Marketing your business online requires a variety of skillsets. One, in particular, is the ability to isolate and understand the buying or search habits of your site visitors… your prospects.
Before embarking on your next online campaign, make sure you’ve grasped an understanding of WHO you are targetting before thinking about suitable content or offers.
When was the last time you took a look at your own website from the perspective of the first-time visitor? Does your website clearly and concisely tell the visitor who you are and what you do? Look at your homepage (which is where most of your traffic will visit) and within 10 seconds can you figure out what your site is about? Have you overlooked one of the most important aspects of your site, the introduction? Do you just jump into listings of products without telling your customers who you are and why they should use you? With the simplest level of analytics you can find out a tremendous amount about your customers and where you may be losing their interest.
Recent research demonstrates how powerful the influence of the internet is on the purchaser: 42% of online shoppers visited three or more sites to investigate their last purchase, and only 33% of online shoppers had made up their minds about the price they were willing to pay for their purchase in advance of going online to research.
Now more than ever your potential customer is swayed by what they see and hear online. They are more conscious than ever before as to how and where they will spend their hard earnings online.
What are you doing to guarantee your website browsers spend with you? Can you build a picture of your typical site visitor? Do you know;
- How they found your site?
- What they do whilst on your site?
- How long they spend on your site?
- At which stage they leave your site?
The ability to answer each of these questions will give you a firmer understanding of where your potential customers are slipping through the net.
Having answered these questions, think about the following … When somebody visits your site, are you doing all that you can to incentivise them? If not just to purchase, but to at least tell you who they are in return for information that may be valuable to them? Do you run competitions as a form of data capture? Do you speak to your customers using email marketing campaigns? If so, how do you attract your site visitors to register for your newsletters?
Remember, your website should be a form of two-way communication between the business and its customers – so talk and listen.
