Articles

Is Your Website Working?

by Michael Camire Internet Marketing Training At Its Best.
Yesterday, I was talking with an individual who was trying to sell me some new products to carry in my exotic bird store. I asked him for his website address so I can (1) view the products online and see what they look like; (2) get more information on the company itself; and (3) to make sure it was a valid company. He responded that "they use to have a website but no one ever visited it, so we took it down".

Does your Website attract a steady flow of targeted traffic, build an opt-in list, supply you leads and income from sales of products and services?

If it doesn't, then you need to examine your Website content, design and structure.

In most cases, Websites are designed and built first. Then the business owners try to figure out how to attract visitors. This approach is backwards.

Before you have a single web page built or content written you should have clearly identified your strategy for attracting visitors and converting them to leads or clients. Using the web to market your product or services requires a web marketing plan.

The web has the potential to be a powerful communication tool, but your Website needs to be designed in order for you to achieve your marketing goals. These goals also have to be measurable.

A Website built and managed without a clear marketing plan is usually a waste of time and money. Many Website are nothing more than web billboards. These sites generally do not attract clients and provide little marketing benefit.

What should you measure?

The most obvious category that can be measured is the amount of traffic that your Website is generating. The key value is the number of unique visitors that come to the Website. There are other values that are important, such as page views and average length of stay.

As you measure these values over time the goal would be to have a steady increase in all of these values.

Of course, if these visitors are not doing anything when they are on your Website they are of little value.

Do you have a call to action?

Your Website should be designed in such a way that your visitors are presented with a call to action. This call to action should be obvious to the visitor. Your call to action is another element that can be measured. How many visitors perform the call to action?

The call to action can take many forms. It may be opting in to a email newsletter list, or filling out a lead form. The ideal action is the purchase of a product or service.

When a site visitor performs the call to action, you have a conversion. The number of conversions divided by the number of Website visitors is the conversion rate.

One of the goals of the Website should be to increase the conversion rate.

Testing

Once you have your measurable elements, traffic and conversions, you can test various ways to make your Website work. You can test various techniques for increasing traffic. Options here include search engine optimization of your Website, pay per click advertising, press releases and article writing.

Then you will also want to increase your conversion rates. Split testing is used to determine how various elements within the web page affect the visitor. You can change the elements on the page such as the headline or color of text and graphics, to measure the affect on the visitor.

Website Goals

You now have the understanding that your business Website should be working for you with a marketing plan. You need a call to action. You need to measure traffic and conversions, and then test to improve the results.

With these measurements in hand, you can now set goals for your Website.

To Your Success!

Michael Camire
BizVentures5000
Skype Me: pratbirdman
About Me

P.S. Do you need help with your website, to build a downline, create a lead capture page, set up an auto responder and more, if so, I want to help you. Sign up for my free 8 step-by-step process at http://trckrs.com/45217/.


About Michael Camire Senior Premium    Internet Marketing Training At Its Best.

300 connections, 3 recommendations, 992 honor points.
Joined APSense since, July 13th, 2010, From Prattville, United States.

Created on Jul 28th 2011 08:25. Viewed 741 times.

Comments

Posseidon Power Senior   SEO,SEM,SMM
Find out on my revpages how to generate more traffic to your websites.
Jul 28th 2011 08:39   
Chuks Okonta Committed   Internet marketer
@micheal, you are an addition to apsense, great article, i wish to add that after all that you need send traffic to your site.
Jul 28th 2011 08:45   
Don Von Ebers Advanced   Network Marketer
Already a member, Michael, but thanks for the refresher!
Jul 28th 2011 09:19   
Michael Camire Senior Premium   Internet Marketing Training At Its Best.
Don can you tell us how TL2I is helping you. And have you joined the TrafficLeads2Income group here at Apsense?
Jul 28th 2011 09:34   
Kalpna Sharma Advanced   Social Women Care Security Service Advise
Good views help others. well done
Jul 28th 2011 10:41   
Patsy j Payne Senior   konnektions konsultant
I too am already a member and love the checklists. I will join the group here.
Jul 28th 2011 11:17   
Elizabeth Wesley Senior   AdvertisingbyCowgirls.com
Nice article, well written.
Cheers!
Jul 28th 2011 20:16   
Slamet Paminto Senior   Internet Marketer
I like read this articles and I think this will give good ides for all
Jul 28th 2011 22:03   
Jim Lee Senior   Wholesale shoes supplier
yes a website don't have visitor is useless!
Jul 29th 2011 01:21   
Vishwajeet Kumar Professional   Internet Marketer & Webmaster
Very Well written article, Thanks for sharing.
Jul 29th 2011 02:44   
Ljerka S. Advanced  Teacher
Hi, thank you for the eye-opening article.
Jul 29th 2011 03:03   
Alex R. Advanced  Affiliate Marketer
Yes a website has to be relevant to attract.number of unique visitors and to get steady flow of targeted traffic is the hardest things to achieve as you know.
Jul 29th 2011 03:34   
Marlau G. Senior   webmaster, Online C- Generator
good hint for websites to really work!
Jul 29th 2011 03:42   
Eddie Garcia Freshman  Banner Advertiser Consultant
You were right on the money with this one. Of course it's great when you don't have to worry about visitors if you can build your business w/o them. That's why I love my opportunity so much! I don't have to depend on others to be successful. Enjoyed this article! Tks.
Jul 29th 2011 05:51   
Arthur Webster Advanced   Just plain honesty
This is a good article containing much common sense HOWEVER there is one major aspect that is missing . GENERATING TRAFFIC! No matter how brilliantly conceived a web site is, no traffic = no business. Traffic generation is the one factor that decides whether your web site is going to be effective. You can't test and play with statistics if there aren't any! Unfortunately most marketers try to pretend that SEO and article writing will do the job - they will ONLY IF THE NECESSARY TIME AND EFFORT IS SPENT! A new site will need to buy traffic so the new site owner must be prepared to learn all that he can about economising on PPC campaigns.
Jul 30th 2011 03:57   
Chuks Okonta Committed   Internet marketer
@micheal, already a member i tried joined again , system said email already exist, what name does you emails comes with? Is it micheal c. I receive more that 100 emails a day.
Jul 30th 2011 11:13   
Nikolay Rusev Advanced   Navigator of Ship
thanks for this article is very instructive and helped me a lot
Aug 1st 2011 05:49   
Nathan Services LLC Senior   Private Lender Closer
We can all use this even if we already have some expertise.
Aug 1st 2011 16:40   
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