When it comes to website traffic, the adage “quality over quantity” is definitely something to take note of. You could be getting thousands of visitors to your website every day, but if you’re not getting a good return on investment, conversion will tell you as much.
A low number of clickthroughs – and, if you’re selling a product, less visitors moving into the purchase funnel – means that you might need to take a look at where the problem could be.
It’s possible that your website is missing out on quality visitors because you aren’t properly using an interconnected approach. Are you using proper SEO and strong keywords? Is your website layout optimized for your audience? Is the content you are producing educating and entertaining your target customer? There are a number of issues that could be causing low conversion, but the end result is the same: website traffic that bounces quickly.
In an effort to keep visitors on your website, let’s identify why your traffic might not be converting, and see what can be easily done to reverse that trend.
When Numbers Do Lie
With any website the goal is to drive as much relevant traffic as possible to the right pages, and convert that traffic into a desired action. The best way to make one’s presence known online is to have a website that’s well-promoted with a user-friendly interface and lots of smart, shareable content.
However, many people tend to overlook the smaller things in favor of focusing purely on numbers, in the mistaken belief that getting tons of traffic is proof that a website is effective.
While it may look impressive to have a stat counter displaying a huge number of visitors, it loses a lot of meaning when you depend on a possibly overinflated visitor base to become your customers.
People who stop by your website once and glance at it before clicking away immediately might add another tick to the counter, but they’re not providing you with revenue. Additionally, this can skew analytics when it comes time to figure out the ROI on your website.
An article on Outbrain sets the record straight: “The important numbers to review with your analytics reports, in order to tell if your traffic is relevant, will include the amount of pages that were viewed, the amount of time users spend on your site and the bounce rate (Bounce = one-page visit). More pages viewed and more time spent mean more engagement.”
If your website’s analytics reports show that you have a high traffic number but low conversion, you’re likely keeping their interest briefly, but not encouraging them to stay on the website long enough to see what you have to say – and possibly buy what you’re selling.
Tips to Promote Conversion
If you’re stuck with a website that isn’t converting, don’t give up just yet – there are plenty of tweaks you can test and hold up against analytics to see if there’s any positive effect. To get people to click through to your website and stay long enough to see what you have to offer, try a few of the following tactics:
Improve your headlines. They’re the first thing that people will see, and it’s your first chance to grab their attention immediately. The Kissmetrics blog recommends testing “clear headlines with a unique value proposition” and choosing phrasing that’s concise and creative without sounding like spam.
Add visual content. In today’s fast-paced digital world, attention spans are becoming shorter and more prone to skim over long-winded walls of text. A good way to grab attention is to incorporate visual content such as relevant images and video clips. If you encourage your visitors to interact with your website’s content, there’s more of a chance that they’ll stick around to see the rest.
Make it easily shareable. If you’ve got quality content, you’re going to want to make sure you’re getting as many eyeballs on it as possible. Make it easy for your audience to share what they’re reading by adding buttons that let visitors tweet a link, share it to Facebook, reblog it on Tumblr, and so on.
Share your insights with reputable websites. Distributing content about your experience will build positive reputation, signal to consumers that you are an industry thought leader and increase your credibility.
Why Your Visitors Aren’t Converting
It can be easy to get discouraged when you’re not seeing the conversion results you want out of your website. But if you take the time to test out some new techniques and ways to grab the attention of both your audience and search engines, then you may start noticing your website’s traffic staying put longer. Valuable traffic is out there – you just have to cut through the clutter to find it.
What’s your best tip for converting visitors on your website? Let us know in the comments.
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