Spending money to increase daily website visitor numbers, even to thousands a day, widens your audience.  However, the expenditure is probably pointless if the end result is no actual customers. This month I am focusing on this issue, and two of the most common topics raised when I am asked about websites.

Keyword Advertising

There are companies paying hundreds of pounds a month, and more, on keyword advertising. This is the bidding process for chosen terms on search engine sites such as Google Adwords. The results can be impressive. Businesses are happy to declare "We spent £500 last month and received an extra 2,000 visitors to our website." But are they tracking performance? How many of those visitors viewed the website's products and/or services in detail?  How many revisited the site? Most importantly, how many of them actually got in touch and became customers? 
 
Keyword advertising can be a great way to get instant results, but you need to be able to measure those results in ways that are meaningful to your business.  My advice, if you cannot do this, is to suspend your keyword advertising until you have had some training. 

Tracking Visitor Behaviour

In order to improve your website's customer conversion rate you need to understand visitor behaviour. This is achieved by viewing the daily/weekly/monthly statistics on your website visitors. If you do not have access to your site's visitor statistics then organise this before investing any further in your website.
 
My tip here is to set this up free by using Google Analytics. This is a popular statistics service providing comprehensive information, the results of which you could find very interesting. Tracking your visitors will enable you to analyse how they use your website and what they are looking for.  By understanding what your visitors are interested in when they visit your site, you can take action and turn them into customers. Tracking them can also help you identify where future website improvements and changes are needed.