Why Your Website isn’t Working

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Amanda Ferris

Do you want the visitors that flock to your website to be converted into profitable customers?

Are you disappointed in the lack of response you received from website visitors? Is trying to understand ‘Internet Marketing’ and the options available confusing to you?

There are some common misconceptions held by website owners. Changing these ideas and using proven solutions will help you improve your Internet strategy and bring in customers more effectively.

1. You have a brilliant website, but nobody knows about it:

It’s simple; you need to drive people toward your website. The only way to do that is to market your website as part of your ‘Internet Marketing’ strategy. Try not to fall in the trap of thinking the design of your website has a link with how many people visit your site, this is a mistake commonly made with Internet Marketing. The quality of the content on the site and how it helps visitors has far more to do with driving traffic to your site than how it looks.

2. Your website is all about you:

 This is possibly the biggest mistake made by website owners. Unfortunately this is not the case, visitors are only interested in what you can do for them. If your website is worded to focus on solving their problems rather than how good your service is, then it will dramatically change the performance of your site. Many websites are written by sales people and don’t give away any useful information to visitors.

 

If your site is written this way visitors will more likely move on to the next site to find their answers.

3. Getting visits to convert to Enquires/Sales:

You need to think about what you want people to do when they visit your site. Do you need them to buy something from the site or do you focus on getting their contact details, so that you or your sales team can follow up?

A big move in Internet Marketing is the shift from sites that sell products or a business, to sites that want to build ongoing relationships with their customers. This has become known as ‘Permission Marketing’, acquiring a customer’s permission to communicate with them. If you’re using your site to get customers’ contact details, they will need a compelling reason to offer those details. Possibly the best way to do that is to offer something ‘free’ in exchange e.g. a newsletter or free sample of a product, but it needs to have value. Follow that up with a good email campaign and a proportion of those people will convert into customers.

If you are interested in getting sales when potential customers visit your site, then it’s a combination of the written content, images or video that explains and shows the benefits of the product that will possibly guarantee the purchase.

Things to look into:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Being listed in what are called organic search results costs nothing other than the time involved to make sure each page on your website is optimised for search engines. Try to identify what words or phrases people use to search for the products or services you sell and make sure those words/phrases are represented in the pages of your site. If you only market to customers that are local to you then make sure you include the name of your local area when you optimise each page. You can find out more about SEO in our post on Search Engine Optimisation.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Using Google AdWords, you only pay for the visitors that click through to your website making it one of the most cost effective advertising solutions available. Beware though as your ads need to be written clearly and targeted at the correct audience so that costs don’t get out of control.

Video Search

YouTube is now the second most popular search engine in the world and Google also uses video content in its regular search results. Obviously, the only way to be listed in YouTube is by using video, but it is well worth considering as video content is more and more sought after and the cost of producing video has fallen.

Get into the Testing Habit

Don’t forget to test and experiment, find out what works for your website. Always use analytics to measure the results from your different strategies. Google’s own analytics tool is free to use and is being improved all the time. The results may astound you.