In the world of digital optimisation, the focus is often on generating as much traffic as possible, and in fairness, getting people to your site remains a critical part of digital success. However, there are actually more fundamental things to get right first, before focussing on traffic generation.
- Understand your clients’ needs
- A critical part of ensuring that your website is successful is understanding what your target market wants to see and do.
- This means asking yourself the questions or needs your potential consumer might have, and ensuring that your website answers and/or offers a solution to those questions in an easy to find and consume manner.
- Make sure your content is user focussed, ‘how can your company satisfy the consumer’s needs’, a website that is too inwardly-focussed i.e. talks about your company and your needs, can be off-putting for potential customers, they need to know they are your priority.
- Keep potential clients on your site
- Make sure that once you’ve got a visitor, you keep them engaged, answer their questions and guide them towards your predetermined goal (usually a sale/purchase) in a clear, concise and consumer-focussed way. If the client finds their end goal too difficult to get to they will move on to another website quickly.
6 great content tips:
- Put the content into words on a web page rather than a downloadable document – this is more Search Engine friendly and ensures you’re not expecting your visitors to jump through unnecessary hoops to access what they want.
- Have enough content to cover all angles – if your content is too light on substance, you’ll rank lower than competitor sites.
- Break your content down into digestible chunks – use bullet lists, mini-headings and infographics/videos where possible. Diverse content delivery keeps visitors stimulated and is good for SEO.
- Ensure that the basics on your site are there – a footer on every page that includes your company’s contact details will improve SEO
- Connect your paid marketing to the right pages. Paid marketing campaigns (on Facebook and Google Display Network, for example) can be excellent vehicles to drive traffic.
- Focus your page directs to specific pages on your website. Sending every visitor to the home page or contact us page on your site can be too generic to be truly useful.
If you get the above right, the traffic you do drive to your site will be far more likely to take the next step with you, therefore converting your traffic from page browsers to clients and potentially a paying customer.
Try using your website as if you are the customer
Take some time to go through your site either by yourself or with your digital partner.
Ask yourselves:
- Is your website user-friendly?
- Does the content answer the questions your target market might have?
- Do you offer clear solutions?
- Do you offer clear ‘calls to action’?
- How do you feel about your website? Are you excited by it? Would you buy from you or become a client?
If the answer is “NO” to any of these, then you could be losing customers daily, who have been on your website and felt the same, and you wouldn’t even know it!
For a free website review and/or to discuss how to bring, keep and more importantly convert your website traffic into leads contact us at Realnet, a Cambridge-based digital agency.