Do You Wish More People Would Visit Your Website?

Do you wish more people would visit your website?  That's a silly question.  Of course you do!  You hopefully know that you also have lots of company!  Most businesses wish the same thing!  You are also not the only one who wonders how to make that happen.  As exciting (and stressful!) as building or re-building a website can be, the real work begins once you have launched something on the web.  Many of my clients, as I will guess, you, as well, stress over the fact that fewer people are visiting their websites than they need or want.

When you understand that an average website receives a 2% visitor to lead conversion, you can also understand that it requires lots and lots of visitors before a 2% conversion can stack up enough to start making a difference. So, what can you do to accelerate the rate of visitors to your website?

One method is to create a cyber-roadway to your website.  And eventually, over time, a super cyber highway to your virtual representation of your business. As you spend time adding to and building onto your company’s website, try and think of the website as a stationary cyber-office where there is an invisible, but very eager employee who works tirelessly as a greeter to all who stop by.  Most cyber-offices will have greeters who take shifts greeting and directing traffic, as the necessity to be there 24 / 7 is paramount.  To make sure these dedicated souls’ time is worthwhile, as well as the visitors who stop by, your job is to create many and multiple cyber-roads that lead people to your cyber-office.  What an unfortunate waste of greeter loyalty if they don’t get to meet and greet many people during their shifts.  (FYI… Bear with the analogy for a bit.  I know it’s out there a little.  That said, I’ve used this analogy before and it seems to resonate with people once it sinks in!)

Cyber-roads can be long or short.  The long roads should have many smaller roads that shoot off of them.  An example of a long road is a relevant piece of content – an article that you write, or a third party article about you, ones you might write yourself on troubleshooting or care tips that would benefit your customers.  Blog posts are other long cyber-roads.  These pieces of content, as you can guess, are searchable, link-able, and sharable pages on the web.

Shorter roads exist usually within the longer ones in the forms of links to calls to action, like a specific Contact Form, or to vote on something, provide a review, read reviews, print a coupon, or refer a friend.  Cyber-roads cross each other, go over and under each other, cross-reference each other.  There are an unlimited number of lanes on your cyber roads, enabling an unlimited number of "drivers" to travel them at the same time.  Riders on these roads never crash or collide into each other.  They are essentially crash-proof, so creating as many (relevant and valuable!) cyber-roads as you can is wise.  Imagine as one of your new visuals (and goals!), a super cyber highway crowded with visitors scurrying to get to the pages and information destinations on your website that they need to get to know you, get comfortable with you, and ultimately choose to do business with you.

Lastly, (3), ensuring the access to the roads is easy, as well as transitions to your shorter roads is an important assurance to provide if you want optimum visitation to your website.  Easy access refers to search ability of your content.  Applying current SEO, search engine optimization, criteria helps when visitors are seeking specific information you are providing in your content.  When your pages are not being discovered as a result of searches, it may be through links that they are found.  When this is the case, name your links clearly and be sure the links work.Provide links to relevant content in relevant places as much as you can. 

A couple more trip tips you can take to help promote repeat traffic to your website from new visitors is to suggest in your content that your visitors bookmark your site or the specific page they are on.  This makes their return a bit easier and faster.  Another suggestion for whoever is charged with web content in your company is to update the pages frequently to keep them current and relevant.  This provides value to more than just the search engines.  It provides value to your readers and visitors, as well.

A final key to becoming cyber-road super stars is to remember to watch the traffic patterns on your cyber-roads.  A simple way to keep a pulse on your traffic patterns is to use Google Analytics.  If you already have this associated with your website, good for you!  It is a great tool as long as you look at it.  If you have it, but don’t watch it, start a new habit and keep an eye on it.  If you don’t have it, you can follow these steps to add Google Analytics to your website.  You will see which pages are frequented the most and the least, which cyber-roads lead the way, how long visitors are hanging out on each page, and which ones are leading visitors further into your website.  This knowledge can help you decide on building new cyber-roads, building onto old ones, and on patting yourself on the back for creating ones that work.

These tips can help you in creating the right paths to guide visitors to your company’s website, which ultimately will end up being your first challenge.  Once they’re there, making it worth everyone’s while is the second. 

I realize this analogy is kind of “out there,” but hopefully, it can help in visualizing a little bit better what needs to take place once any website is created in order to attract the visitors that you need to make a difference.

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