Getting yourself a nice, shiny new website is brilliant, but it’s only the start. That’s when the hard work really kicks in. You want that website to pay its way and start bringing in lots of relevant enquiries so that you can grow your business.
If it isn’t doing that, you need to find out why before you can start fixing it. Here are some suggestions for what to look out for:
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Your Objectives
Clearly, you can’t say that your website isn’t bringing in enough leads unless you know how many leads you were expecting. You also need to know if those expectations are realistic. You can’t expect to increase from 1 enquiry a year to 10 a week without doing a lot of work. To figure out how many leads you need to meet your sales targets, try our lead generation calculator.
Visitor Numbers
Are you measuring the number of people visiting your website? Google analytics or similar tools will tell you the numbers and, more importantly, where the visitors are coming from. Are they direct visitors who are typing your specific website address? This means that they are hearing from you somewhere else, perhaps from your press advertising or networking. They may also be arriving from online adverts on Google or Facebook, for example, or from organic search or from social media. Figure out what’s working best and see where there is room for improvement. Look particularly at the organic search as it is a long-term, sustainable way of increasing traffic to your site, and there is usually scope to develop it.
Conversions
Once you are attracting enough visits to your site, you need to figure out why they aren’t getting in touch. Check that:
- There is an easy way to get in touch on each page – an enquiry form, live chat, request a call button, phone number. Remember that different people have different contact preferences so provide a choice if possible.
- There is an alternative for people who are not ready to get in touch. Some decisions take a long time, and by understanding your potential customers’ buying journeys in detail you can provide the information they need at each stage. Do you have useful, educational information to help them, and do you have the means of capturing their contact details so that you can nurture them through the decision-making process?
By reviewing your site’s effectiveness you can make changes where they will have the most impact.
You can read more on the Red Evolution Blog.
Julie Mitchell-Mehta is a Chartered Marketer at Red Evolution, an Aberdeen based Inbound Marketing Agency that uses marketing, design, development, content and SEO skills to help businesses thrive online.
