Give Your Audience What It Wants
Too often web designers make a web site that only contain fluff. The problem is, visitors don’t come to your site to wast time, but usually have a distinct purpose. Don’t give them what they want, and they are gone!
So how do you appeal to these visitors? The easy answer, “Give them what they want.” The more important question you should ask is, “What do my visitors want?” To answer this question, you need to research three imperatives, 1)Who are your visitors? 2)What attracted them to your site originally? 3) What do they want when they come to your site? Once you know who your visitors are, what attracted them and what they are interested in, it becomes very simple to attract and retain them.
The next question, “How do I find this out about my visitors?” There are plenty of tools you can use to do this. First, ask them. Open up a dialogue with your visitor and find out more about them point blank. A second way way to learn more about your customers is by using traffic analysis software such as Google Analytics. Not only will this software track the number of customers and the number of pages accessed, but it will also show pinpoint locations where your visitors reside, how long visitors spend on your site, how often they return to your site, as well as the amount of visitors who come to your page and immediately exit it. With this valuable information it becomes much easier to provide unique and quality content that your customers will love.
Build Traffic
By catering to your customers needs you’ll see an increase in traffic from past visitors returning to your site. But by extending your marketing reach you can compound the number of visitors your site will receive. In this section we talk about some of the most important traffic building methods used by professionals each day.
If your not using PPC Advertising (Pay Per Click) then your missing out on what could become a website goldmine. With all PPC campaigns it is important to start out with a low budget, to improve your results before you unleash this method. Although there are many services that offer PPC Advertising, we suggest to start with Google Adwords. Not only is Google Adwords one of the most powerful systems, but it also can be connected to Google Analytics for very helpful tracking. By targeting the right traffic you’ll be increasing your profits in no time.
If you like free relevant traffic, your going to love SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is about optimizing your web pages to become more search engine friendly, adding valuable and unique content and providing trusted links from within and outside of your website. The better ranked you can get your website in the search engines, the more free and relevant traffic you will receive.
Influence Your Audience to a Profitable Action
As mentioned earlier, you want to make it quick and easy for your visitors to get what they want. On the other side of the coin, you need to make it easy for your visitors to do what you want them to do. For example, why make them click through endless pages to sign up for a membership or newsletter? The easier you make it for your visitors to do what you want, the more they will do it.
You can make it difficult for your visitors to make you money in many ways. Give them too many options to nonprofitable actions, making your navigation confusing and cluttering your web pages with random text and graphics. Get your customers attention to a profitable action by using varying degrees of contrast, color and font choice. When in doubt use different approaches on different pages and measure the results.
The number of methods you can use to increase customer action seems endless. A few of the many worthy mentionables are branding, cross promotion, A/B testing and improving your call-to-action. Remember, the higher the rate of visitor to customer conversion the more revenue your website will receive.
Partner with an Expert
If a lot of the concepts discussed in this article seem relatively new to you, honestly, it will be easier and more profitable to turn to a professional to help you out. In choosing an expert partner, make sure they have a marketing background and are focused on building your profits.
Matthew Henage is an expert web marketer and Owner of Superior Design Inc, a Utah website design and web marketing firm. By visiting his website, for a limited amount of time, you can get an Internet marketing consultation.