What Are You Doing With Your Website Traffic?
| Category: Traffic and Tracking | Date: 2002-12-06 |
The endless quest of every webmaster seems to be to get more and more traffic. After all, more traffic means more sales... doesn't it. Your answer to that question should be "not necessarily."
The utility of your traffic depends upon how you've structured your site. It depends upon what your site is set up to accomplish. It depends upon the path that you guide your website visitor down as he travels from page to page. You do have a path laid out on your site for you visitor to follow, don't you.
For those who may need a review of this concept...your site should be set up to accomplish ONE primary purpose and then have several secondary objectives.
For many sites, this primary purpose is to capture the email address of your visitor and to make them a regular part of your community. For other sites, the primary purpose it to promote a cause or educate. For still other sites, the primary purpose is to make sales. These purposes are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
I think it's a safe assumption to make that the primary purpose of many subscribers' websites is to make sales. If that's the case with your site, then you need to make sure your website focuses primarily on that job. That means that whatever brings them into your site needs to attract traffic interested in what you're selling. Your promotional efforts need to make clear what your site has to offer. Your search engine listing and your advertising - for example - needs to emphasize what you're offering. This keeps you from wasting a lot of resources. It attracts traffic looking for what you offer.
The simplest site for making sales is a "direct response"website. This is a site where the visitor arrives at the site on a page which starts right off with your sales copy. The person comes to the site looking for this, and your web copy should make the sale for you. Your visitor to a direct response page has very few choices. They generally can either make a purchase or leave. Often they can also join your mailing list. This allows you to call them back to the site if they don't make a purchase the first time. The invitation to join your list should be structured so as not to interfere with making the sale though. Perhaps you have an exit popup that only shows up if they exit through a page other than your order form. If they make a purchase, your invitation to join your list can be incorporated in the order fulfillment process.
The most effective type of direct response sites I've seen and operated are mini sites. Some of these sites have as few as 1 page. They are highly focused selling machines. A lot has already been written about mini sites so I won't belabor the topic. The idea is to have a highly focused site which concentrates on one topic or purpose and does not offer the site visitors too many choices. Give your visitor too many choices and he doesn't make any choice. Give your visitor too many choices and
you will often confuse him. One of my favorite books on the topic of mini sites is call Killer Mini Site Profits. It gives you a step by step guide to creating "Killer"mini sites. You can read more about it on my website at: http://williecrawford.com/killerminisites/
If the primary purpose of your site is to capture your visitors email address so that you can later follow-up, then your site should be structures to focus on this purpose. For example, you can invite the visitors to:
- Sign up for a course
- Enter a contest
- Subscribe to your ezine
- Download a freebie
All of these paths should lead to the visitor willingly giving you permission to follow up. Perhaps you offer a free ebook on a topic but require the email address to give the download url. You make clear on you webpage that you will follow up with more information on the subject later. In order to convince your visitor to give you his
email address and permission to follow up, you need to give him a GREAT reason. Your follow-up must promise tremendous value. Your web copy needs to spell out the benefits of your ezine, course, or freebie.
If your site is to promote a cause or educate your visitor on a topic you are passionate about, it needs to be just as focused. It still needs to be structured to get your message across and perhaps sell your visitor on your point of view. Just as in the other sites described above, your site must not contain distractions that prevent your visitor from following the desired path through the site.
To track the effectiveness of your site in accomplishing it's purpose you should incorporate tracking software. This software can be as simple or as complicated as your desire. Some tracking software will go as far as to show you the exact path your visitor took through your site and even how long they spent on each page. I prefer simpler software but encourage your to use whatever you're comfortable with.
Take a few minutes now and evaluate what your site is really designed to accomplish. Ask if anything about your site detracts from accomplishing this purpose. If so... analyze how you can correct these deficiencies. Revise your site to lead your traffic towards your desired objective. You need to do this before you struggle so hard to attract traffic to your site. Do this and you'll discover that the traffic you have produces greater results. You'll gain maximum utility from the traffic you work so hard to get.
Copyright 2002 by Willie Crawford
About the author.
Willie Crawford is an internet marketing consultant who has aided hundreds in building very successful online businesses. Feel free to drop by his marketing discussion board at http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
today to discuss marketing and website traffic issues ;-)
traffic@therealsecrets.com
http://williecrawford.com
The utility of your traffic depends upon how you've structured your site. It depends upon what your site is set up to accomplish. It depends upon the path that you guide your website visitor down as he travels from page to page. You do have a path laid out on your site for you visitor to follow, don't you.
For those who may need a review of this concept...your site should be set up to accomplish ONE primary purpose and then have several secondary objectives.
For many sites, this primary purpose is to capture the email address of your visitor and to make them a regular part of your community. For other sites, the primary purpose it to promote a cause or educate. For still other sites, the primary purpose is to make sales. These purposes are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
I think it's a safe assumption to make that the primary purpose of many subscribers' websites is to make sales. If that's the case with your site, then you need to make sure your website focuses primarily on that job. That means that whatever brings them into your site needs to attract traffic interested in what you're selling. Your promotional efforts need to make clear what your site has to offer. Your search engine listing and your advertising - for example - needs to emphasize what you're offering. This keeps you from wasting a lot of resources. It attracts traffic looking for what you offer.
The simplest site for making sales is a "direct response"website. This is a site where the visitor arrives at the site on a page which starts right off with your sales copy. The person comes to the site looking for this, and your web copy should make the sale for you. Your visitor to a direct response page has very few choices. They generally can either make a purchase or leave. Often they can also join your mailing list. This allows you to call them back to the site if they don't make a purchase the first time. The invitation to join your list should be structured so as not to interfere with making the sale though. Perhaps you have an exit popup that only shows up if they exit through a page other than your order form. If they make a purchase, your invitation to join your list can be incorporated in the order fulfillment process.
The most effective type of direct response sites I've seen and operated are mini sites. Some of these sites have as few as 1 page. They are highly focused selling machines. A lot has already been written about mini sites so I won't belabor the topic. The idea is to have a highly focused site which concentrates on one topic or purpose and does not offer the site visitors too many choices. Give your visitor too many choices and he doesn't make any choice. Give your visitor too many choices and
you will often confuse him. One of my favorite books on the topic of mini sites is call Killer Mini Site Profits. It gives you a step by step guide to creating "Killer"mini sites. You can read more about it on my website at: http://williecrawford.com/killerminisites/
If the primary purpose of your site is to capture your visitors email address so that you can later follow-up, then your site should be structures to focus on this purpose. For example, you can invite the visitors to:
- Sign up for a course
- Enter a contest
- Subscribe to your ezine
- Download a freebie
All of these paths should lead to the visitor willingly giving you permission to follow up. Perhaps you offer a free ebook on a topic but require the email address to give the download url. You make clear on you webpage that you will follow up with more information on the subject later. In order to convince your visitor to give you his
email address and permission to follow up, you need to give him a GREAT reason. Your follow-up must promise tremendous value. Your web copy needs to spell out the benefits of your ezine, course, or freebie.
If your site is to promote a cause or educate your visitor on a topic you are passionate about, it needs to be just as focused. It still needs to be structured to get your message across and perhaps sell your visitor on your point of view. Just as in the other sites described above, your site must not contain distractions that prevent your visitor from following the desired path through the site.
To track the effectiveness of your site in accomplishing it's purpose you should incorporate tracking software. This software can be as simple or as complicated as your desire. Some tracking software will go as far as to show you the exact path your visitor took through your site and even how long they spent on each page. I prefer simpler software but encourage your to use whatever you're comfortable with.
Take a few minutes now and evaluate what your site is really designed to accomplish. Ask if anything about your site detracts from accomplishing this purpose. If so... analyze how you can correct these deficiencies. Revise your site to lead your traffic towards your desired objective. You need to do this before you struggle so hard to attract traffic to your site. Do this and you'll discover that the traffic you have produces greater results. You'll gain maximum utility from the traffic you work so hard to get.
Copyright 2002 by Willie Crawford
About the author.
Willie Crawford is an internet marketing consultant who has aided hundreds in building very successful online businesses. Feel free to drop by his marketing discussion board at http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
today to discuss marketing and website traffic issues ;-)
traffic@therealsecrets.com
http://williecrawford.com
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