In the world of SEO and PPC, there are far too many professionals and business owners that are simply stuck in the more is best mentality, where the need to double traffic and double users is the main aim, which is why so many business owners fail to see really solid results when it comes to the campaigns that are being run for them, or being run by them.

I used to say that keywords were vanity and traffic was proof of success, and whilst this is of course true in terms of most businesses wanting more traffic, it is not always true in terms of this extra traffic leading to more enquiries, sales and business, as just driving more people into your shop does not always mean more profits, especially if they are the wrong people. Running an advert offering 50% off of an LG TV that you actually only had one in stock that leads to 1,000 people queuing at your door on Friday morning might give you a load of traffic, but it is also going to give you a load of unhappy and angry customers as well.

The main point of delivering more traffic is to make sure it is the right traffic. It is pretty easy to increase your traffic levels if you have a budget or enough time and effort to spend on various social media platforms banging your drum. But when they come to your site, whether paid or not, are they actually going to be the people that want your products or services, or are they just people that in reality, have no interest at all. Increasing your traffic just to make the graph look pretty is worthless, increasing traffic with the right kind of visitors that are going to buy from you is the golden egg of online marketing.

So, if you are sure you are getting the right people, looking for the product or service you offer, yet sales just do not reflect this, now is the time to look at your website and try to improve your conversion rate, as these are the people you need to work on. Just going and getting more people will often only lead to more questions being asked as to why you are not making more money, which is why getting your site spot on in terms of conversions and call to actions is crucial, before you even think about increasing traffic levels.

So, how can you increase conversions? Here are some tips:

Work Out Your Goals

Whilst this might sound obvious, do you really understand your goals from your website? Do you have a realistic idea of how many sales you should expect to make and also what you are basing this expectation on? Do you want more direct sales, more enquiries or do you simply want people to spend longer on the site watching your videos about the company? There are so many goals outside of just selling more products, which is why it is important to make sure you understand what you are looking to achieve from your site and then make sure this is realistic, otherwise you will just be chasing a goal that you will never be able to achieve.

Run Some Split (A/B) Testing

Split testing is incredibly important as it allows you to make minor, medium or large scale tweaks and then see which version works best. Sometimes, increasing sales is about minor tweaks on your website, moving the buy now button or making the flow a bit better, but the only way you can really and fully understand if the changes you make work is to run split testing, otherwise you will never really understand the perfect formula. Equally, I am not saying spend your life testing web page versions, but try to improve things and see if you can squeeze more sales by making onsite enhancements and improvement.

Work On Your Copy / Message

Although you might think that the pages on your website sell your services well, it is important to understand that the way you describe your services might not be the best way for your customers. Copywriters are so important for both offline and online marketing material, as quite often the business owner struggles to express and describe their services, product or company effectively, concisely and efficiently, meaning you might be losing sales and conversions simply because your visitors really are missing your message or are just not engaged with your website copy and text.

Create Calls To Action

In the rush to get your website live, the latest product online or you have a new guide you want to make a success, it can be easy to forget about the obvious things and by this I mean simple things like having a phone number on all pages, or making it easy for the customer to make the purchase quickly on a mobile phone. Make sure you have calls to action and make sure these are obviously and logically placed, which following on from our split testing paragraph above should be something you are continually looking at anyway.

Check For Technical Issues

I have told the story a few thousand times before, but I once had a customer who’s sales dropped through the floor overnight, and rather than stand back and look at the issues, a barrage of emails about how the SEO / AdWords work must be to blame followed the next day. Upon a reality check, we found the checkout system was failing, so rather than traffic falling off a cliff, it was due to the fact that the customers could not actually buy anything! So, always make sure you test your checkout system, test the website and make sure that it works correctly, as if you notice a drop in sales, do not just blame your online marketing company!