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Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet
marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your
site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined
your website goals. If you don't know what you want
your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to
accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing
and monitoring your website, all your site will be is
an online announcement that you are in business.
If you expect your site to stimulate some form of
action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so
a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product,
there are steps you can take to insure that your website
is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first
indicators of how well your site is working for you
is finding out the number of visitors in a given period
of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which
you haven't been doing any unusual offline promotional
activities.
However, just because hoards of people have passed
through your gates does not mean your site is successful.
Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something
there. It is equally important to monitor the number
of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure
is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential
element of the efficacy of your website. To find the
site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per
month and figure out the percentage of them that actually
performed the action your site is set up for. For example,
if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them
purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals
1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors
and divide that figure by the number of visitors who
made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25
÷ 2000 X 100).
If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill
out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference
is between your site conversion rate and your sales
conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills
out your form will actually become your customer. However,
whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product,
or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion
rate will measure the success or failure of your website
whenever you make changes to the site.
You may find that you need to implement some additional
marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your
site is extremely low. There are several effective methods
to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly
launching a search engine optimization campaign. This
campaign is targeted at increasing your position in
search engine results so that consumers can find your
pages faster and easier. You can either research the
steps you need to take to improve your search engine
rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company
to do the work for you. In either case, after your have
improved your search engine positions, make sure you
keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting
of your efforts to maintain high positions.
Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a
visitor to your website to accomplish the action the
site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for
the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily
accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four
levels to get to it? If it's too difficult to get to,
the customer may just throw in the towel and move on
to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible,
and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.
Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on
your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor
to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy
must be specifically geared to your online campaign
and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure.
The right copy can make the difference between profit
and loss in your online campaign.
Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing
Consultant and author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael
has been marketing online since the early days and he
knows what it takes to make money and succeed online.
Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Fr*e monthly
newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful
web site promotions that can help YOU!
Go to
http://www.search-engines-revealed.com
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