Web Marketing Success Tip #1: Make sure your website converts before spending money on web marketing

This is the first post in a new blog series I am doing geared toward helping those who use web marketing to succeed in their efforts.  I encourage you to leave your comments and tweet it as you see fit and hopefully, we can all learn something new.

So what is the key to a great web marketing campaign?  Some would say the delivery of the message is the key.  Others would say it is the platform.  Both of these are great answers and very important to the success of a web marketing campaign but ultimately, what makes a web marketing campaign a success is the website your potential customers are sent to.  More explanation below…

Make sure the target website converts.

For any web marketing campaign to be successful, the website you send visitors to must convert.  Sadly, you can throw all the visitors you want at a website that doesn’t convert and still be in the same situation you started in only with less money, more frustration and more visitors that are not doing what you want them to do.

That being said, it is extremely important that you make sure your website works the way it is supposed to and does what it is meant to do.  I realize that all websites are not about getting people to buy something but they are meant to get visitors to do something, be it read the posts, click on ads, sign up for services, etc.  If thewebsite does not serve this purpose, web marketing will ultimately fail to do what it is supposed to do.

To play the other side of the story, some web marketers would argue that the purpose of web marketing is to get people to the intended site and the job is done.  Honestly though, what is the point of doing the markeeting if the site doesn’t convert.  Yes the web marketing is complete and working, because people are visiting, but what is the value for our client if we get 1o,000 visitors to our client’s site and none of them take the intended action on the site?  The value is none.  This is a shoddy client experience and honestly, if I were the client, my web marketer would be replaced, quick-like.

Testing if the website converts.

There is a quick and dirty way to see if your website is converting already and it involves comparing your record of desired actions taken (such as sales numbers, ad click numbers, etc.) for 2 months and your website analytics for 2 months.  I suggest comparing 2 months of numbers so you can rule out 1 month being a fluke if your numbers are crazy.  Granted, it does take a bit of work to get to the results, but compared to a full-on marketing analysis, this should be pretty cake.

To get a good idea of whether your website converts, compare the number of actions you want completed on the site (such as product sales or ad clicks) to the # of visitors that you get per day.  Using this data, you will be able to see, over the course of 2 months, whether your site converted or not, what your conversion ratio was (both on a daily and monthly basis), and also the days when your site converted the most and the least.  Using this information, you can get a better idea of whether or not it would be beneficial to spend the money to get more visitors.  If your conversion ratio is low and your visitor count is low, I suggest you consider having your website reviewed (and possibly revamped) to improve it’s conversion, before considering additional web marketing actions.  If your visitor count is low and your conversion ratio is high, your website will likely see even more success with a targeted web marketing campaign.

Wrapping it up.

Ultimately, we all expect a return on the things we invest in and in the true spirit of your website being an investment, I hope that this post has provided you with a tool and some insight into how to get on the right track with it.  If you have any questions about web marketing, websites or anything else in this post, please feel free to contact me, as I would love to discuss it more with you.  Also, feel free to leave your comments below and let me know your web marketing story.

For an incredibly in-depth marketing analysis, in which we will take this method and expand it to gain even more insight into the results your website is producing, please contact me and request a free consultation.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next post in my Web Marketing Success Tips series.