The telephone does not begin ringing as soon as a website is operational. It is quite simple to identify how many enquiries flow from a website; however, it's impossible to calculate how many visitors have not even reached your website, because it has not been marketed effectively.
3 basic steps you must take to make your website work for you are:
Step 1
Look critically at how easily and quickly visitors on your website can find what they are looking for.
Web users are notoriously impatient and move to an alternative site at the least excuse. Some of the most important things you should ensure about your website are:
• Your website should be easy to use, and information should be easy to locate. Try to reduce the amount of effort people have to make before they find the information they are looking for, i.e. minimise click-through's.
• Condense textual content to fit the time and attention constraints of today's busy Web users.
• Your web site should be quick to download. Studies have indicated that visitors will quickly lose interest in your web site if the majority of a page does not download within 15 seconds.
Step 2
Plan a marketing campaign to draw the right kind of visitors into your site - and implement it.
Your marketing plan must address the following points:
• Who will your audience be? How will you use this information to make it the focus of your website?
• Where do you want to be? Define your goals.
• Up-to-date content. How will you keep your website content up-to date?
• What online marketing methods will you use? Many are available such as Search Engine Marketing, News groups, Affiliate Marketing and Sponsored Listings.
Step 3
Monitor the results of your campaign, recognising failures and reinforcing successes.
If you're worried that half your marketing budget is being wasted on ineffective campaigns, do you really know which half? If you're nodding in sympathy, then you're probably not measuring and maximizing the return on your marketing investment.
It is critical to understand whether or not you should keep, quit or change your marketing campaigns.
Run your campaigns in a way that they can be measured. By continually monitoring your campaigns you can decide which ones are providing you with maximum returns on investment (ROI), and which ones are not.
Example's of monitoring your campaigns are:
Email campaign: You can measure how many people visited your website immediately after the campaign, or how many people made an enquiry/bought items from the website.
Search Engine campaign: Record the average number of unique visitors to your website as well as information such as where they came from (Easily done using tools such as www.VisitorLogs.com which we will discuss next month).
Tradeshow brand awareness: Difficult to measure but you can measure the number of people exposed to your message and compare the cost of the tradeshow to a newsletter campaign which you may have previously carried out.
What next?
Why not apply for a free website health check by visiting www.KeywordMarketing.com where we will create a FREE report detailing what changes, if any, need to be made to your website. We can also provide you with a competitor analysis and ranking report, as well as specific information on how we can help you. Alternatively, you may want to download our FREE Website Traffic Guide - a popular guide on how to make your website work!
About the Author
Ajay Dhunna is a Director @ www.keywordmarketing.com
