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You are here: Home / Archives for attracting qualified website traffic

attracting qualified website traffic

When is it Right to Drive Traffic to Your Website?

by Eric Leuenberger 4 Comments

Everything in business has its place, and each is equally important to its respective task. Traffic is no doubt very important and a must for building any business. However, a number of things have to be in place prior to that traffic actually helping sales, and even then, the traffic must be qualified.

It’s an all too common misconception. Many people believe that to increase sales you must increase traffic. Seems logical, and should work, right? Not always. They focus so much on traffic that they forget (or choose not to) work on the other parts of the business. They are convinced that increasing traffic is the answer they have been looking for to increase sales.

However, they often find that more traffic isn’t all it is cracked up to be. They end up frustrated with shattered hopes—the traffic levels increased but the sales they expected to achieve from that increase simply weren’t there. They scratch their heads and can’t understand why it didn’t work the way they thought. After all, they got more traffic, so they naturally should have increased sales right? Wrong.

The real fact is traffic alone will never increase sales. It’s the combination of the right quality of traffic mixed with the right design and plan that does. Without the right design and plan in place, it doesn’t matter how much traffic you receive, your chances of sustained sales increases are slim.

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying ‘you can’t put the cart before the horse.’ Hold that in the back of your mind for a minute and we’ll recall it later.

PPC and SEO are just two methods for driving traffic to a site. For sake of this article we’ll leave it at that. These two marketing channels are going to be critical toward developing a successful and sustainable business—but each has it’s time and place for being utilized. First and foremost, you must ensure that your website is ready to convert any traffic you receive into customers for without this you’ll fail. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and if you aren’t ready you’ll find that you lose far more customers than you gain.

Here is ‘brick and mortar’ example (elaborated to illustrate what I mean by all of this.)

Let’s say you are shopping for a certain show shovel (the traditional ‘brick and mortar’ way … not on the internet.) You have may options to choose from around you and you choose a local hardware store (aptly named Hard to Find Hardware) that you saw a lot of advertising for (via radio, TV, local papers, etc…) They no doubt are all over the place and getting the exposure they need to bring in the traffic—in fact they made it very easy to find them. But as you’ll soon discover, they forgot one critical element.

In all their effort increase traffic to the store, they overlooked or forgot to make sure that once you get to the store, you quickly find the shovel you are looking for and then get out the door with it in a fast friendly manner, satisfied and happy that your entire experience with them was right—and because of that experience you’ll be back in the future to do business with them again. It’s called the customer experience and it plays a crucial role in winning sales, keeping customers, and sustaining a lasting business.

Let’s continue …

You arrive at the store, park your car in the lot, and move toward the entrance door. You pull the door to open it and nothing happens. You push the door and nothing happens. Thinking for a moment that you are an unknown star of ‘Candid Camera’ you examine the door and give it one more try. To your surprise you find out that the door actually slides open (is not pushed or pulled.) You wonder why there isn’t a sign on the door saying ‘slide to open.’ (This is your first real albeit unknown sign that this store has not thought about the customer experience.)

After figuring out the door on your own you walk into the store and notice right away that you don’t see a single person in site. It’s dimly lit (no doubt because the owner is trying to save on energy costs to offset the high expense of driving traffic to the store.) Your first impression isn’t good—but there’s more to come.

You try to ignore the current uncharacteristic circumstances, and decide to press forward in search of the snow shovel you saw in the ad.

Much to your surprise (and frustration) you find that not a single aisle is marked with a sign indicating what it contains—and oh there are aisles! You begin to wander aimlessly up and down each unmarked aisle in search of the snow shovel you came for with no luck at all.

(Strike One.)

You stumble across an aisle that has outdoor equipment such as rakes, wheelbarrows, etc… but lo and behold there are no shovels. This makes no sense to you and you now begin to look for someone, anyone, who will help you find what you seek (all other potential customers have already ‘left the building’ because they know already what you don’t yet but are going to find out soon.)

You search high and low for some ‘human help’ but determine that they are all either on ‘lunch break’ or are hiding from you (or both!) One thing starts to become clear … they don’t care about you. You’ve now been in the store more than 20 minutes and still have yet to find what you came looking for. You’re about to leave and suddenly, you see the store owner (who appears to be wandering around looking for items about as aimlessly as you are.)

Upon approaching the owner you tell them your dilemma and ask them if they can direct you to the area you would find this shovel. They stop and think for a moment then take you up and down a few aisles searching with no luck (while you follow behind thinking to yourself ‘I’ve already been down this aisle’.)

You tell them that although you expected to find the show shovel in what looked to be an outdoor equipment area (with no marked sign remember) it was not there. And even though the store ad said there was a sale on that show shovel, you did not find it in what appeared to be the ‘clearance’ section (in fact, you saw no ‘clearance’ section at all.)

The store owner then replies to you saying “Oh, you want that type of shovel. When I choose a shovel I look for it based on its function and since most shovels ‘dig holes’ they can be found in the section with things like power drills, nail guns etc… which also make holes.” Trouble is, you don’t search for shovels like that and the type of shovel you are looking for doesn’t dig holes … it pushes snow.

(Strike Two.)

At this point it’s safe to say any customer that stayed to this point now decides to leave. Many more won’t even attempt to buy from this store as they heard about the bad experience from those who tried it. Good news travels fast, but bad news travels faster.

You are determined though. You didn’t come all the way out here, spend this amount of time in the store, waste gas, and think you’re leaving with nothing in your hand right? You want that shovel.

After some serious frustration and even more determination you find the shovel you came for. You pick it up and head to the front of the store to checkout. But when you get to the front of the store, you do not see any checkout registers at all? You look for signs directing you to the registers and quickly remember there are no signs. You ask a lone employee, who is also wandering around, where you can find the checkout counter and they tell you the registers are at the back of the store (not the norm you quickly think.)

For some unknown reason (maybe you like the abuse) you proceed to the checkout (at the back of the store) credit card in hand.

You arrive at the register and give the card to the cashier to which they reply “we only accept cash here.” Steam is now beginning to blow from your ears and you’re at a boiling point. You’ve just spent well over 35 minutes in this store, finally found what you came for and now can’t even pay for it with the method you choose. You tell the cashier they should point out the payment methods before people arrive at the store (but it goes in one ear and out the other.) The cashier replies, “this is how we have done business for over 20 plus years and we aren’t about to change because of one person’s needs.”

(Strike three. The store owner’s out!)

Fed up with the entire experience, you put the shovel down where you stand, turn frustrated, and leave the way you came in with a bad impression of the store in your mind … vowing never to return again (and making sure you tell all of your friends never to shop their either!)

You get into your car and go to the nearest competitor’s hardware store (named Customer Focused Hardware.)

You approach their front door and it automatically opens for you. Upon entering you are greeted with a clean organized store, brightly lit, clear signs showing you where to go, and a smiling sales rep that asks you if they can help you. (These guys clearly know what they are doing.) Within 7 minutes have found the shovel you were looking for originally (prominently displayed up front I might add because it is on sale), already paid for it and are heading back to your car.

This is the type of experience you expected when you left the house and you’re sure to return to this store the next time you need anything hardware related. The store has won you over and the competitors will all be closing their doors soon.

Closing Thoughts and Moral of the Story

So, who are you “Hard to Find Hardware” or “Customer Focused Hardware?”

Who do you want to be?

And the million dollar question, “Who would you rather buy from?”

Remember, if the rest of the business is not setup to address the customer needs and concerns, the sales simply won’t happen—no matter how much traffic you attract.

Yes, you should be working on traffic generation and should never stop, but make sure you don’t neglect the other aspects of the business while doing so.

Don’t put the cart (i.e. traffic) before the horse (i.e. customer experience).

Filed Under: Design & Usability, Search Marketing Tagged With: attracting qualified website traffic, traffic generation

All Web Site Traffic is NOT Created Equal

by Eric Leuenberger Leave a Comment

Ya know, It’s hard to comprehend I know, but would you believe people still talk in “Hits”? Recently I read the following from an e-commerce store owner (and this seems to be a common “theme” among may other online store owners as well):

I have a site that is getting hits but no sales. Visitors come and look around at the products but don’t buy. I know the site is probably slow for dial up visitors but there must be another problem. I have good prices with some items on sale. I believe the SSL is set correct. Anyone see any glaring problems? Can it be that PayPal is the credit card processor? Any comments would be appreciated.

Let me set the record straight. “Hits”, well ah, that term went out with the dinosaurs, and should, for analysis purposes, never be looked at. Read on to see what a “hit” really is and what number you should be looking at to accurately determine the REAL number of visitors you are getting. A “hit” is not it.

I’m going to approach this one from a different perspective (non technology related, and more “marketing / customer focus” related). Technology is important, but it is only one part of the whole puzzle. It’s the foundation that everything else builds on. It’s the whole “Customer Experience” from beginning to end (from the moment they first come in contact with you until the moment they either buy or leave) that you should be concerned with. If you haven’t read my post on Customer Experience, you should.

Now, A few comments:

1. All traffic is NOT created equal. There is “Traffic” and there is “QUALIFIED Traffic”. Do you know if your visitors are QUALIFIED already? If not, you can’t appropriately say they “should buy”, and you can’t make proper adjustments to your site until you know that.

As a sample illustration, let’s say you have a brick and mortar store you sell from on a “busy street”. You get a lot of “visitors” walking buy the store, BUT, a “Window shopper” is less qualified to buy, and probably will not. However, a person that actually walks into the brick and mortar store is more qualified and therefore more likely to buy from you. Make sense? It’s no different on the Internet.

You have to determine who is qualified and who is not (the difference on the internet is that just because a visitor “comes to your site” doesn’t mean they are qualified). You have to begin to qualify them from the first moment they come in contact with you. This could be through Organic SEO, Paid Search (PPC), or any number of other advertising means. It is also achieved through proper tracking and analysis.

2. “Hits” is the wrong number to be looking at. This is a term that went out with the dinosaurs. You should be looking at “UNIQUE Visitors” to get a real idea of how many visitors your site is receiving. To loosely define a “hit”; a “Hit” occurs when a visitor requests information (any information) from your site / server. Even a BOT can create a “hit”.

A “hit” works like this:

Let’s say you have (for simplicity sake) a single web page that has 10 pictures on it (and nothing else at all). If I come to your web site, and look at that page, you will see 10 “hits” (although I am only 1 unique visitor). If another visitor comes to the site, you’ll see 10 mores hits (but you have only got 2 REAL unique visitors).

So, my question is … what is the TRUE number of visitors your site is getting now that you know what a “hit” is? Look at UNIQUE Visitors to get the true figure.
3. You could have everything in place and the site could look super, however, if the traffic you are getting is not qualified, you still will not see any sales. It’s that simple. This is the same for any site even up to the big e-commerce sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc… The basic principles of “e-commerce Best Practices” are the same.

4. As for the PayPal piece, read my posts on that topic for more information on how to utilize PayPal as a payment solution and still recover potential lost sales from your store.

4 Layers of  a web siteThe “guts” of your online store is the “technology” piece of your “Customer Experience” puzzle. However, you need to look at the other 3 pieces of the puzzle as well. “Website Design”, “Website Usability”, and “Customer Influence”.

Unless all 4 pieces of the puzzle are addressed, and traffic is qualified, your sales will always be “less than what they can be”.

Filed Under: E-Commerce Optimization, Featured, Search Marketing Tagged With: attracting qualified website traffic, customer influence, website design, website hits, website usability

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