What Are You Doing With Your Website Traffic?
Copyright 2002 by Willie Crawford

The endless quest of every webmaster seems to be
to get more and more traffic. After all, more traffic
means more sales... doesn't it. Your answer to that
question should be "not necessarily."

The utility of your traffic depends upon how you've
structured your site. It depends upon what your site
is set up to accomplish. It depends upon the path that
you guide your website visitor down as he travels from
page to page. You do have a path laid out on your site
for you visitor to follow, don't you.

For those who may need a review of this concept...
your site should be set up to accomplish ONE primary
purpose and then have several secondary objectives.
For many sites, this primary purpose is to capture
the email address of your visitor and to make them
a regular part of your community. For other sites, the
primary purpose it to promote a cause or educate. For
still other sites, the primary purpose is to make sales.
These purposes are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

I think it's a safe assumption to make that the
primary purpose of many subscribers' websites is to make
sales. If that's the case with your site, then you
need to make sure your website focuses primarily on that
job. That means that whatever brings them into your site
needs to attract traffic interested in what you're
selling. Your promotional efforts need to make clear
what your site has to offer. Your search engine listing
and your advertising - for example - needs to emphasize
what you're offering. This keeps you from wasting a lot
of resources. It attracts traffic looking for what you
offer.

The simplest site for making sales is a "direct response"
website. This is a site where the visitor arrives at the
site on a page which starts right off with your sales
copy. The person comes to the site looking for this, and
your web copy should make the sale for you. Your visitor
to a direct response page has very few choices. They
generally can either make a purchase or leave. Often
they can also join your mailing list. This allows you to
call them back to the site if they don't make a purchase the
first time. The invitation to join your list should be
structured so as not to interfere with making the sale
though. Perhaps you have an exit popup that only shows up
if they exit through a page other than your order form. If
they make a purchase, your invitation to join your list
can be incorporated in the order fulfillment process.

The most effective type of direct response sites I've
seen and operated are mini sites. Some of these sites
have as few as 1 page. They are highly focused selling
machines. A lot has already been written about mini sites
so I won't belabor the topic. The idea is to have a
highly focused site which concentrates on one topic or
purpose and does not offer the site visitors too many
choices. Give your visitor too many choices and he doesn't
make any choice. Give your visitor too many choices and
you will often confuse him. One of my favorite books on
the topic of mini sites is call Killer Mini Site Profits.
It gives you a step by step guide to creating "Killer"
mini sites. You can read more about it on my website at:
http://williecrawford.com/killerminisites/

If the primary purpose of your site is to capture your
visitors email address so that you can later follow-up,
then your site should be structures to focus on this
purpose. For example, you can invite the visitors to:
- Sign up for a course
- Enter a contest
- Subscribe to your ezine
- Download a freebie

All of these paths should lead to the visitor willingly
giving you permission to follow up. Perhaps you offer a
free ebook on a topic but require the email address to
give the download url. You make clear on you webpage that
you will follow up with more information on the subject
later. In order to convince your visitor to give you his
email address and permission to follow up, you need to give
him a GREAT reason. Your follow-up must promise tremendous
value. Your web copy needs to spell out the benefits of your
ezine, course, or freebie.

If your site is to promote a cause or educate your visitor
on a topic you are passionate about, it needs to be just as
focused. It still needs to be structured to get your message
across and perhaps sell your visitor on your point of view.
Just as in the other sites described above, your site must
not contain distractions that prevent your visitor from
following the desired path through the site.

To track the effectiveness of your site in accomplishing
it's purpose you should incorporate tracking software. This
software can be as simple or as complicated as your desire.
Some tracking software will go as far as to show you the
exact path your visitor took through your site and even how
long they spent on each page. I prefer simpler software but
encourage your to use whatever you're comfortable with.

Take a few minutes now and evaluate what your site is really
designed to accomplish. Ask if anything about your site
detracts from accomplishing this purpose. If so... analyze
how you can correct these deficiencies. Revise your site
to lead your traffic towards your desired objective. You
need to do this before you struggle so hard to attract traffic
to your site. Do this and you'll discover that the traffic
you have produces greater results. You'll gain maximum
utility from the traffic you work so hard to get.

----------------
Willie Crawford is an internet marketing consultant who
has aided hundreds in building very successful online
businesses. Feel free to drop by his marketing discussion
board at http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
today to discuss marketing and website traffic issues ;-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Note:
This article first appeared in our ezine, Limitless
Marketing Ezine. I publish original material
similar to this in each weekly issue. If you are not
a subscriber please sign up today using the form at:
http://williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

Feel free to publish this article in your ezine,
in your ebook or on your website. A note telling me
that you published the article would be appreciated.
My email address is willie@williecrawford.com

Thank you,
Willie Crawford

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