If you find this helpful, pay it forward! More after the article...
How to Prepare Your Website to Ensure It Can Handle More Traffic
First in a Series
As we said last month: Who DOESN'T want more traffic to their website? Here is a six-step strategy you can follow to successfully increase traffic and win more sales.
Set up tracking
How do you know if you are doing better (or worse!) if you don’t have a clue how you are doing now? Measuring how many visitors come to your website, how long they stay, and what they do while they are there is crucial. Your website is a living entity that needs to evolve to stay relevant and you’ll want to know which changes moved your business in a positive direction and which are time-wasters.
Let Us Do It For You
Two of the best tools for your website also happen to be free for you to use: Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
- Google Analytics provides an amazing amount of data about what is happening on your website day-to-day, month-by-month, and even in real-time. Google’s support page will show you how to install Analytics on your own website.
- The Google Search Console tracks your website’s performance in Google search results to help you understand and improve how visitors find your website online. Setting up Search Console is separate from Analytics, but those details are also on Google’s support page.
Craft your Call To Action
If you want your website visitors to act, you have to ask them. Your CTA could be “Buy Now” or “Subscribe” or some other message, but do take the time to create something compelling and don’t confuse the visitor with multiple CTAs on one page. Also, don’t make them scroll all the way past a bunch of content before you make the request. Instead, place your CTA at several opportune places since you’ll want to ask more than once.
Incentivize for leads
Without leads, it’s awful tough to make sales, but you’ll need contact information, such as an email address, to pursue those leads. One way to persuade website visitors to give you their email address is to offer something of value in exchange. Talk to your current clients and brainstorm with your team to create the right lead magnet for your target market.
Strategize your landing page
Different from the rest of your website, your landing page should fulfill the promise of specific search terms and then follow up with a Call To Action. This cut-to-the-chase page isn’t for clicking and browsing and takes more effort than you’d think to be clear and simple.
Review your customer’s journey
Rather than building your website around “how to sell,” you should build it for “how to buy.” From the first contact, your site should provide a satisfying experience so visitors will buy again and tell their friends to buy, too. Take them on a pleasant, logical journey that answers their questions, eases their concerns, and makes purchasing stress-free.
Set Google Goals
One way to measure if your landing page and customer journey is working as designed is to set Goals in Google Analytics. Decide what you want your website visitor to do, such as filling out a form or downloading a checklist, and then measure how often that goal is met. Enrich the data even more by adding dollar value to conversions.
These six action items are the gold standard for building a successful business website and our recommended strategy for all of our clients. Once in place, your website has a strong foundation for implementing the next steps, such as Search Engine Optimization, which we will talk more about next time.
Too busy to carry out this program on your own? Then let our Sprocket team do it for you. Get started now by requesting a free initial review of your website. Just click the button below to learn more.
Check Out Our Offer
Read the next post in this series.
Photo by Isaque Pereira from Pexels
Did you enjoy this article? Was it helpful? Insightful?
Then please share it! Post it on your favorite Social Media platform(s) so your followers see it.
It's easy. Just click on any of the social icons below and we'll do the heavy lifting for you.
Oh yeah, leave a comment below. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for visiting!
Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
Other posts by Kate Gingold
Contact author
Full biography
Full biography
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
x
Linked In
Google Plus