Anyone who runs a website, eCommerce platform, or social media channel understands that data is gold. Before making important decisions, especially in marketing, you need to look at the numbers first. Over the years, big data played a critical role in achieving online competitiveness and success. Gone are the days when the only indicator that your website is popular is by how many visits you get.
Yes, website traffic is still a primary measure of how effective your website is in attracting your target audience. But when you check your website traffic, you’re also looking at other vital factors or user behaviors. Among others, you need to know the following:
- Time spent by the user. The number of website visits becomes meaningless when users don’t stay long enough to make a difference. If you consider how Google ranks websites, they pay close attention to the bounce rate as well as the time spent on the page. What this ultimately points to is how relevant your content is to the user’s needs. For Google, user experience is a major ranking consideration.
- How many of the users or visitors completed a sale? Ecommerce sites need sales to succeed. Having high website traffic should also be coupled with conversion. Thus, in measuring the traffic, the conversion rate should be included in the analysis. This way, the business will know if its marketing strategies are attracting the right audience.
- The cost of website traffic. Organic website traffic is supposed to be free because you’re already spending money on SEO. But some businesses also choose to support their methods with PPC. Measuring website traffic will help the business understand the cost of paying for advertisements and be able to adjust their spending according to the results.
Measuring website traffic is only one of the factors essential to digital marketing. It gives an overview of how popular the site is, but there’s more to it than what you see on the surface. Yes, it’s a good starting point for marketing and is still a crucial indicator used in making important business decisions. Let’s discuss further how important website traffic is, and why it’s more than just statistics or numbers.
Online marketing rests heavily on the concept of traffic and conversion
Conversion can mean different things, depending on the goal of a website. For an eCommerce site, conversion refers to sales. For blogs, on the other hand, it could mean whether the user signs up for a newsletter. The true impact of website traffic and conversion to your business bottom line is directly connected. It’s impossible to get conversion if you don’t focus on traffic first. And once you have traffic, it amounts to nothing if you aren’t able to convert these visitors into customers or subscribers.
There are plenty of factors that affect traffic and conversion. Marketing experts employ different strategies not only to meet their SEO goals but ultimately get a high conversion rate.
What do you target to get the right traffic for your website?
There are four different sources of traffic on the internet.
- PPC. Paid clicks come from advertisements you post on websites and other platforms such as social media. This strategy leads to immediate results, and the primary goal is to increase exposure to a massive audience. Since every click comes at a price, it’s crucial to ensure that you also achieve a favorable conversion rate. What’s good about this strategy is that you also get access to accurate and detailed analytics measuring performance.
- Organic traffic through SEO. Unlike PPC, SEO aims to gain organic traffic with the help of search engine ranking. Although SEO is time-consuming and comes at a cost, the positive results are long-term. Once you gain high organic traffic, you’re also more likely to gain increased conversion. In the digital marketing world, SEO is a highly regarded strategy because it has overreaching benefits for any business or website.
- Referral marketing. Content marketing can also produce referral traffic if done correctly. Posting on blogs is a good example of content marketing. When you publish high-quality content, you receive citations from other websites and at the same time build your connection with a network of bloggers. This is another way to increase exposure and tap into the existing audience of these blogs.
- Social media channels. This refers to getting organic traffic from social media channels, and not paid advertisements. It entails curating social media accounts to increase engagement and reach. By nurturing your relationship with followers and visitors, you also get traffic to your website.
All these sources of traffic should be considered by any website that wants to have a successful marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter the conversion purpose, what’s important is to harness the potential of all traffic sources for optimum gain.
What is the difference between random and qualified traffic?
It’s an unfortunate reality that bots still comprise a majority of website traffic today. Therefore it’s important to qualify website traffic, and not only look at the numbers. Marketing experts know that by employing the right techniques, they can target the right audience. Knowing your target market and investing in marketing strategies that attract them will reduce the likelihood of getting clicks from bots.
Website traffic equates to conversions.
We can’t stress enough the relationship between website traffic and conversion rates. So, if your business regularly collects traffic data, how do you use this information to your benefit? This is where qualified traffic comes in. You need to use strategies that will convert these eligible site visits, otherwise, your efforts are futile. Factors such as website design, mobile responsiveness, and navigability are only a few of what you can pay attention to if you want to convert qualified site traffic.
Lastly, website traffic is useful in striking a balance between your marketing expense and ROI. As earlier stated, traffic gives you an overview of site performance. And when you drill down to look at specific aspects of website traffic, you can determine whether you’re realizing the intended ROI. Since marketing is an ongoing need and the expense is considerable, achieving this balance is crucial to the bottom line.
