The notion that online traffic is not inherently beneficial to your business operation seems counter-intuitive. After all, what kind of business wouldn’t want to have more people frequenting their website, company blog, or ecommerce storefront?
While this kind of logic might make sense at first glance, upon further inspection, we can easily see why more people doesn’t necessary translate into more conversions. Simply put, if the conversion rate on your website is low, bringing in additional visitors is not likely to improve your total number of customers by much.
To further complicate the matter, increased site traffic can put additional strain on your web servers, causing slowdowns which can negatively impact your user experience, potentially leading to fewer conversions.
With that being said, your business can still benefit from increased traffic, provided your website has a high enough conversion rate. So before you start working on driving more traffic to your website, you should first ensure that your conversion rate is properly optimized.
In the rest of this article, you will find a list of established practices for getting your conversion rate where it needs to be.
Use Visuals for Effective Communication
Conversion is a form of dialogue. It is a process through which businesses and consumers exchange information for the purpose of reaching a mutually-beneficial outcome. However, not all means of communication are created equal – some are inherently more conducive for online interactions. For example, if a visitor is looking to buy a product from your company, they probably won’t be satisfied if your ecommerce storefront only has textual product descriptions. On the other hand, if you include images on your product pages, visitors will have a much easier time figuring out whether they want to become your customers. Product videos, infographics, tutorial animations, and other kinds of visuals can be used as well to ensure that your conversion rates don’t suffer as a result of a lack of information.
Improve Your Mobile UX
The quickest way to turn people against you online is to interfere with their regular browsing habits. And according to statistics, mobile browsing is now the preferred way people use to access the web. If your website doesn’t feature full mobile support, all that traffic coming from portable devices will lead to few conversions. Conversely, if your website is equally convenient to use irrespective of device choice, its conversion rate will improve regardless of traffic. To ensure that your site renders equally well on devices with different screen sizes, you need to make sure that it is developed in accordance with the principles of responsive design. You should also take into account the fact that portable devices have a touchscreen user interface, so you should adjust your menus, buttons, and other website elements accordingly.
Acquire Qualified Traffic
In our introduction, we have argued that the amount of traffic your website receives has little bearing on how effective it is at converting visitors. We would now like to qualify this claim by saying that traffic can have an impact on your conversion rate, provided it comes from particular sources. Specifically, if you implement a pay-per-click marketing strategy, you can be certain that some portion of your traffic will come from visitors that followed ads on Google, Bing or Facebook. This kind of qualified traffic can present several advantages to your business. First, it will bring you visitors who are already looking for products and services in your business niche. Second, it is more amenable to analysis thanks to tools such as Google Adwords or Bing Ads. Finally, it is cost-effective as a marketing strategy, which means it can work for smaller budgets.
Set Up Chatbots for Customer Service
B2C communication is essential for conversions, and communication is at its most effective when all parties involved are equally engaged in the conversation. However, few business can afford to have an online staff available at all times to address customer queries. One of the more popular solutions to this issue is to host a customer support chatbot on your website. These automated conversation systems can be programmed to help website visitors with all sorts of on-site activities. For example, the Servisbot chatbots can provide answers to common visitor questions, so your customer service agents can attend to more important tasks. Chatbots are easy to set up, and once you have them running, they can provide 24/7 support to a global audience. They can also function as data-gathering tools – they can provide valuable insight regarding keywords, search intent, and customer buying preferences.
Conclusion
As a business, it is always more prudent to first set up an effective system for converting visitors into customers, than to pursue additional traffic at all costs. The former approach will ensure that once a prospective customer reaches your site, they will be almost certain to convert, which is a much more tangible gain than attracting a large audience with a low potential for conversion.
