Are more website hits really important?

Let's think of a simple scenario, say where a website may have the following; 2,000 hits per month and 10 leads coming from the website per month.  What is the best way to double your leads from your website? (to increase leads to 20 per month).

Let's consider two options in this scenario. We can either increase our website visitors or increase the conversion rate from our current website. Which should we focus on? There are four different points to decide upon your best approach for each option, discussed below.

INCREASE WEBSITE VISITORS

1. Timing
Bring more web visitors can be achieved in several different ways but it essentially is down to two; Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and advertising. 
SEO is always desirable but it is a long term activity of six to nine months, at a minimum, to seriously increase the number of visitors coming to the site.
Advertising (let's assume basic AdWords) is the only means to truly bring in visitors in the short term. Even using that method you should be running a six week trial program at minimum and then setting in place a longer term strategy.

2. Cost
A long term SEO campaign has some obvious expense to it, even if you run it in house. The good thing about this is that it is also cumulative. That is, when you stop advertising, hits to the site stop coming, but your SEO activity builds upon itself and works month after month after month. Depending on your target market, activity level, cost per click and the like, any reasonable advertising campaign is $2,000 per month plus. The management of this campaign is on top of this cost.

3. Risk
Gaining more hits on the website does not necessarily mean more leads. They have to be this right sort of hits, from the right prospect at the right time. Many an AdWords campaign has failed here (which is why they need to be managed so carefully) and many a social media campaign aimed simply to gain hits/likes and so on has also come up short.

4. Control
Gaining more traffic means we are trying to change people’s behaviour either through SEO or AdWords. Getting them to click where they have not previously clicked. It is essentially out of our direct control and puts us in a competitor situation.

INCREASE WEBSITE CONVERSIONS

1. Timing
Changing our website to increase the conversion from current web visitors has an immediate and long term effect. Every visitor has an increased chance of conversion from the very day we change the site.

2. Cost
Assuming we are not completing a total website revamp, small changes to the website to increase conversion are relatively cheap, ranging from a few minutes on the back end to perhaps $500 of artwork.

3. Risk
There is limited risk associated with changing a website to try to increase conversions. In effect, we can trial one or two things and then change or add to increase again.

4. Control
Our website is totally within our control. Visitors coming to our website are already coming, so everything we present to them is totally within our control.

If we look at the given scenario and to answer the question, yes website hits are important. However, equally as important is what strategy you have in place.

To double leads by increasing hits means going from 2,000 hits per month to 4,000 hits per month. This is not easy task.

To double leads by increasing the conversion rate require going from converting 0.5% of visitors to converting 1% of visitors. Although no marketing task is easy, this is a far easier task than the first, and totally within our control.

The table below summarises the two strategy options. We need to do both to truly be effective in the long term.

Contact Fit 4 Market today to see how we can assist you with your Marketing Strategy.

Fit 4 Market are marketing consultants operating in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth