Why More Traffic isn’t the answer to your online sales woes…

Why More Traffic isn’t the answer to your online sales woes…

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For businesses the endgame has always been about getting people to walk out of your shop with your stuff. It’s got to be; as a business owner you need to make money.  The same has been true for restaurants, lawyers, and mechanics as well. 

 While drawing attention to your wonderfully adorned menus and comfortable chairs is nice, if people aren’t eating any food they’re just taking up space.  Getting people into your office for a free consultation about a wrong which they feel has been committed against them is a good idea; but if the individual in your offices isn’t suing anyone or has no reason to be talking with you, then, as a lawyer you’re simply spinning your wheels.

This all seems to make sense to most businesses. So why should it be any different for the online traffic to your website?

Of course the difference between a waitress or mechanic shooting the bull with a non-paying customer is a little more of a hindrance for their getting other work done, but the thought process should be the same. Having traffic visit your website; drawing in unique visitors and spreading your message; that’s all very well and good, but what does this traffic do for your bottom line?

The fact is that online traffic continues to grow and does more so each day. Surfing the net has become a full time occupation for many. But generating the web traffic is often not the problem for small businesses. The problem many smaller businesses face in their battle for online pounds is the frequency of conversion.

Many businesses see the issue of getting more online sales as simply a matter of getting more traffic to a website. It’s always good to have people’s eyes on your product; also true that these eyes may one day turn into pounds and pence on your balance sheet. But the goal for businesses isn’t to just get money from a consumer “one day;” the goal is to get them buying now and then becoming and staying a regular customer and continuing to endorse the product later.

Turning browsers into buyers is at the crux of the problem. It’s clear to most that businesses need to spend a lot more time and effort on optimizing their own landing pages and making conversion a top priority. Simple testing of a page can result in a huge increase in conversion rates.

For example, if your site gets 100 visits per month and converts 2 leads into further interactions or sales, that means your websites conversion rate is 2%. When your site pays for increased traffic and you’re getting now 200 page visits; doubling your page visits; that’s great! However if you’re still only getting 4 sales, that means you’re still operating at 2%. If you’re paying for and totally focused in on increased traffic only and are not worrying about conversion, your sales could stall and stagnate.

If you’ve then got a competitor who is focused in on getting those customers who visit their website to ring the virtual register, that’s a totally different story.  Say this competitor focuses in on conversion only. They get the same 100 visitors; instead of only getting 2 sales, maybe they get 8.  An 8% conversion is 4 times what the first business had. Even if you’re going with the 200 visitors/4 conversions number; that still means that your website is generating only 4 sales every month; one half of what your better optimized competitor is doing.

For many small businesses the idea of converting visitors into customers is almost an after-thought. Maybe they just think that if they can get enough people to come check out their website, the appeal of the website will sell itself. Unfortunately that is not always the way that things work.

As a small business owner you need to be singularly focused in on conversion and making sure that your traffic matters. Because no matter how much traffic your website generates, at the end of the day, what your conversion rate is still will dictate how much money you’re going to make.