How to Drive Traffic to Your Website
“…Online sales elements – technical knowledge – website design will be the better flow when you are building your new website…”
How to Drive Traffic to Your Website
Having an online store is no longer an option for most businesses. Instead, it becomes a necessity and some even do it for business survival. As we know, an online website represents your brand’s reputation and image, more than before, it serves the purpose of brand learning, brand exposure and brand first impression. From the marketing perspective, some will choose to do their branding campaign online that generates offline interactions such as booking appointments with the salesperson or set up a time to visit the physical store front. The reason is, advertising on online platforms is cost-saving and now, more effective as compared to billboards or other offline platforms. Now without an online brand presence, either website or e-commerce storefront, people may not know about the business at all unless they are within your area.
Online Website or E-Commerce Site Elements
When it comes to a business website, be it an e-commerce website or corporate website, the web design comes first in mind. A notion of similarity is when you open up a physical store or office, the interior design is what makes your business or store to stand out from the crowd. Technical IT knowledge needed in building a website such as hosting, domain name registration, website security, etc, are next in line for you to think of. It is all those excitement and sleepless nights when you research and layout your ideal website design or think about the store name, it’s like your 2nd life finally comes true! Yes, we feel you on this! However, some people will get all disappointed or stressed out when it comes to the later stage – all that technical jargon that you have no deep understanding but have to make the final decision! Though some people do sail through this “technical” stage smoothly, what about your return on investment after your hard work and effort that you’ve poured to your site?
What if we tell you, the sequence of building a website is starting of with focusing on the online sales elements, then the technicality, and lastly the website design? Before we dive into details, for businesses that need assistance in website design and technical support for building up a website, you may contact us at https://thegigabit.com/contact-us/ for more information. A team with more than 13 years of experience in web hosting and other IT services as well as website designing are right here to serve you!
Online Sales Elements – Technical knowledge – Website design
The online sales elements such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) audit reports or Google Analytics will influence the sections to be included in each web page. Such as, a testimonial section from your customers is advisable to include in your website, other than it is to gain your buyer’s confidence in your products, at the same time, it is an element that conveys a message to Google that your website is trustable and active. An SEO audit report serves as the “skeleton” for your whole website. Google Analytics, is a tracking tool for your website visitors’ purchasing patterns. For example, to know how many sales you have made from your e-commerce website, you must include a “Thank you” web page at the end of the purchasing journey, after your visitors complete the payment process. Without the “Thank you” web page that implemented the Google Analytics tracking code, when circumstances such as failure to make payment or payment denial arise, you wouldn’t get to know and this gave a false impression that your website visitors made a purchase and you have sales. After getting to know all these necessary elements that need to be in place, then it will ease the journey of building your website. You may discuss the technical part with your Digital Marketing agency on SEO and Google Analytics, and let them communicate in detail with your Website Design agency, meanwhile, you can discuss the IT specifications that are suitable to “host” your website with the Website Design agency and Web Hosting agency. Lastly, you need to register your online store name (in IT, this refers to Domain Name) and look into the website security.
When everything is in place, it’s time to “pull” more internet surfers to your website and Digital Marketing is what you should look into when you want to have growth in your website traffic and of course lead to more exposure, sales, etc. The term that refers to the volume of people visiting your website is called Website Traffic and it consists of 2 main pillars, direct and indirect traffic. The website’s direct traffic boost, mainly includes SEO and Google Adv tools, while the indirect traffic boost includes traffic from:
- Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or YouTube
- Third-party platforms collaboration, such as online media advertisement space or article writeup. It also includes brand collaboration for specific campaigns, KOL or influencer marketing for products and services, bloggers and more.
- Offline marketing efforts, such as events leads and public relations activities
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Other than assisting in your website “skeleton” building, SEO tools help in “communicating” with Google to “pull out” your website when people search your products in search engines, such as Google Chrome, Yahoo and more. When your website is being pulled out to show on the list of searches on the search page, your website visibility or website traffic will increase and at the same time expose your product to more potential customers. So, how does SEO “communicate” with Google? It is by tracking the words that people punch in at the search bar. Each page in the website will have a specific title, description and keywords inserted through SEO then SEO will help to match the keywords implemented with the words that punch in at the search bar on the search engines, and then your website will show at the list of searches in the search page. Whether your website appears on the first page and first line on the search page will depend on the keywords bidding budget that you and your competitors are competing for, which leads to our next element- Google Ad.
SEO Buzzwords:
- Branded or Non-branded Keywords – basically when we talk about branded keywords, it is referring to keywords that include your brand name and non-branded keywords are other words people punch in based on their needs or interest and Google will “pull out” your website to show under the search pages. For example, the word “serum”, when people punch in “serum”, then your website appeared on the search page. This is because one of your web pages or multiple web pages containing the word “serum” in the product title, product descriptions or other content of your website.
- Ranking – this is referring to your website appearing at which search page in the search engines. For example, your website appears as the first line on top once people punch in certain words, in SEO ranking means – the first page, the first “line” as shown in the picture below.
Tips: If your page is ranked on the first page when people search a particular word, the higher chance that more people will click on your website. The logic behind this is that people are too lazy to scroll on the rest of the pages, they want fast results. So whenever they see a related website appear on the first page, they will definitely click on it first.
Google will “pull out” the relevant website and rank them on the first page when a specific word is punched in. What are the criteria that Google use to define the relevancy of a website with a specific word? One of the criteria is depending on how many times a word appears on your website. There are also other criteria that are not so specifically listed by Google, which we refer to as the “Google algorithm”. In the SEO report, you will find the information about your keywords in each web page position, at which page and which line in the search page. How to check whether it is true? If you know that your keyword ranked 1st page, 1st line in Google Chrome in your SEO report, open your Google Chrome, punch in the keywords that you wanted to know the SEO ranking, press enter, then see which page and line your website appears on. In Google Chrome, 1 page consists of 10 different lines, so if you see your keywords in SEO stated 11, meaning it is on the 2nd page, the first line in the search page. However, sometimes even the SEO report states 1st line, in 1st page, you won’t find your website at the first line of the search page, instead, you will see a little “Ad” icon product or company appear first, why is that so?
Google Ad
The icon with black bold “Ad” is referring to someone who bought the keywords, whoever bid the keywords that relate to their products with more money, on their business website will have the chance to rank on top than their competitor. Google Adv tool generally has 2 main functions. First, for purchase of related keywords, whether branded or non-branded.
Second, is a platform for purchasing advertisement spots. As shown in the picture below, when you type in the word “anti-ageing face cream” a bunch of product pictures appear on the right-hand side, and it is stated, “Sponsored”. A tool that is used to purchase these spots is called Google Display Network.
Tips: Online presence, brand presence and brand remembrance fall under these tools. The logic is when your brand appears frequently to people, higher chance that they will remember your brand and ultimately buy your product. So in this sense, Google Network Display will help in getting your brand name out into the market, but first of all, people need to know what types of products your brand is tied to or what your business is selling and offering, this is where the keywords come in. What keywords (non-branded) generated out your business website, that is what your brand is tied to most of the time in the view of people’s perspective.
Google Ad Buzzword:
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- Organic vs Paid Keywords – There are millions of words typed in daily by billions of internet surfers. It is impossible that you can buy all words that are related to your product for your website. Therefore, there are 2 different measurements or metrics, the organic and paid keyword. Organic keywords are words that you did not pay for but your website visitor punched in and land on your web pages. Paid keywords are keywords that you pay for and Google will “pull out” your website to show to internet surfer that punched in the words.
Basically, the above 2 different tools – SEO and Google Ads are tools that most business owners will invest in when they want to boost their website traffic. But prior to that, there are also elements that need to be in place in order to generate effective and great results from SEO and Google Ad campaign.
Create engaging content, images and design
Engaging content, images and design are subjective to different people. However, there are some tips that can take into consideration:
1. Content that resonates with your target audience
You have to stand in your customers’ shoes and create content that is dedicated to them, which means creating content from their perspective. Don’t just talk about the features of the product or services, give more information about the benefits, and how they can fully utilize the product. Additionally, come out with content that can draw customers’ emotions. You can find the current trend or news as a point to start off with. How does your product help in improving the current situation? How can it help society? Next, create a blog spot on your website, because a written article with repetitive SEO keywords that relates to your products can help to boost the SEO keywords ranking, in other words, Google will think that your website is more relevant to internet surfer. However, overdoing it will cause a detrimental effect on your ranking instead, because Google will interpret this as it is more like spam content than relevant content to internet surfers, or worst still, your website may not be visible to anyone at all.
2. Images or pictures or videos that show the details of the products
After curating the content, the next image, picture and video illustration is important. The current trend in the market for engaging pictures are “Instagrammable” photos (photo that create a lot of responses – likes, clicks, comments and etc. in Instagram), so you can have some reference on that or you may also get some idea from KOL or influencer posts in whichever digital platforms that are related to your product. Make sure the photo or videos are clear or in high resolution. Video illustration generally will draw more traffic and be more engaging to people because they do not need to visualize your product, especially products that involve a lot of installation steps or varieties of ways to use a product.
3. Keep the balance between designs that represents your brand and target audience
A brand message that is wanted to carry out to the public is “luxurious”, but this term can have different meanings to different groups of people and different colours or object representations that tie with it. As a business owner, when you think of luxury, maybe you will think of gold colour, so you design your website using gold colour as your main theme colour. However, some people will associate the colour gold with “old”, their colour of “luxurious” association maybe is marble colour or better yet, a combination of both. Therefore, you need to make sure you know your customers or potential customers well before deciding on the types of design that are suitable for your business website.
Third-party platforms collaboration, most of the time is brand-leveraging exposure to new segments of audiences. Brand leveraging will enhance the brand identity, depending on both brand perspectives to the public. If a brand portrays itself as fun, and the other portrays itself as creative, then this collaboration may attract both types of audiences who are fun and creative as both brands may expose themselves to a new segment of audiences, which may be relevant to the product that they are selling.
Influencer marketing might be the other option to draw traffic to the website. People will tend to resonate more with live and real users of your product. Real-life unboxing, testimonials and reviews on your product are crucial parts of your brand impression. As the name suggests, “influencer” means people that will influence others easily, so this may be another choice for consideration.
Lastly, offline marketing may help to boost website traffic with brand engagement. People like to access “solid”, and “physical” products where they can touch and feel the product before they make a purchase. So how does this relate to your e-commerce site storefront? Accessible and engageable brands will boost brand trustworthiness, especially for businesses that involve after-service, maintenance and warranty. Your website visitors may visit your physical store and purchase your product online for convenient purposes. Besides, uploading more activities regarding your company may tend to generate more trust and security for people to purchase your product online. People tend to feel more insecure with businesses that operate online stores alone that currently have issues with spam and scam over the internet. So how to make people feel secure to make their purchase on your website? At the very least, make sure shipping and delivery information are well stated in your online store and make sure the website is mobile-friendly and laptop friendly. On the website technical part, make sure your website security is in place, like having an SSL certificate and more.
For more information regarding website security, digital marketing services and other website or technical knowledge advice, you may get in touch with our team by contacting us at https://thegigabit.com/contact-us/. If you need any business digitalization services, technical support or managed services, do let us know as well!