You can’t just aim for more traffic when marketing technical products online
Remember in the early days of websites when there were visitor counters randomly place in webpages?
The ones that said “you are visitor 4 365.”
Website traffic is an obvious measurement of the performance of a website. It’s not the only way, but we will focus on traffic in this post. After all if no one is visiting your website then what’s the point?
The visitor counter was fun at first but it had no context because it didn’t show the time frame over which those visitors appeared.
You see if the counter reads 4 365 visits this month then that’s a great number! But consider 4 365 visits over 5 years, the average is only 72 visits per month. And that’s probably not enough. But how much is enough?
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When you measure your digital agency’s performance with website traffic, you should at a basic level consider:
- Measurement interval
- Traffic Quantum – how much is enough
- Traffic Trend
1. Measurement interval
Most marketers compile monthly reports. Choosing 1 month as the time unit of measure is probably a reasonable starting point. Your time interval is tied to how fast you want to solve your problem. If you need a large amount of improvement within three months then you should probably choose a weekly interval. But I would stick to choosing 1 month as the interval and then check in on it every week to chart progress towards the monthly goal.
2. Traffic Quantum
Qantum is just a fancy word for the amount – how many site visitors should I demand from my website company per month? As it’s one of those “how long is a peice of sting” question, I will peg down a number based on some benchmarking which HubSpot shared. If your goal is to get 1 new customer then you will probably need at least 1 500 website visitors per month! (So in a how long is a peice of string world .., I would say aim for 1 500 visitors a month as a starting goal.)
3. Traffic Trend
If you’re now aiming for 1 500 visitors per month you need to establish a base line. Ask your agency how many website visitors you get each month for the last six months. Plot these on a simple bar graph and look at the trend. If you’re getting only 400 visitors per month and the trend is flat then you probably won’t ever reach the 1 500 visitors p/m goal.
Conclusion
When measuring traffic, concider the amount of visitors per month. See if the current number of visitors per month is trending towards meeting your goal.
A possible starting point for a goal is: 1 500 visitors per month to get one customer per month.
How many visitors does your website get? How high are you aiming? Does 1 500 seem a mile off? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.
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