Struggling to Improve Traffic Conversion?

traffic-stop

Many businesses looking to increase online revenues will run online marketing and SEO campaigns to increase their websites traffic.  These campaigns can significantly improve the number of visitors a website receives each month yet business owners are often left at a loss when the bottom line doesn’t provide a worthwhile return on their marketing and SEO investment.

Increased traffic does not automatically lead to higher traffic conversion rates, if you want your websites traffic to convert then here are a few pointers you need to consider before investing your time and money into SEO and marketing strategies.

Not All Traffic is Created Equal

The first thing to look at is where your traffic is coming from.  Never buy your traffic, you have no idea where it is coming from or even if there are real users behind those numbers.  It’s simple enough to set up a server that uses proxies to conceal its identity and pretend to be an active user of your site.  Unfortunately servers are well known for window shopping but rarely get their credit card out!  Even if the traffic you buy has a real person at the end of it then you have no idea how they got to your site, most likely they have been redirected or misled in some way.  An unwanted pop up to your site would count to you as a hit but is most likely to be instantly closed or ignored by the end user.

Your traffic should be coming from organic search results, well placed links from other sites, social media campaigns and paid advertising campaigns.  This is the first step to providing your site with better quality of traffic but this in itself is still not enough to make sure that your traffic converts well.

 

Make it Relevant

Think about your target market and your potential customer, if they are going to convert then the way they find you must be relevant to their needs.   This means that the keywords you target for organic search results and any paid advertising campaigns must target the needs of your target market.  Avoid broad terms and look instead to target more specific keywords and terms that a potential customer may be using as a search query.

Someone searching for a broad term like “Bowler Hats” could have any number of reasons to search for that term.  Their intentions are unclear, only a small percentage will actually be looking to buy a bowler hat.  The rest may be looking for information, images, a book or film with the same name, a band… the list goes on.  Even those who may be thinking about buying a hat may not actually be anywhere near buying in the buying cycle.  If you target this term then you may see increased traffic but it wont convert anywhere near as well as targeting more specific terms that a potential customer looking to buy or compare would be looking for.  Target keywords and phrases that people are likely to look for when they are ready to buy and this will help increase your conversion rates when they arrive at your site.

Your landing page should also be relevant to your potential customers needs, if they are looking for a cheap bike then make sure the page that they land on offers cheap bikes.  There’s no point in directing them to the page of your most expensive bikes, they are likely to see the price and decide this doesn’t suit their budget and instantly bounce off your site.

Don’t expect visitors to spend long looking around your site to find what they need, offer it to them straight away by matching your landing pages content to your targeted keywords.  This means linking to the relevant pages rather than the homepage and also using descriptive title tags that reflect the matched search term and page content.  The title is the first thing that your potential customer will see in the search engine results, this may be your only chance to show them that you are relevant to their needs.  The same logic should also be applied to headlines for any PPC or other paid advertising campaigns.

If you are linking in from other sites or social media platforms then again make sure that you target your market.  If you’re selling wine then link in from wine forums and blogs, you could offer to do some guest posts for a blog that is related to your market or offer some expert advice on a related forum.  Spedning time to build up a reputation pn a few popular blogs and forums could really pay off.

If you want to use Twitter to promote your products and services then make sure you are targeting people who are in need of what you have to offer, don’t just follow random people and hope they follow back but instead follow those who are likely to have a need for what you are offering. Also post to channels that are relevant to your target market.

Make it Obvious

So you have targeted traffic arriving at the right pages on your site, the final piece of the puzzle is to make it obvious and easy for them to find what they need.  Make sure all your offers and calls to action are clearly placed above the fold and that your site is well presented and easy to navigate. Categories should be organised in a logical way with clear descriptive headings for each section. Nobody likes to dig around at a jumble sale!

Your potential customer is likely to buy if they can find what they need and feel they can trust you.  So the site itself needs to look professional and well presented but don’t go over the top with eye candy, you still want their attention to be firmly on the products and services!

Your checkout or ordering process should be easy and simple, you’ve brought them this far and really don’t want to lose the sale by making things complicated, long winded or frustrating for your customer! The checkout is also a great opportunity for having an option for customers to be added to your mailing list, this can really add value for you by gaining repeat custom through targeted email campaigns.

Push the Margins

Look to increase your margins by displaying related products and special offers on the pages of your product descriptions. I recently bought a bike online and once it arrived I realised that i needed a helmet, a pump, a puncture repair kit and a bike lock… I would have bought all this at the same time if only they had prompted me to do so!

 

So remember to make it relevant, make it obvious and push the margins!