When you want more website sales or conversions, the first and most logical step is to boost online traffic. But while more web traffic is the most logical path to more online sales, it is not necessarily the most profitable option. In fact, paying for or investing in more traffic via SEO, PPC, SMM, or even Content Marketing could be just throwing good money after bad. Specifically, you can boost online traffic to the moon and still lose loads of conversions and profits due to any one or more of the following problems:
- Weak Sales Pages, Product Descriptions, and Other Direct Response Copywriting Content
- Confusing or Ineffective Web Design/Core Page Layouts
- Non-Existent or Malformed Sales Funnels
- Inconsistencies in Your Sales Funnel (on pricing or offer details)
- Improper Configuration of Your Shopping Cart or Primary CMS
- Slow Load Times, Dead Links, and Other Programming Issues
- Weak Primary or Secondary CTA’s
Now of course, every site is going to have a few issues. For proof of this fact, consider that the following tech companies have all hired external conversion rate optimization experts to optimize their sites:
- Netflix
- Vodafone
- Apple
- Sony
The very sad truth is that most sites (over 90%) are not optimized when they are launched. Instead, so-called Internet Marketing experts are called in to provide one specific skill set (like web design, copywriting, or web programming) and ultimately create the final site. But, there is rarely any true planning or coordination to actually make sure the site converts well–rather, they just focus on “getting the job done” and moving on to the next client.
Then, when the site is launched, the first and most glaring problem is a lack of visitors. So, the first thing they do is boost online traffic and then it’s off to the races. When that first sale comes in, they don’t care what the conversion rate is: They just want another sale. And so, they work on getting more traffic rather than making sure the conversion rate is profitable or not.
But more often than not: The conversion rate is simply too low to generate any profits. Instead, all the money being generated is re-invested to boost online traffic. Then, as the initial start-up capital dwindles and the new sales fail to even cover marketing costs, the focus begins to shift to the conversion rate. But by then, it’s often too late given the dwindling resources.
So before you invest one more dime on Internet Marketing services to boost online traffic, here are:
3 Reasons to Optimize Website First Before Investing in Services to Boost Online Traffic
#1: Optimization Boosts ROI of Future Traffic Generating Investments
Getting traffic to your website is the very heart of Internet Marketing but it’s damned expensive. I don’t care if you are talking about PPC or SEO, online marketing costs often account for 40% or more of total site revenues. These sky-high marketing costs are the biggest reason why most websites are operating on razor-thin margins. Now, you may not be able to reduce or even eliminate those online marketing expenses, but you can make sure your investment generates more sales and a higher overall ROI. To do so, you need to first optimize the site for conversions.
Now make no mistake: Different traffic sources will still convert differently (for instance, on average, PPC conversions will be lower than SEO conversions regardless of optimization results). However, the point is that even despite these differences, CRO services will still help raise all ships and thus help improve the conversions across all sources but it may not improve all sources equally.
#2: Conversion Rate Optimization Delivers Higher ROI than SEO, PPC, Content Marketing or Social Media
If you have $5,000 to invest to increase sales, then you’ve almost been programmed (through years of relentless marketing), to spend your money trying to boost online traffic with SEO, SMM, PPC, or Content Marketing. But for sites with more than 100 unique visitors per day, the truth is that conversion rate optimization will actually deliver higher ROI for 3 simple reasons:
1. Elevates Conversions for Months, If Not Years, After Project Complete
CRO experts make permanent changes to your website components that are suppressing online sales. Once the conversion problems fixed, you won’t just generate more sales for a week, or a month or two–but for potentially years after the work is complete. But if you invest the money to boost online traffic, then your sales will dry up within a few days or weeks from when you stop paying the PPC or SEO experts.
2. CRO Services Don’t Increase Your Marketing Costs
With SEO, PPC, and other strategies, you have so spend money to make money and that may well be true for any investment. But with these Internet Marketing options, the problem is that marketing costs can constantly devour up to 1/2 of total online revenues–yes, constantly. So no matter which of these investments you choose to boost online traffic and overall sales, they all increase your marketing costs which destroys profits.
But the cornerstone of CRO is quite the opposite: To convert more visitors from your existing traffic by permanently fixing the problems that are alienating visitors and your overall sales. So CRO won’t increase your marketing costs at all. And in fact, CRO experts can actually generate more sales with less traffic by optimizing your PPC and paid traffic sources to eliminate targeting of non-converting keywords.
3. No Recurring Fees
When a conversion rate optimization project is done, any increased sales generated from the service come with zero recurring fees or additional marketing costs. In other words, after overhead and fulfillment costs, those are good old-fashioned profits.
#3: Because Your Site is Losing Loads of Money It Could Be Generating–Right Now!
It is not uncommon for a site to boost it’s conversion rate by 50, 100, or even 200% in some cases. Now on average, you typically are looking at about a 40% increase in conversions–with zero increase in marketing costs and no recurring fees. So what is 40% of your average gross revenues from the site? That, on average, is what you could be throwing away each year by investing in SEO, PPC and other strategies to boost online traffic instead of investing in CRO services first.
It’s a pile of money and it’s already yours by getting the traffic to the site. But without optimization, that money will go to your competition instead while you keep giving all of your online profits to the SEO or PPC experts each and every month. Wouldn’t you rather just invest once and boost your online sales today and also make all future traffic investments more profitable?
Tell me what you think by posting your comment below.
