Warning! Website traffic plateau approaching

Has your website’s traffic hit a plateau or it just doesn’t seem to be growing?

Has your website’s traffic hit a plateau or it just doesn’t seem to be growing? I hate that wall where you get stuck with the same old amount of traffic. You know, when you just cannot seem to see what it is about your website that is holding you back.

What are the barriers that are causing your website visitors to leave or not click certain buttons that you want them to? Whenever problems exist, I usually look at myself and ask what am I doing wrong that needs to change.

It works, because at the end of the day you are the only real factor that you can change in the system; you cannot force someone to buy. The same principle applies to your website; change it and you will get a different result. Test it in small doses and rollback changes that didn’t work.

How is your website?

Ask yourself the following question and you will understand what your web visitors are thinking:
“If you didn’t own your website, would you visit it on a weekly basis?”

Think of the websites you visit regularly and why:

• Google – good results for things you are searching for.
• Hotmail – a free email program you signed up for when you first got on to the internet.
• SmartCompany – I want the latest business news from my desk and I don’t really want to pay for it.
• Facebook – All your mates are there so you may as well go there too.
• Other websites – they give you something valuable.

You get value on a regular basis from these websites. They are tools in your online armoury. Once you stop just selling to your visitors and start helping them, you will get the love back.

Four key areas to reconsider

As you read the four items below, note down the ideas you get about your website on a piece of paper and set up a meeting to discuss these items with your web designer.

1. Navigation – Is it logical? Are you speaking in the language as what your visitors expect. If you didn’t own your website and you were in the market for your service, and you popped on to your website, what would you expect the navigation to say?
2. First thing you look at on the homepage – What is the first thing you look at? What would be the first place you would want to click? What would you expect to be behind that first click? Feel that you are a first-time user and pretend you don’t own your website, and just go through the emotions.
3. “Contact us” button – What does the button that goes through to a possible transaction say? “Contact us”. That’s it? That’s all you are going to give me? What about a promise for an instant reply within 24 hours. Where are you placing the button? Is that where you would expect it to be if you didn’t own the site?
4. Contact / Sales form – Pretend you didn’t own your website but you are kinda keen to talk with someone. Fill out your own form. Read each field carefully. Where is the button located to complete the form? Is it the most noticeable thing on the page? If not, perhaps you want the visitor to click off and find something else as opposed to clicking it.
5. Bonus! Read your “About us” page – Just have a skim through it. Imagine yourself browsing into this website and reading the content. Would you want to do business with that person?

Fred Schebesta’s company Freestyle Media is an established innovative online marketing agency specialising in building search engine friendly corporate websites and running online marketing campaigns.

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