Is your website successful?

A website needs to do 2 things to be successful:

1. Obtain & maintain ‘good’ traffic
2. Consistently convert traffic into something beneficial

To apply a ‘brick and mortar’ example, this is equivalent to making sure that you not only have customers in your store but that it is also easy for them to buy things they are interested in. On the web, your site needs to be easily found by people who are looking for what you offer. Once they find you, they need to like and trust what they see enough to take action.

1. Have & maintain ‘good’ traffic

So, what is ‘good’ traffic? At first glace it’s easy to assume that this just means we need a lot of visitors. However, much more important than the quantity of your website traffic is the quality.

Example:
A “real estate developer” gets 300 hits a day to their website. However, due to some poor submission and keyword choices, the site is appearing in directories under “website developers”.  As a result, 90% of the traffic is people who are looking for a new website not a new home or building.

As you can see, this isn’t very helpful to this particular developer.

To make sure you are getting the traffic you really need requires a well planned online marketing campaign. This may include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Link Building, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), offline marketing, or all of the above. This will generate the traffic quantity you need. Making sure the keywords your campaign is based on are thoroughly researched will ensure the traffic is of the proper quality.

Often times, website traffic is an afterthought to website design and development. This is similar to building a shopping mall in the middle of a forest then worrying about building the roads that lead to it afterward. Who finds your website and how they do it is just as important as what you are offering. Perhaps more so.

Do you have ‘good’ traffic?

Every website has different needs, but answering the following should give you a decent picture of your current traffic…

1. Do you have detailed reporting on your website? (If not, you should. Try Google Analytics)
2. How many visits per day do you receive? Per week? Per month? Per year?
3. Where are the visitors coming from? (search engines, links from other sites, direct requests, etc.)
4. Where are they geographically located?
5. What search terms (keywords) are they using to get to your website?
6. How long do they stay on your website?
7. Are they taking any action on your website? (buying something, contacting you, signing up, etc.)
8. What percentage of your visitors are taking a desired action? (this is your conversion rate)
9. What technology are they using to view your website? (browser, operating system, etc.)

Probably the most important question in determining your traffic’s quality is #8. How many of the people coming to your website are actually doing what you want them to do?

2. Consistently convert traffic into something beneficial

Now that we have our traffic we come to the second part of the success criteria…

Whether you are the site owner or you are the developer creating it you know that the owner is the final judge in determining the success of the website. How that owner comes to this decision is based on the website doing something beneficial to them. This could be in the form online transactions, signing up for a newsletter, filling out a contact form or picking up the phone. Ultimately, it boils down to making the owners personal success easier in the form of revenue, prestige, leads or improved operations.

To achieve this, each and every page on the website should be designed to entice an action. By performing that action the visitor is converted into a customer. (i.e. They ‘bought’ what you were ‘selling’. Which is the entire goal of having a website.)

Several things go into enticing your visitors (once you have them) into action. Getting the right visitors (aka ‘good’ traffic) is the first step, but now they have to like what they see enough to do something about it. Landing page design, button placement, content, etc. are all part of this.  Specifics on these are beyond the scope of this article, however, asking yourself the following will give a good start:

1. Is your design professional?
2. Does your design & content instill trust?
3. Is your content useful to the visitor?
4. Is the desired action clear on EVERY page of your website?
5. What is the incentive for taking the action? What is the visitor getting in return?