All the traffic, none of the sales? Time for a fresh approach
Posted by Frances van den Berg on 26 May 2009 | Tagged as: SEO Strategy
If you find you have a high bounce rate or people are trawling your site but buying none of your products, you’ll have to face the fact that your website is simply not ‘doing it’ for them. You have all the SEO strategies in place to drive people to your site but what they find when they get there is confusing, long winded or plain boring and bland. It’s like inviting people to a party at your house and giving perfect directions, but when they get there they find the house unlit, the gate locked and a snarling Rottweiler glaring at them.
Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Marketing has given an inspired suggestion on how to find out why your high traffic is not delivering the desired conversions with her blog, Showing all the right people all the wrong things. It’s as simple as, ‘ask Mom’. The point of this exercise is that the mom in question knows as little as possible about SEO and is approaching the website entirely from a usability point of view. You’ll realise what needs to be changed by taking note of when she starts getting frustrated or lost on the site.
In the SEO industry, we can easily get lost in analytics and technicalities, and while these are at the heart of internet marketing, sometimes it’s time to use Occam’s razor. And no I’m not on the topic of hair removal: Occam’s razor was thought up by a logician way back in the day (I’m talking the 14th century) and, according to Wikipedia, the principle stated “the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible”. So, all you need to do is sit back and let the user (who has come without a set of preconceived SEO ideas) do the work. The solutions will soon become clear with the statements that he or she makes.
For example:
Statement: “I don’t know how to buy this product.”
Solution: Get some catchy (but non-invasive buttons) to lead the user easily through the online purchasing process.
Statement: “I don’t understand what they’re trying to do/ sell/ say.”
Solution: You need to be clearer with your content. Give the user a short, snappy of overview of what you’re about and keep them interested and keen to explore your site further. A suggestion on a WebProWorld forum was to “tell me in a few short sentences that this is the site for me”.
Only then are you ready to get down to the nitty gritty details and start delving into your analytics accounts. If your site is ranking well for the keyword ‘home improvement service’ but the conversion you want is that people buy flooring materials, then you need to change your campaign so that keywords such as ‘tiles’ and ‘buy tiles’ start ranking.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Couldnt agree more, you can take a horse to water AND make it drink. You just need to speak horse!!
May 26th, 2009 at 11:44 am
lol:)