Quite a few business owners just expect that their website will generate business by itself with little more than the initial investment to have it setup. Sadly, most of the time it just doesn’t work like that.

So, what’s the problem?

When a website is not doing what you want it to, a common response is to think you just need more traffic. While this can be the case, another very likely situation is that the traffic coming to the site is just not converting.

No matter how much traffic you push or pull to your website, it’s not going to be worth it unless you can convert these people into customers. To understand how to convert people, you need to understand what people coming to your site are trying to achieve. Once you understand that, you can shape your website to promote the actions you need people to take to become a customer of yours.

Example

Imagine you are searching for a new service provider. Your first step might be to ask for recommendations from family and friends. When that doesn’t turn up any results, you head to Google. You search for ‘x’ and 1000’s of results come up. You browse a couple of results and click through a few website (if you’re me, you’ll open 10 new tabs to quickly browse through multiple sites quickly). Once you’ve shortlisted your favourites, you’ll want to compare those businesses to work out who deserves your money.

While your preferences will be unique to your character and what you need, there are some common ways you’ll analyse a site:

1. Does the site look trustworthy? If you going to spend any amount of money you like to think that they are trustworthy.
2. What’s in it for you?
3. Do you have all the information you need to make a decision?
4. Is it easy to get in touch if you have questions?

Then from a business perspective:

1. What do you want these people to do on your website? Get in touch? Book a service? Buy a product? Subscribe to your newsletter?

What’s next?

Once you’ve identified these areas and provided as much ease and accessibility to the process as you can, you should then setup some tracking goals in Google Analytics. GA will show you how well your traffic is converting and help identify areas you can improve.

If you can line up the right traffic with a clear action that they want to take, then you’re on the way to making the most of your traffic and not owning a leaky bucket.