BizFractals

This is something for the people who already have their site up and running, and started getting some traffic to their site.

You’ve started your site, you have made it a bit popular, and you get around 500 visitors or so a day. Suppose you have products as well, and you get about 2 or 3 sales - lets be fair, 5 sales - per day, making you an average of about $40-$45 per day.

Are you happy? Of course you’re happy. Your sales average per day is around $45 per day, and you have regular traffic. So, on an average, if you double your traffic, your sales average would be around $90 per day. If you can invest part of your earnings to double your traffic, that should work out.

Ok, now, what if I put it this way - you are making 5 sales per day, which means you are losing 495 sales per day!

Out of your 500 visitors, you are making $40 - $45 per day, which means that you are losing $3960 - $4455 per day.

Agreed, no one may be able to convert 100% of their traffic into product sales, but you’ll need to look at an average of atleast 40%-45% conversion rate to be very successful with your site. Your current conversion rate (as per the above figures) would be about 1%, and that would stay if you are lucky!

If you double your traffic by reinvesting your money at this stage, then unless you prevent losing the above conversions, this figure is only going to double.

So, what should be done to make the most of this traffic?

Your daily sales average is an average of everything you have on your site - direct sales of products, ad impressions, PPC click-throughs, etc. While increasing the traffic would double the impressions, that would be meagre compared to the other products that you have on your site.

Here are some ways of making sure you get the most out of your site -

1) Use CPM ads on every page

Every hit you get on your site is an impression. If you use CPM ads (Google Adsense, Adbrite, etc.) on your site, every page opened on your site will count to your impressions, which adds to your basic ad revenue.

Word of caution - Do not overdo this. Use this justly and wisely, keeping in mind all the Terms and Conditions of the ad provider (Google, Adbrite, etc.), or you run the risk of getting banned. There are some allowed limits within which you will be safe.

2) Ask for opinions

Wouldn’t you want to know why 495 visitors to your site did not want to purchase anything from you? Maybe not all the 495, but atleast a good portion of that maybe.

People do not buy stuff from your site either because they didn’t come there to buy anything in the first place, or they didn’t find anything “catchy” enough to buy. The former of the lot, you can make the best use of the impressions they give you by page visits - give them more interesting things to read. The latter of this sort we can deal with directly. Ask your visitors for opinions on what they would like to see on your site. Ask for feedback on content, as well as what they would like to have information about. This would give you an idea of what your readers like to read, and also what they might like to buy.

3) Make changes on your site

Use your visitors opinions to make changes to your site. Ask them what they would like changed on the blog. This could be for changing the colors of the site, or to get content of a different type (a new category maybe). You might also get new product ideas which you can look into. Make possible changes, let your users know what changes you have made, and monitor what effect it has on your visitors.

4) Use your site metrics to get more product and post ideas

One more way to put in interesting topics on your site is to find out why people come to your site in the first place. Asking them is one thing, but there is another easier way - your site metrics. For example, if you have a Sitemeter account which is connected to your website, you would be able to see the links under the Referrals page which referred people to your site. You might be able to see by looking at the google or yahoo links there what people were searching for which lead them to your site. That will also give you an idea of what your overall market is looking for, and also more ideas to post into your blog or website.

5) Ask your current visitors for more traffic

How? Give them options to share content with their friends or colleagues, or like-minded individuals. Give them options to email your article to friends, share it on social media sites, etc. If they find your content useful, they would surely let others know, which results in more traffic.

Keep these things in mind, and this will make a positive difference to the figures on your site.