Tuesday, December 23, 2008

How To Increase Website Profits

By Matthew Henage

Give Your Audience What It Wants

Far too often webmasters make websites that contain just fluff. Visitors don't come looking for just any random stuff, but usually they have certain things they are looking for, and if they don't find it, they are gone faster than you can say, "Thanks for visiting!"

So how do you get your visitors to stay and not running off to your competitors? The easy answer, "Give them what they want." To do this you need to answer the following question, "What do my visitors want?" This question can be answered by deviding it into three more specific questions: First, Who are your visitors? Second, What attracted them to your site originally? And Third, What do they want when they come to your site? Once you know the answers to these questions it becomes very simple to attract and retain them.

The next question, "How do I find this out about my visitors?" There are plenty of tools you can use to do this. First, ask them. Open up a dialogue with your visitor and find out more about them point blank. A second way way to learn more about your customers is by using traffic analysis software such as Google Analytics. Not only will this software track the number of customers and the number of pages accessed, but it will also show pinpoint locations where your visitors reside, how long visitors spend on your site, how often they return to your site, as well as the amount of visitors who come to your page and immediately exit it. With this valuable information it becomes much easier to provide unique and quality content that your customers will love.

Attract More Visitors

The great thing about finding out who your customers are and what they want is that it becomes a catalyst to building traffic. However, this alone will not maximize the amount of traffic you can receive. There are as many ways to build traffic as your creativity allows. We will go over a few, as well as some overlooked ways that you can build traffic for your website.

If your not using PPC Advertising (Pay Per Click) then your missing out on what could become a website goldmine. With all PPC campaigns it is important to start out with a low budget, to improve your results before you unleash this method. Although there are many services that offer PPC Advertising, we suggest to start with Google Adwords. Not only is Google Adwords one of the most powerful systems, but it also can be connected to Google Analytics for very helpful tracting. By targeting the right traffic you'll be increasing your profits in no time.

Albeit a slow method, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a necessary tool for the traffic hungry enthusiast and to build your website profits. In a short definition, SEO is about bringing relevant traffic from search engines (Like Google) to your website. The more valuable, unique and search engine friendly your content on your website is the more traffic you'll see from the search engines.

Influence Your Audience to a Profitable Action

While you want to provide your web traffic with the content that they want, you also need to make it easy for them to make you more money. Does your website make it difficult for your visitors to sign up for a membership or make a purchase? Why? Make it easy for them, and your visitors will respond appropriately.

Keep your website clean by only providing content that your customers want, and what you want your customers to do. Draw your visitors attention to a profitable action by using proper design such as color, contrast and varying fonts. Don't forget to try new ways on different web pages to get your visitors attention.

There are other tactics and tools you can use to increase customer sales as well. Using call to action, branding, A/B or multivariate testing, design improvements and product/service cross promotion can improve your sales many times over.

Partner with an Expert

Like trying to do your own plumbing, Trying to do web design and marketing by yourself can lead to more bad than good. Sure, if your dedicated and take time to get the proper experience you can do fine. But if your serious about turning a higher profit for your website right now, you'll be better off hiring a professional. - 15634

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