Website Conversions as important as traffic to websites and page rankings

When working on the promotion of your website, one thing you need to consider is that the traffic you receive and your presence on the major search engines is not the whole story! You need to ensure that all that extra traffic is converting to sales for you. There is no benefit to your business if you're not making the sales/generating the business.

Firstly you need to decide what your goal is with the website - what actions do you want your visitors to take?

Use your analytics tool to find out what your visitors are doing - are they interacting with your services like buying products or signing up for your newsletter? Or do your visitors leave the site without interacting with it in any way? Doing this research enables you to find out if your website has enough "hooks" to keep visitors interested.

So, you now know what you want from your site and what your visitors are currently doing. If you have identified that the conversions are not happening as you would like, spend some time focusing on how to encourage people to engage with your website. Doing more SEO is not the only answer to this as you need to not only attract people to your website, but to get them to stay on the site once they arrive.

Here's our top 5 tips to convert more of your visitors

• Ensure you site is easy to use and accessible
  • Make the buying process easy to use - including the use of clear book buttons and simple forms to complete
  • Ensure your site structure and navigation is easy to use and information isn't lost within the site layout
  • Make sure your site is accessible both to all browsers (although most users are using IE other browsers are important to convert everyone) and to all users (including accessibility via screen reading software)
• Ensure your site includes copy and not just a catalogue of your products
  • Include copy about your company and information about the full range of products and services you offer, make this copy engaging and regularly updated - something that will make people want to come back. Ensure that this copy is direct and covers what customers are looking for on your site - remember users won't read through pages of flowery copy that doesn't tell them what they need to know.
• Make use of your brand/company name and build your credibility
  • It's great to have a well designed, easy to use website but if your visitors don't remember who you are they won't come back - Use your company name through the site to increase awareness of your company as a brand
  • Creating articles for submission on other websites is another way to build your credibility and raise awareness of your brand
  • Links from Market leading websites and/or professional industries will also add to your credibility - this is particularly helpful if you are relatively new in your sector or have a new website
• Offer Free services if appropriate
  • Offering free services on your site is a great way of encouraging people to come back to your site
• Ensure Payment methods are secure
  • Make sure you are using secure payment technology for any sales on your site
  • Ensure that your visitors are aware of the security they have whilst making a payment on the site - make these security measures are clearly promoted to your visitors!

Following these tips can help you make the most of the traffic you get to your website.