Monetize Your Current Website Traffic

Last week we kicked off our new monthly webinar series Website Peak Performance – Building Better Business Websites. Each month we will present a 30 minute webinar on one issue that will improve your business website.

This month we discussed the number one question you need to ask about your business website. How can my site make more money for our business?

Many times website owners focus on how to get more traffic to the website. The problem is – a website that can’t generate leads won’t get better with more traffic. Doubling the number of visitors does not guarantee twice as many leads from your site.

Conversions = Revenue

The process for fixing this issue is Conversion Optimization. Conversions are the actions website visitors take on your website (aka calls-to-action). This includes things like buy, download, subscribe, register or sign-up. The Conversion Rate is the percentage of visitors to your website that take one of these actions. During our webinar, I gave an example of the benefits of working to improve your Conversion Rate. My example showed that improving the Conversion Rate by 0.5% could result in a 20% increase in revenue.

Lessons from Friday’s Program

Strong calls-to-action convert visitors to leads. Don’t assume people will find your Contact Us page. Tell visitors what you want them to do on your website. Be specific and repeat often.
Give people what they want. Maybe visitors aren’t interested in a 30 page whitepaper? Maybe they don’t want to start with a one-hour meeting with your sales team? Maybe the coupon you are offering is not for the product they are looking for? See what calls to action can be most effective. This requires testing and willingness to change.
Companies that are successful improving conversion rates did not make quick decisions. They were willing to be patient, pay attention to the details and work on what they have already. One example I gave was a site that spent years trying to figure out what should be on their homepage. Now that they know, their website is the primary source of their sales revenue. Starting a redesign every time website traffic slows does not help.
Not every website is setup to track and test conversion rate. Your first project will be to have all the pieces ready to go so you can begin your study. You may need to build or fix forms. You may need additional pages. You will want to track down the reports you need from your sales team and your website analytics. Then you need a plan to define what you are going to test. Planning is required.
Improving the Conversion Rate of your website is not easy. It takes a lot of testing and willingness to experiment. But, this is the one website project that has direct impact on improving the revenue of your business. It is easy to see how time and money spent to work on this will give you a return on your investment.

Learn More About Website Revenue

This is such an important topic, I want to make sure everyone has a chance to learn about this material. Listen to the recording of our webinar broadcast: How to Get More Revenue from your Website?