Web Site Promotion And Marketing

How To Get The Most Out Of

Your Web Site Traffic

Probably the most common question I get from subscribers is something
along the lines of, "I'm not getting any sales. How much traffic do I need
to solve this problem?"

Well, unfortunately, more web site traffic does not mean more sales. The
truth is, your web site should be producing sales RIGHT NOW, low
traffic or not.

I think a good rule of thumb to follow is "the 1% rule". If you're getting
1000 visitors a month, you should also be getting 10 sales a month. If you
are getting 10,000 visitors, then you should be getting 100 sales. If not,
something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

I have certain products that consistently sell close to 2.5% (1 of every 40
visitors) and have had months as high as 6.1% (1 of every 17 visitors).
This has come, however, only after lots of changing, editing and
experimenting.

I also have a great product that sold only a quarter of 1% (1 of every 400
visitors) and has taken me over 4 months of tweaking and re-writing to
finally (and barely) nudge it it over the 1% threshold. This has been a
toughie.

I tell you this to make two important points here:

First, traffic doesn't make your site more or less effective - you do. The
traffic you create through your web site promotion and marketing efforts
only impacts the number of sales opportunities, not the selling power of
your site.

Second, the perfect time to get your site "sales ready" is when your traffic
IS low. This way, you can be assured of watching your sales grow right
along with your traffic.

How do you go about this?

Well, you need to know where to look to find the necessary "fixes". This
is a two step process.

First, you absolutely have to be sure that your visitors are "targeted" to
begin with. Are they people who have an interest in your specific market
niche? You could just be attracting the wrong crowd. If you are, the
"clues" that will point you to the places you need to fix will not exist.

You need to follow the footprints of targeted visitors to gain eye-opening
insights.

For example, if your traffic is coming from traffic exchange programs in
the form of pop-ups and pop-unders, or "guaranteed hit" types of
programs, it's much more likely that you're getting a "broad interest" set of
visitors rather than ones having a specific interest in in your

niche.

If this is the case, you can target your web site promotion and marketing
methods more precisely by using traffic building techniques such as search
engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, writing articles, ezine
advertising, promoting free reports and participating at forums.

I'd take 500 well targeted visitors over 10,000 broad-based ones any day
of the week.

And once you're getting these targeted visitors, it's your site statistics that
will tell you exactly where you need to go to work.

Second, assuming you ARE attracting "targeted" visitors but are still not
getting good results, it's now time to get your site "in shape". You're
winning half the battle, and now it's just a matter of time before you
conquer the field.

You see, now you're in what I call the "tweak phase". Here, you
continually edit and experiment with your content until you get the results
you're looking for.

The first thing to do is to make a written list of the "site objectives" you
have for your visitors. What do you want them to do, and in what order?

For example, I have a number of visitor objectives. Here's the top few:

1.) Avoid quick homepage exits.

Solution: Change opening headline until your visitors are at least letting the
site fully load (naturally, your wise use of site design elements such as
graphics and images will impact this as well).

2.) Get visitors to click on links to internal pages that describe the
products I endorse.

Solution: Edit copy of each link until at least 40% of site visitors select at
least one of these links.

3.) Get visitors to click from these "preselling" pages to the actual
merchant sales pages of the products endorsed (a "clickthrough").

Solution: Keep evaluating and changing copy until at least 50% of the
visitors to these pages clickthrough to the merchant sites.

4.) Get sales (simple enough, huh?). And notice this is #4. Several steps
must work well FIRST.

Solution: Change and edit "preselling" copy until 1 1/2% of visitors who
clickthrough make a purchase.

5.) Get visitors to sign-up for newsletter.

Solution: Change newsletter description and sign-up placement until at
least 15% of visitors are subscribing.

6.) Average at least 5 page views per visit.

Solution: Change page descriptions, the placement of the descriptions and
the content itself.

Okay, do you see what this does? By listing your objectives, you've
created a more manageable and prioritized set of tasks that will help you
lead your visitors where you would like them to go.

You can also start with lower goals ( the number of clickthroughs, sales,
page views, newsletter sign-ups, etc.) and increase them as your site
becomes more and more effective.

Many of these changes can be made simultaneously. Then, watch your
site stats and monitor the results.

Normally, I like at least 500 - 1000 visitors between site edits, but I used
to do it with far fewer earlier on (200 - 300). You can experiment with
this as well.

The point is, that once you're getting targeted traffic, and you are open
both professionally and ego-wise to changing how you are doing things on
a regular basis, it's simply a matter of time before people are buying what
you are selling.

So even with light traffic, you'll have money coming in to keep you
encouraged while you build your name, reputation and traffic for the
greater achievements ahead.