Winning Strategies to Drive Traffic to Your Online Shop

Make the most of your investment with these proven techniques to increase Web site ROI.
Jan 1, 2009

By Derek Griffin, Contributing Writer

Today, a Web site isn't a business luxury — it's a necessity. Just like a business card or brochure, your Web site provides the first impression many people will have of your business. Your goal is to make sure it's not the last.

Professional Presentation

The first question to ask is what goals do you want to achieve with your Web site? The primary goal of the site should be to get your company's message across quickly and have it presented in a professional manner consistent with your brand identity. Getting that message across quickly is a key requirement because Web site visitors are fickle and need to be impressed enough in just a few seconds to dig deeper into your site.

This means balancing aesthetic appeal with functionality and making sure critical information is above the fold (the bottom of your computer screen). Studies of Web usage by the Nielsen Norman Group, an Internet design firm in Fremont, Calif., show that 50% of visitors will not scroll down the page to see what additional information you may be hiding on a long home page.

According to Jakob Nielsen, a principal and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group (nngroup.com) and author of the book "Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity" (Indianapolis: New Riders Publishing, 2000), you only have about 30 seconds to grab a visitor's attention on that first page load; therefore, you must encapsulate your business offering quickly and effectively.

Also, short attention spans dictate quickly loading graphics. A "wait while this fancy presentation loads" message might be OK for a high-end graphics agency, but it will kill any potential a business-to-business Web site has for success.

Some further examples of Web usage statistics illustrate how important the design of your site is to a visitor's experience:

• 40% of visitors do not return to a site if their first visit results in a negative experience. Source: Forrester Research

• 83% of Web users have left sites in frustration due to poor usability. Unintuitive navigation and sluggish performance were reported as the main culprits. Source: NetSmart Research

• Almost 70% of online consumers reported some Web sites take too long to download. Source: Boston Consulting Group

The key information is who you are, what you do and how to contact you. To recap, your primary goals should be to:

• Strengthen your business identity and, by so doing, bolster the confidence of prospective clients

• Generate new inquiries for your services or products

• Sell products (for e-commerce Web sites).

Driving visitors to your Web site once you've spent so much time and money is the final step you must focus on to improve the rate of return on your investment. After launching the Web site, if you magically expect new customers to appear on your doorstep, you'll be disappointed. The Web site must be promoted — to all of your existing customers as well as any prospects in your database.

You can use an e-mail broadcast as the first line of communication, then follow that effort with a postcard or mailer. If you're selling products, offer a promotional discount for buying online. It also may help to do some local advertising, in print as well as online. All of these efforts are to drive more immediate traffic and gain visibility for the site. There also are long-term strategies for search engine visibility to consider.

Optimizing Your Site

Prospective new accounts should be able to find your business in a variety of online ways. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the most obvious strategy, but you should not limit your efforts to just that. There also are many online directories that can give you targeted as well as local traffic. These include industry listings for companies providing specific services as well as local business directories, such as your Chamber of Commerce. A directory listing has the direct benefit of getting visitors to your site, and also provides an indirect benefit by raising your Google search ranking.

Part of the "black magic" of search engine ranking algorithms includes how many other Web sites are linked to yours, and that is where directory listings have a long-term benefit. Other critical factors to search engine visibility include site traffic, how long the site has been live and keyword density. Web site traffic is easy to quantify and can be increased with print and online advertising. Keyword density is a much bigger bear to wrestle.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is all about having the right mix of keywords imbedded in strategic locations throughout the site. The words should be terms that search engine users would type in to find the services or products you offer. These keywords go into multiple areas of each page: The page title, meta tags, information/content and page links all give you an opportunity to make your site deeper and more relevant to search engines.

The page title is the blue bar at the top of your browser window and is the most important area to focus on. Meta tags are the behind-the-scenes keywords that only are seen by search engines. Your information is what people read. You may use keywords in describing what you offer, but if you're too aggressive and the keywords have no intelligible flow — which is the equivalent of e-mail spamming to search engines — then search engines will overlook your site.

Page links represent an additional way you can squeeze in keywords and have them picked up in searches. Page links as well as using keywords in your domain name can be very effective. Search engine optimization is a long-term strategy. It rarely provides instant success because of all the factors involved. The only way to guarantee instant traffic is online pay-per-click advertising.

Advertising

The results of any search engine generally start with "paid" listings at the top and down the sides, followed by natural or organic listings that have made it to the top through longer term SEO strategies. Pay-per-click advertising allows you to control your budget and adjust based on the success of certain keywords. You can manage your keyword campaigns through:

• Google AdWords (Google, AOL, Earthlink)

• Yahoo Search Marketing (Yahoo and other partner sites)

• Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions (MSN).

Some firms proprietary systems can aggregate all of your marketing dollars into a single campaign, eliminating the need for multiple accounts if you want traffic across all major search engines.

Reach Local (reachlocal.com) is a firm that offers this service and can even target your advertising revenue to specific cities to help your success rate. Even in this information age, it's much easier to land an account if you have a chance to meet face to face with a potential customer.

There are a lot of options when it comes to what you can do for your business through a Web site. Even if you start small, plan for future growth and always think 12 months ahead so that when you invest in your online marketing strategy, each future investment builds on what you have done so far. The most important decision is deciding to get started and following through on that decision.

Derek Griffin is president and co-founder of SpearTek, an Atlanta-based firm that helps companies make Web sites easier to manage and more profitable. He speaks at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows on the topic of company stores.

For more information or to comment on this story, e-mail Derek at dgriffin@speartek.com or visit speartek.com.

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