Lauren
When it comes to running an eCommerce business, all website traffic is good website traffic, right?
Well, not exactly.
While getting consumers to visit your website is a crucial part of maintaining a successful business, if the people who browse your site are not interested in your products or services, you are wasting your time, energy, and money on bad traffic.
What’s the difference between good and bad traffic?
You might be wondering how to tell the difference between traffic that is considered “good” and traffic that is considered “bad.”
If so, here are a few factors to keep in mind:
- Is your website receiving a lot of traffic, but no leads?
- Does your website have a high bounce rate?
- Are you receiving a lot of negative feedback about the relevance of your products and services?
- Are people only staying on your website for a minute or two?
- Is little to none of your website traffic coming from repeat visitors?
- Is your website receiving a lot of traffic, but few conversions?
If you answered yes to some or all of these questions, then you may not have good website traffic.
When it comes to increasing conversion rates, the quality of your traffic matters far more than the quantity of traffic.
Bad website traffic is a lot like…well, bad traffic. We’ve all had times when we have tried to go places only to be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for several minutes or even several hours. When there is bad traffic, people are not able to get from point A to point B, and everyone’s time and gas is wasted.
The same thing happens when you direct bad traffic to your website. These website visitors aren’t making it to point B- converting on your website- and are instead wasting resources you could be using to drive traffic that will actually boost your profitability.
Good traffic, on the other hand, refers to website visitors that are a part of your target audience, visitors that are interested in the products or services your business has to offer, and visitors that will return to your website contribute to referral traffic. Because these are the consumers that will cause you to make more sales, these are the consumers you need to spend your time and energy marketing toward throughout the year.
Building good website traffic
If you have a large amount of traffic and a good number of website visitors per month, but you are trying to boost the quality of your traffic, there are a few steps you can take:
Conduct keyword research
When people are searching online for the products and services you offer, you want your website to show up in the organic search results. One way you can improve your SEO and make sure your website is high on search engine results pages is to conduct keyword research and use these keywords on your website, product descriptions, and blog headlines.
This way, the majority of the people who visit your website will be people who are already interested in what your business has to provide.
Keep an eye on your analytics
The best way to determine the quality of your traffic and see what you need to improve is to monitor your analytics. Use tools like Google Analytics to see where you might need to adjust your digital marketing strategy.
Is your bounce rate high? You might need to make changes to your landing page.
Are customers clicking on other pages, but still leaving your website rather quickly? You might need to step up your marketing strategy so that people know what to expect when they visit your website.
When you are aware of key metrics, it will help you stay on the right track and make any necessary changes to improve the quality of your website traffic.
Provide high-quality content
Consumers today want to buy from businesses that add value beyond just what they have to sell. Writing blog posts and social media posts with high-quality, relevant content will draw people to your website and establish brand loyalty. These website visitors will be ones that are not going in cold, but rather ones that already see the benefit of your business, making them more likely to make a purchase or to refer your business to friends or family members.
If you do not already have a blog on your website, start one this week! A blog is a great way to consistently provide quality content and to engage with your website audience.
Use email segmentation
If your business sells clothes, you are probably not going to do well sending an email advertisement for snow boots to consumers living in southern Florida. Instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach to email marketing, use email segmentation to separate your email subscribers based on their interests, location, and other key demographics and information.
By using email segmentation, you can make sure that the people who click through to your website are going to find products and services that are relevant to their specific needs and interests.
Don’t be afraid to use email retargeting to try and boost your good website traffic, too!
Go to your target audience
If you were trying to get 60-75-year-olds to go to a traditional brick-and-mortar business, you wouldn’t post flyers in a college dorm. If you were trying to get people to join a co-ed soccer team, you wouldn’t advertise at a women’s softball game.
Apply this same reasoning to your digital marketing. Which social media platforms are being used by your target audience? What are their interests? Use this information to make sure you are sending targeted advertisements that will not only be seen by your desired audience, but that will also catch their attention and prove to be relevant.
In doing so, you will make sure that the vast majority of your website traffic consists of consumers who are likely to take an interest in your business’ products and services.
Solicit feedback
Whenever possible, try to solicit feedback from those who visit your website, those who abandon their carts at your website’s checkout, and those who make purchases from your business.
This feedback can be used to see how you can advertise more effectively and make improvements to your website and your marketing so that you will be able to gain more traffic that will turn to leads, conversions, and, ultimately, sales.
Although it might seem promising to review your metrics and see that you have large quantities of website visitors browsing your site each month, if this web traffic isn’t good traffic, it can do more harm than good. Sure, there will always be the occasional website visitor that will go to your website cold and end up making a purchase, but you should not be devoting your time, money, and energy to driving this type of traffic to your website when it could be better spent elsewhere.
Now that you know the difference between good and bad traffic, you can spend time engaging in best practices for increasing your good traffic, which will in turn increase your business’ profitability and help your business grow.
