Traffic ≠ Sales 📈

Hi reader,

In my opinion, a lot of website owners spend way too much time and money obsessing over traffic. 

And yeah, website traffic can be important in some contexts. But here’s what I want you to remember:

Traffic doesn’t equal sales. 

Getting people to land on your website is only half of the battle. You could have a million people clicking through your pages every day and still not make a single sale.

Let’s talk about what to do instead.

Today’s advice to grow your business

Think beyond traffic and optimize your website for the entire customer journey.

It's not enough to just get people to your site. You need to think about what they do once they're there. 

Let's say you had 4,000 visitors to your website this month. But then you look closer and see that your bounce rate is 80% – meaning 8 out of 10 people are leaving without even clicking on anything. 

And of the people who do stick around, only 1% are actually adding items to their cart.

See the problem? To grow your business, you need to understand how people are interacting with your website at every stage of their journey. Only then can you start to optimize for conversions and make more sales.

Here’s how this will benefit you

You'll turn more website visitors into paying customers.

When you optimize your website for the entire customer journey, you're removing all the friction points that might prevent a visitor from becoming a customer. Everything you do is meant to strategically guide visitors toward a purchase.

A confused customer is less likely to buy. If they can't find what they're looking for, or if they don't understand your offer, they'll just leave. But when you make the experience smooth and intuitive, they're more likely to stick around, check out your services, and eventually make a purchase. 

You'll position your business better for long-term growth.

Relying on traffic is simply not a solid foundation for long-term success. When you shift your focus to the entire customer journey, you're building a business that's not just about attracting new customers, but also about keeping existing customers happy.

When you have a great experience with a company, you're more likely to go back to them again and again, right? It's the same with your website. By creating a positive experience, you encourage people to become repeat customers. And when you have a solid base of repeat customers, you're not always scrambling to find new ones.

Your first step

Log in to Google Analytics and take a look at your user behavior reports.

Google Analytics has a lot of information about how people are interacting with your site. Here are a few things to look at:

• Engagement > Pages and screens: This report shows you which pages are getting the most views and how engaged users are with those pages. You can see things like how long people are spending on each page, how far they're scrolling, and what percentage of people are leaving after viewing only one page.

• Engagement > Events: Events help you understand what actions people are taking on your site, like scrolls and outbound clicks. This can give you clues about whether people are finding what they need and engaging with your content.

• Explore > User Explorer: This lets you drill down into the behavior of individual users, giving you a granular view of how people are interacting with your site.

Before things get chaotic again in the new year, take some time to play around with Google Analytics and check out these reports. I know it can seem like a lot of info, but once you get the hang of it, you'll have so much valuable information about your customers.

If you need help understanding your analytics or figuring out what to do with the data, just hit reply and let me know – I'm always happy to help.

Best,

Jono