10 Tips: Increase Traffic and Convert Visitors

The goal of any website is to increase their traffic and convert their visitors to customers. The ratio of visitors to customers is known as the conversion rate, and really, increasing that is more important than actually increasing your visitors... but, they are often associated with one another, because, obviously, if you have more visitors, your chances of gaining customers is higher.

Having more traffic costs you more money, though. Whereas, conversion does not. Therefore, the following 10 tips are gonna focus more on the conversion aspect.

1. Have an Easy-to-Use Website

   This may seem like an obvious point, but many websites out there are far from easy to use. Make sure it's accessible, and viewable by most browsers. Ensure you have all the information your customers need, laid out in a clear and organised manner. If a visitor has difficulty finding what they need, they will leave. Make no mistake, you are not the only one online offering that product or service.

2. Target a Niche

   Whatever business you have or are starting up, it will do better if it targets a smaller audience looking for more specific things. You are not gonna compete with superstores who offer anything and everything, there's no point in trying, not to mention that it would be a lot more work and cost you a lot more money.
   
   If you specialise in a niche, you decrease your competition and increase your conversion rate. You may decrease your overall visitors, but the visitors you do get will be more likely to convert.

3. Advertise

   Advertising with Google's AdWords is a great way to get more clicks. Your site will be at the top of the user's search results when the keywords you choose are searched... and you pay what you want per click, so you can easily budget it. Also, advertise on facebook, which allows you to target people with specific interests or within a certain demographic.
   
   Also, be sure to have relevent ads on your site... perhaps even from independent or local businesses which you support.

4. Use Social Networking Sites

   Join social networking sites! Mingle with your potential customers. Word of mouth is a great way to gain customers, and it's free! By putting yourself in the various circles, you increase your chances of being come across. Offer special deals through your social network page to drive customers to your site. And have sharing icons on your site, too... encourage people to spread your name!

5. Use Google AdWords Keywords Tool

   Scope out which keywords would benefit your site the most. Choose keywords with low competition, but relatively high search volumes. Also, if you're going to advertise with AdWords, then choose those keywords carefully, too - if possible, find keywords whose search results don't currently have ads on the results page, or maybe one.

6. Content on your Site

   Search engines like content. So, make sure you've got it... properly structured and tagged. And by content I mean actual text, not ads and images.

7. Have a Clear Call-to-Action on Every Page

   It's important for your visitors to know what you want them to do. Why are they there? And where do they need to go next? You are more likely to lose them if you don't have your call-to-action in plain view on each page.

8. Gain Trust

   If your visitors trust you, they are more likely to become customers. Have an address for your business, and advertise your phone number. Show a privacy policy and explain shipping procedures. Don't hide information from your users cos you think it will help you. Be honest, and professional.

9. Know your USP (Unique Selling Point)

   ... and make sure your customers know it! Most businesses have a USP, whether they know it or not. It may be your customer service, homemade product, knowledge base... it could be any number of things. Whatever it is, advertise it, use it to your advantage! It's not only doing you a favour, but your customers as well, cos they may very well want whatever unique thing you have to offer!

10. Update you Website

    Lastly, keep your website up-to-date. Make sure all information is current, including prices, phone numbers, hours.... As well as the look! Outdated websites will appear so, and they will lose trust from your visitors. Make sure to visit your site often and review it, compare it to others, or get other people to review your site. Other people's perspectives and opinions do matter, as you have this site for them to use, not yourself. Also, by frequently visiting your site, you will be more likely to notice any bugs, errors or typos... or even get privy to a hacking that's taken place.

Using Google Analytics to Understand your Traffic

Google Analytics is a neat little tool. I didn't realise how much information could be gathered about your visitors - for free, and organised so legibly; any type of user can understand it. You need to have a Google account to use it, obviously, but then you can register as many sites as you like, and simply copy and paste the analytics code into the head tag of your website.

If you have a website, you are probably curious about how many visitors you get a day. But, you may not realise how easily available all other sorts of information are. These data not only ease your curiosity; by revealing your (potential) customer's demographics, behaviour and technology used, you acquire valuable data that you can use to help your business.

When viewing the statistics, you can choose any specific date or a range of dates. In the Audience Overview you are shown the number of visits for the day(s) selected, as well as unique visitors. The total number of visits represents the number of sessions (a session is considered over when either a break of more than 30 minutes occurs between visiting your site, or the web browser is closed), whilst the unique visitors represents how many visitors with unique cookies visited your site. If a user clears their browser cache and then revisits your site, or visits from a different browser, then they will be counted as another visitor.

The image to the left illustrates a portion of the Overview view of a website for the month of May. As you can see, 526 sessions viewed the site, and 242 of those 526 were generated by unique cookies. You are also shown how many pages were viewed and the average number of pages viewed per visit. The bounce rate, at 47.34%, represents the percentage of visitors who viewed more than the 1 page they landed on. If, for instance, your site had 10 visits for a period of time, all of whom left your site without viewing another page, your bounce rate would be 100%. Therefore, a lower bounce rate is better, as that means your visitors are actually delving into your site, and not just bouncing away.

** It should be noted, depending on which page, and how many pages, you have included the Analytics Javascript on will affect your visit and visitor statistics.




The Traffic Sources Overview tab offers information on where your traffic is coming from, with details on which keywords were searched and what sites generated traffic.

Or maybe you are interested in where your visitor's are viewing your site from? You can view an Audience Overview by country or city, as well. Perhaps it is useful for you to see which country you get the most unique visitors from... or which one has the highest bounce rate.

Or do you wanna know what browsers your visitors are using, along with their version? That information is available, too. As are statistics for visit durations, and how many page views those visits generated... as shown in the screenshot to the right.


The Content Overview tab allows you to see statistics from the individual pages of your site, such as how many page views each one has gotten during a specific day or range of days. of course, all these data can be analysed further by clicking on it and adding a dimension to the analysis. In the example below, we are looking at the statistics for the page contact.php. It had 51 page views in May, 28 of which were from unique cookies. The average time spent on the page was 39 seconds, and 12% of visitors exited the site from this page. Upon adding the source of traffic into the analysis, we can see that 20 out of the 28 unique visitors were from direct traffic, whilst 6 came from facebook, 1 from chapeaurouge.cz and 1 from a google search.

The data which is most useful for you depends on the kind of business you have, but regardless of what it is you're selling, promoting or sharing - you will surely be able to extract useful information from the data which Google Analytics gathers for you. The ways of organising the data are seemingly endless.

Securing your e-Commerce Website

Knowing what steps to take in making and maintaining a secure website is an important factor of any successful e-commerce business. So, what can you do to secure your website?

Websites are usually hacked into server-side, meaning that if you're using a CMS (Content Management System) your site will be more prone. So, before making your website, ensure that you can justify the use of a CMS if you're planning on using one. If you have a static website, for example, whose content rarely changes, then a CMS would not be beneficial.

If you are using a CMS, be sure to update it with stable releases when available, as older versions will be more susceptible to hacks... and eliminate any indication of its use from your site, or at the least, the version that you are using. Renaming the tables in your database from the standard default names is useful, too; just adding a prefix will do. You can also limit the number of failed login attempts, as with this plugin for WordPress. The more familiar you are with your CMS, the better; understanding how to use it is definitely favourable to your site's security.

If you have a backend to your website, then refrain from using 'admin' as a username, and even name the login page something other than login.php, admin.php or anything along those lines.

Forms open up a wide hole to your server, and if not coded properly can offer direct access to all sorts of things, so always be sure to validate your forms by checking input length and format. Even set a maxlength on the input fields.

Password protect private directories.

Lastly, always remember to regularly backup your site. This can be as simple as exporting your database, installing a free plugin which does it for you, such as Drupal's Backup and Migrate module, or even getting a paid solution such as VaultPress for WordPress.

Understanding Intellectual Property

Knowing who owns what and what you have a right to use can be confusing sometimes. Copyrighted material, trademarks and patents... what is the difference, exactly? Well, I'm gonna break it down for you.

• Trademark

  A trademark must be registered. It can be the name of a company, product or service. Anything that is a registered trademark cannot be used or even mimicked by another. A domain name, for example, can be a trademark. Companies register trademarks in order to secure proprietary rights of certain words or symbols with their name.

• Patent

  Patents must also be registered, but unlike trademarks, patents have to do with the inventions of products and technologies. Patents register ideas, whereas trademarks register names.

• Copyright

  Copyrights apply to artwork; no registration is needed. The author or creator is granted exclusive rights to their own works during their lifetime, and are protected for another 50 years after their death. Copyrights protect the works from being copied or exploited by anyone other than their rightful owner.
  
  Of course, it is very easy to take copyrighted material and use it. If you are really bent on protecting your work, you should get it verified, with the date. If you are on the other end of the stick, the one using the artwork, you should look for artwork which is licensed. Photos with a Create Commons license allow the creator to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive, and can often be used with attribution to the creator. As such, photos with Creative Commons on flickr.com can be used freely, as well as all photos on everystockphoto.com. For a small(ish) fee, one can acquire photos, videos, illustrations or audio for (even commercial) use at istockphoto.com. Though, you cannot earn money directly from the artwork, it is meant to help promote your business, not be it.

Well, I hope that's cleared things up for ya.

Planning an Online Business

Many businesses have an online presence; if not most, nearing all. And many are purely an online business. Planning and implementing an online business isn't difficult, but there definitely are some key things to keep in mind before just rushing in with the attitude, "anyone can do this!". Cos, really, though 'anyone' can; many do not.

My example business is gonna be an iPhone repair shop in Prague, cos that's where I live. I'm gonna go through the process of choosing an appropriate domain name, structuring your site and optimising it for search engines.

• Choosing a Domain Name

  This is important: you want something simple that describes your business. Ideally, your domain name would just be the name of your business. of course, this is not always possible... especially if you want a .com TLD. If the name of your business is a word you made up, then your chances of obtaining that as your domain name are much higher - but, you won't get much traffic from search engines (not at first, anyway), cos no one's gonna be googling a word they've never heard of. The other thing to keep in mind for your domain is the TLD (top level domain, the .com, .net, .cz...) -- who are you gonna want to be targeting? Is your customer-base worldwide, or just in the US? If so, then .com would probably be best. If you are targeting people who are solely from your country, then use your country's TLD. Being recognised as a local business can be more appealing to the customer, and finding the domain name you want is also more likely with your country's TLD rather than a .com. The last thing to keep in mind for your domain name are trademarks - make sure you are not ripping off someone else's name, especially a well-known company. This is more trouble than it's worth, as you will probably end up having to build your site and name all over again.
  
  So, for my iPhone repair shop I am going to choose www.iphone-repair.cz (this is just an exercise, this website does not actually exist). It is direct and to the point. The domain is available (I checked on active24.cz, a Czech hosting service provider - if you are wanting a .com or other generic TLD, you can go to namecheap.com or godaddy.com, just as an example). I chose the .cz TLD, as I would probably not have any customers outside of the Czech Republic; I doubt someone would come down from France to have their iPhone fixed.

• Site Structure

  There are many sites out there that are poorly organised and laid out. The website to the right is an example of one. The kicker is that the website is for a company which is in the business of organising! I would definitely not want these people helping me organise anything...
  
  You certainly do not want your potential customers' first thought to be that you would most be suited for a job opposite of what you are advertising. That is a bad sign. You want your website to be clean and easy to use. You want your users to feel comfortable as you lead them through to their final destination. And you gotta know where you want that to be. If you have a website, then you must have a reason for it. What do you want people to do once they get there? Do you want them to call you? Fill in a survey? Buy something? Give feedback? Whatever it is, let it be known and push them toward it. There is nothing worse, as a user, to come to a website and then think, 'now what?'.. I dunno about you, but I leave, quite promptly.
  
  So, be sure to plan out your site and draw up a wireframe. For my example (to the left), a one-page site acting as an advertisement will do just fine. Try not to over-load your site with information. More is not always better. If all the noise is causing confusion, then your site will not have the intended affect.
  
  I added sharing icons, as word-of-mouth is a great way to gain exposure. There are language icons, for the website to toggle between Czech and English as those are the customers I am targeting. I have a table with the services offered, along with their price for each iPhone version, as that is the main thing potential customers will be searching for. A map is also included, with the nearest tram/bus/metro stop and lines which go there, along with the address and any added notes for the directions (we want to make it as easy as possible for people to find us, right?). Finally, a phone number is included, inviting any inquisitions and offering service to their door. I would probably add an e-mail address, too. The mission statement tells your customers what your purpose, aims and ideas are behind your business. A slideshow is at the top of the page, next to the logo - a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Adding a slideshow to your site is far more interesting than a paragraph of text. All the information they need is on this one page; there is no need to spread this information out amongst several pages.

• Search Engine Optimisation

  So, you have your website up and running, now how are you gonna get the traffic? Cos, really, what is a website without it?
  
  There are many factors that go into the optimisation for search engines, some of which you can't control - such as your website's age. The older your website is, the better. Which makes sense. If you've established yourself and maintained your site and regularly updated it with new content for half a year, it is much more likely to be within the organic results of a user's search (on the first page) than a website that has only been online for 1 month.
  
  The Google adWords Keyword Tool is a useful tool for finding out how many other websites out there are using specific keywords, as well as how many google searches are made for those keywords a month. With this information, you can pinpoint which keywords are searched through google a decent amount of times a month with the least number of website competition. For instance, when I typed in 'iphone repair' and selected the Czech Republic as the location filter, I was shown that the competition was low and is searched locally (within CZ) an average of 720 times a month. Google also gives you some other keyword ideas beneath your initial query. For mine, they have listed 'unlock iphone' with low competition and local searches at 6600 a month. Now, my iPhone repair shop would most likely unlock iPhones as well, so it would probably be a good idea to include this text in the body and title, to make it searchable.
  
  You can also advertise on google search pages with Google adWords. For my iPhone repair shop, when I type in 'prague iphone repair' into the google search engine, I get almost 15 000 000 results, and there is only 1 ad at the top of the page. Advertising here is optimal, as it brings you right to the top of the search page and is displayed to users who are querying your keywords. If you have a new site, especially, this is a good way to get traffic, as the ads are effective within hours of signing up. With adWords you can let google automatically adjust your CPC (cost per click) bids, so that you can get the most clicks possible within your budget, or you can manually set your bids for individual or groups of keywords.
  
  In order to optimise your searchability, it is very advantageous for your business to specialise in a niche. Businesses that offer a myriad of services or products are more likely to get overlooked in searches, unless, of course, they are a well-established business with a customer-base. When internet users shop online, they usually know what they are looking for - and type it directly into a search engine. The broader your company's services/product ranges are, the harder it will be for a search engine to fit you with their query.
  
  Search engines like content. If your website is a medley of images, videos and ads - you're gonna be ignored. My iPhone repair shop example has a table with services and prices, text within the mission statement and an h1 tag behind the logo. Content is important, as search engines cannot 'read' images.
  
  Of course, the more traffic you have coming to your site, the higher it will be indexed. Which is kind of a catch 22... But, I suppose more traffic = good SEO practices and vice versa. Including sharing icons or a facebook like button on your site is a good way of advertising through word-of-mouth.