Even the most beautiful website in the world will sink faster than the Titanic if you don’t understand your visitors.
Here are a couple of questions that you are going to ask yourself (or your web designer will ask you) to really get to the heart of things. When you understand these answers, then you’re going to know your visitors inside out and will be able to build a much better website.
WHO is your current visitor?
Unless your website is absolutely brand spanking new, the odds are pretty good that you’ve been pushing at least a trickle of traffic to your domain, and have some analytics that you’re going to be able to refer to.
Take a good, long, hard look at your analytics and really try to understand who your visitors are. You’re going to want to compare this information with your customer database (information probably contained in your CRM system), and you’re going to want to figure out where they are located geographically, how long are they spending on your site, which pages are they spending the most time on, and any other details that you’re able to pick up from the analytics tools that you have access to all ready.
WHO is your ideal visitor?
At the same time, you’re going to try and focus on who your ideal visitor is – which most likely doesn’t mesh up perfectly with the kind of visitors you currently have on a regular basis.
The overwhelming majority of business owners out there are directing all possible traffic sources they can to a single website, and aren’t really thinking about whether or not those traffic sources are right for them or contain prospects that are likely to convert into paying customers.
You simply cannot afford to make this kind of mistake in today’s modern world. Digital marketing consultants understand better than most business owners that the current landscape for online businesses is very competitive, and you’ll get your clock cleaned if you think you’re able to push less than ideal prospects to your site and have hopes for conversion.
It just isn’t going to happen.
Find out who your ideal visitor is – gender, age, country and the kinds of websites that they like to visit, etc. – and you’ll be in much better shape.
WHAT is your ideal visitor hunting for most?
When someone lands on your website they need to find the answer to their most pressing question almost immediately or they aren’t going to stick around for any amount of time.
Again, too many business owners throw up some kind of generic copy on their homepage, and then hope that they’ll somehow convince people to poke around their site rather than click on to any of their hundreds and hundreds of competitors with absolutely zero effort whatsoever.
Instead, you need to make sure that you’ve built your website with one central focus in mind – to provide your ideal prospects with the answers to their questions. This is the only way that you’re going to be able to get their attention, rise above the clutter, and start to form a relationship that turns them from a prospect to a customer. It will also help in your credibility as well.
WHERE are your ideal visitors coming from?
Finally, you will have to think about where your ideal visitors are coming from, not only from a domain perspective, but also from a mindset perspective.
Some sources of traffic are much better than others, even if they aren’t capable of pumping out the kind of volume that you’re looking for. For example, a web search for “new Nike shoes” isn’t going to be quite as targeted or as beneficial as a traffic source and “where can I buy the newest Nike running shoes”.
It looks like a minor distinction on the surface, but nothing could be further from the truth. Context is everything, which is why you’re going to want to build that kind of contextual thinking into your website traffic strategy with the help of the best SEO gurus out there.