The most commonly asked question of me is “How can I get more traffic to my website?“…

After which I immediately follow with “What are you going to do with it?“…

At this point I generally receive blank stares followed by a request to elaborate.

Here’s the thing – most website owners think that getting “hits” to their website is the most important thing in a web strategy. They don’t care what they are going to do with new visitors – just that they come.

This is a fundamental flaw in your web strategy. Granted – traffic is important but the most critical aspect in your web strategy is doing something with the traffic you get. By “doing something” – we mean accomplishing and executing on your website’s goals (you do have goals for your website, right?).

What’s the point of getting an extra thousand visitors to your site if you aren’t doing anything with them? If they aren’t signing up for your email list, buying your widget, leaving a comment, subscribing to your RSS feed, or whatever – than what’s the point?

Why do you need to generate more traffic when are doing nothing with the traffic you are getting now?

Our colleague Brian Kaldenberg maintains the idea of “It’s easier to double your conversion rate than to double your website’s traffic”. What he means is that it’s easier to optimize your website to meet your goals than it is to get more people to come to your site. It could also be more profitable…

Lets get technical…

All of this data can be found inside your web analytics.

Let’s assume your business, Acme INC, sells a single widget for $97. Currently, your conversion rate – percentage of website visitors who end up buying your widget – is 3%. And let’s say you get 2,000 visitors to your website every month. If we do the math…

• 2,000 visitors * .03 conversion rate = 60 widgets/mo sold on your website
• 60 widgets * $97/ea = $5,820/mo revenue generate by your website

So what Brian is saying above is that it will be easier to increase your conversion rate to 6% than it is to increase your website’s traffic to 4,000 visitors per month. Here comes more math

If you Acme INC doubles their conversion rate to 6%…

• 2,000 visitors * .06 conversion rate = 120 widgets/mo sold
• 120 widgets * $97/ea = $11,640/mo

But guess what – you can optimize your website RIGHT NOW and increase your conversion rate. Doubling the traffic to your website will take a lot of hard work, great content, advertising, and patience (like years). Both are important – but don’t you think Acme INC would like a 6% conversion rate BEFORE they double their traffic?

• 4,000 visitors * .03 = 120 => $11,640/mo
• 4,000 visitors * .06 = 240 => $23,280/mo

For Acme INC doubling their conversion rate before they generate more traffic is a difference of 12,000/mo … doubling their revenue.

Wrapping Up

Back to our main point… Instead of asking “How can I get more traffic to my website”, you should be asking “How can I convert more of my website traffic into my goals”.

Once you’ve optimized for conversion – than you should start generating more traffic. Look at the numbers and make data driven decisions.

If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

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Google Analytics For Beginners

Getting started with Google Analytics? Or have you had it installed for awhile and are looking to learn what some of things inside actually mean? Here’s a good starter video for you that walks you through what to look at, what’s important, and what the different reports mean.

Want to dig deeper into your Google Analytics? More Google Analytics in 60 Seconds after the jump…

Find The Best Keywords

You can use Google Analytics to find keywords that perform the best for you – ie which keywords lead to more sales… These reports will help you to optimize your search marketing targeting and advertising.

Find Poor Performing

Find out which keywords you are bidding on that are the worst performers. You don’t want to create campaigns where people leave right away. You can tell which keywords drive the most amount of traffic – and then determine which keywords are profitable. You don’t want to bid on keywords to drive bad traffic – which are ones that will leave right away. This is measured using bounce rate.

Link AdWords with Google Analytics

Linking your AdWords account with Analytics gives you insight on keywords, ROI, and more. This data allows you hone your advertising campaign to the most profitable keywords.

Identifying High Spenders

Using careful keyword and conversion analysis you can target the highest spenders… That’s good right? Using these techniques you can target the keywords that these big spenders use to find what they are looking for – and target them.

Improve Local Results with Google Analytics

Local search is huge and cannot be ignored. Many companies have customer demographics based on geographic location. Careful analysis in Google Analytics can help you find, target, and optimize new markets. This insight can show you where you need to target search advertising and SEO regionally. This is powerful stuff!

Need To Track E-Commerce with Google Analytics?

Track sales down to the product level with Google Analytics. You can also use Google Analytics to figure out which targeted keywords are creating the most sales for each product. This video shows you how to configure e-commerce tracking on your site.

Using Site Search

Find out what people are searching for on your site – to give you insight to what they are looking for. This data allows you to capture and optimize on trends you otherwise wouldn’t know. You can also use this site search data to optimize your keyword buys in Google AdWords.

Setting Up Conversion Funnels

We love conversion funnels at 48Web (I know, we’re data geeks) but we find this is some of the most valuable information available in analytics for fine tuning and measuring your web strategy. Using these techniques you can find out where people are coming from that are actually converting on your website – and where you are losing potential conversions. We always say – conversion trumps traffic. Traffic is easy to get but its often easier to double your conversions than traffic. Using these techniques you’ll be able to optimize for conversions.

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Behind organic traffic, FriendFeed and StumbleUpon – one of the biggest traffic generators to this website is Twitter. In order to optimize this I’ve added the ReTweet button and so far it’s worked beyond what I had expected.

ReTweet Button For WordPress

If you want to drive more traffic to your site and increase the amount of retweets your content gets – this button is necessary.

You can download or install the ReTweet button for WordPress here.

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