More Website Traffic? Wright Brothers Discovered—Part 2
Businesses are ravenous for more traffic, leads and visitors to their website. But, in part two of our blog post history lesson from the Wright Brothers, we will learn that there is one thing (initially) more important to business profitability than more website traffic and customers. If you do this in the wrong order, you will unnecessarily be throwing away a ton of money.
In part one, we introduced a vital principle discovered by the Wright brothers that can increase the profitability of your website. If you have not read part one yet… Stop! Click on this website traffic link, to read about what the Wright brothers figured out. It’s ok… we will wait for you.
Successful marketing, both online and offline, is the combination of two factors—(1) how many people see your message (traffic), and (2) how effective your message is in persuading the reader/viewer to do what you want them to do (conversion).
In internet marketing, traffic is the volume of visitors that come to your website. The conversion dimension is how many of your website visitors “convert” and do the action you are trying to get them to do. That could be to buy something from you, opt-in to your list, call to set up an appointment or inquire about your services.
Just like in the efforts to get a plane to fly, the order you work on these elements is critically important. The conversion dimension must be first.
Website Profitability 101 From The Wright Brothers
To return to the Wright brothers historical analogy, the conversion dimension is the wings (aerodynamics). Get that right first, then turn on the search engine traffic like a powerful engine that pushes more and more air over those perfected wings. From there you can use any sort of engine—online, offline—because you have honed the message… and it is a proven winner.
Do it the other way, focusing on traffic and you drive traffic to a website that won’t fly… and everything crashes. That is what happens sometimes with client websites. We drive traffic to their site—but no one calls. Talk about throwing money down a hole!
It is crucial that you work on the “aerodynamics” of your site before you expend a lot of energy (and money!) getting traffic to go to it.
How do you do that?
An Example of How You Can Do This
Over 30-60 days, you measure the response rate of your campaign (Google ads, keywords, and especially landing page content, layout, and how you present your offer, etc.). You weed out those things that are not working while increasing those that do.
For example, you may start out getting 3 calls from 100 website visitors. It costs you $100 to get those website visitors, whether or not they call you. If you make $30 in profit from each customer, then you are losing $10 ($30 x 3 = $90 profit minus $100 cost).
Obviously, more traffic won’t help you in this situation… but will only increase your losses.
If you improve your website response rate so that 4 visitors out of 100 call you, then you start to turn a profit (4 x $30= $120, minus $100 in cost).
Incrementally improving profitability of your website
Over time, you can increase your response rate to 6… or 10, or more. At this point, you will take as much traffic as you can get. We have some clients that started out getting 7-8 calls per 100 website visitors (7-8%), but with testing and improvements are getting a 30-35% response rate. We are now turning up the wind speeds to hurricane levels since their profitability level is so good.
The costs incurred during the early phases of your testing and experimentation with your website can be considered research costs as you perfect your “aerodynamics.” If you do it right, you can start out at breakeven during the R & D phase. It is only greater profitability from there.
Free Resources To Help Your Website
Download our free report, Website Persuasion Checklist, to make sure your website is doing everything right (or should I say, “doing everything Wright”) to maximize your profitability with each website visitor. Click on the link above… to access an instant download of this report.
Want a free website conversion analysis? Let our conversion experts identify weaknesses with your current website and what you can do to fix them. Click on the link and sign up today!
