re going to need to examine.

Let’s start with how you’re getting your traffic. Are you relying heavily on social bookmarking? Digg, Stumble, Propeller and other social bookmarking services don’t always deliver traffic that converts well. If you submit a controversial, unusual, or very timely (connected to a news event) post, you may see a spike in traffic, but those spikes generally die down again very quickly.

This is especially true if your site is commercial in nature. There is nothing wrong with having a commercial site - it’s just that those sites aren’t very appealing to most members of social bookmarking sites.

You also need to think about whether you’re promoting to too broad a market. If you have a web site that revolves around weight loss for women, for instance, and you are getting traffic that is interested in weight loss...all of the men who come to your site are just wasted traffic, because your website is promoting something that does not benefit them.

If you have a website about show dog training, and you are doing pay per click advertising targeting people who are interested in dog training...again, that is too general. You need to target people who are specifically interested in how to train show dogs.

You also need to examine your web site and consider what kind of message it is delivering.

If people are coming to your web site and not taking action, chances are your web site design is not doing what it is supposed to do.

Is there a clear “call to action” high up on your home page? It is very well known among professional copywriters that customers need to be told what to do. A website visitor’s time is limited and they don’t want to wander around your web page trying to guess what they should be doing next.

Is your website easy to navigate? Is it free of grammar errors and mis-spellings? Do you present your information in an authoritative tone? Is it free of links or advertisements that would distract visitors from your main message?

You’re going to need to answer questions like these before you turn your attention towards driving more traffic - so that you can steer the right kinds of traffic to your site, and so that your customers know what to do once they get there.