Before You Worry About More Traffic
You build a website with the goal of it getting seen, right? There is very little use on the internet for a site that sees little to no traffic. However, so many web site designers are more interested in the traffic numbers than what those numbers are actually saying. Before you start counting up the clicks on your website, there are a few things you need to understand.
For starters, what is traffic? It’s the number of people who land on your website throughout the course of a given time period. Some of these “landings” are intentional, and some are from people who arrived at your site accidentally or without a real goal. Consider these numbers:
500 hits (visits) on your website in one day
300 leave the site within a few seconds (bounce rate)
100 read the page they land on, then leave
50 click through a few pages before leaving your site
25 find your sales page, and then leave
25 order from your business
What clicks should you be concentrating on, the initial 500 or the last 100 that actually make use of your site? It doesn’t matter how popular your website is, you’ll always have that bounce rate within the first minute or so. There are steps you can take to improve the bounce rate of your site, bringing more people deeper into the website and towards the order page, but they won’t work for everyone. Some people just land on your site thinking that it is one thing, and finding something else. Concentrating on the initial 500 is important, but you also need to make sure your site is useful to the group that actually stick around long enough to look through your site.
Are you giving your site visitors what they need when they land on your site? Before you start working on bringing in more traffic, you need to make sure that you’re meeting the needs of the traffic you already have. What are people looking for when they land on your site? Are there certain keywords that have a higher bounce rate than others? Check your analytics program to see what opportunities you can take advantage of. Make sure your navigation is easy to follow, your design is uncluttered, and that your content is well written. Make a strong first impression, and people are more likely to stick around (and then come back later).
Do you have any big changes planned for your site? Maybe you want to redesign, or add a blog. Take care of any alterations to your site before you focus on more traffic. Get the new features in place first. When you start bringing in more site visitors, you want to make sure that they are seeing the same site every time they come back, at least at first. If they visit your site once or twice, and then it changes drastically the next time they come back, it can be confusing.
If your site is ready to go, user-friendly, and you know you can make a strong first impression, you’re ready to start working towards your goal of more traffic, secure in the knowledge that you have taken care of everything that will make your site more useful for your site visitors.
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