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I hear it all the time “we just need more website traffic.” Website traffic is always good, but what are you going to do with it and get them to stay?
You can have the most visited website on the Internet, but if your website is visually horrible and not engaging = it will not matter at all.
I get this traffic response from many people in small business. Traffic Traffic Traffic! We need website Traffic! You can generate traffic back to your website in so many ways like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, press-releases, blog posts, SEO techniques, etc., but if your website isn’t digitally designed to keep visitors onsite (content creation + design funnel flow) or steer them into converting (buy cart) product or service, then what’s the point?
Your challenge is to be part strategist, part creative, part producer and always inquisitive.
The first thing any digital marketer needs to look at is bounce rate. Bounce rate is the % of visitors who enter a site and “bounce” rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site. Bounce rate measures the effectiveness of a website to entice readers to continue on with their visit.
How do you keep visitors on your website longer?
- Target your audience and plan content around them accordingly.
- Make your website visually appealing. Create or Download a good WordPress (WP) theme website layout. If your website is outdated and created 5 years ago, time to create a updated refresh layout. Example: improve your website’s readability by adding “visual breaks” in your content. Create space to let your content “breathe.” Use an easy-to-read font.
- Website speed. Reduce your page loading time (like image compression). If you use a WordPress website platform, Install W3 Total Cache. W3 Total Cache is by far the best caching plugin for WordPress. Make sure to configure each setting for maximum load time gains i.e., Enable page caching via disk: enhanced. This caches your website in visitors’ browsers, Enable minify and set it to auto, Enable object cache via disk. A great article on this can be found here by Jonathan John (The Ultimate Guide to Speeding Up WordPress).
- Content creation. Keep it constant, fresh, high quality, and flowing. Daily easy-to-read blog posts, hi-res images, Infographics, slideshows, create engaging article post headlines, add a call-to-action at the end of each post. Showcase your top posts with a “feature” post.
- Internal links. Linking and designing content that links to the other internal content will help visitors stay on site. Your website’s navigation should be simple and easy. When you have a website that is hard to navigate, visitors are likely to just leave.
- Quick Tip: Keep their attention on your content by setting all your external links to open in new windows.
- Add a site search box within the website. Implement internal search (which is easy since it’s one of the WordPress standard widgets), you can even look at the queries they use on your website and get a better understanding of your audience and it keeps them onsite longer.
- Make it responsive. This is a no-brainer with the rise of mobile (smartphones and Tablets). Websites that aren’t responsive will likely deter any mobile traffic. Make it easy for those visitors to browse your website from smartphone or tablet.
Online Marketing Juice 