Earlier this week when explaining the topic of Click Through Rates as illustrated inside Google Webmaster Tools I also said that getting clicks to your website does not immediately mean you will make money. Your website actually needs to convert visitors into some type of sale or first step conversion towards eventually making a sale.I have found that most website owners spend little time worrying about website customer conversion. Generally speaking, most website owners don't understand that websites never make money instantly after being launched. I've found that most web developers don't explain the true process of website ownership, in that you have to build it, market it, test it, and change it over and over again.
In my experience, there's a general sense of accomplishment once a jeweler finishes setting up a website, but then a sense of dissatisfaction when they realize the website is never complete.
The initial website design you choose is one of your own liking and style. You chose where to put the navigation, where to place the images, the negative space aspects, and they style of all your photography. But those were all your own choices... and your choices might simply not appeal to your target audience.
Understanding what your target audience likes requires some type of advanced website tracking and continual testing of your web pages. You can track where people click and what images they click on. You can even track the keywords that brought people to your site and then what they clicked on.
Knowing the actions of your website visitors will help you discover how to continually tweak your website for greater conversions. It will help you discover what your target audience likes or dislikes about your design choices.
Google Analytics provides tracking tools; you have the A/B split testing experiments within GA, and you also have the sitemap overlay which shows you how people clicked around your website. These tools are not easy for the average website owner to work with or analyze, and you usually need a professional SEO to explain them for you. Remember, these are free tools.
Other paid services are also available to help track website visitors more easily. You can do a Google search for "website heatmap" to find some options for visitor tracking. All of these services will cost extra money just to track and see reports. You do need to take action and make changes to your website once you have the reports. This is where the continual testing and changing comes into play.
For some this seems like a never ending bottomless pit of website expenses when in reality this is an ironclad process of improving your marketing and sales. This ongoing process should achieve far greater trackable results than continuing to throwing money into offline advertisements that don't have results.
So the bottom line of today's Daily Golden Nugget is that the expression "if you build it, they will come" does not apply to your website. Your website is an island unless you tell the world about it and then figure out how to make your customers happy.
Want my best suggestion? Pick a simple website design that allows you to be flexible with small changes as you track your visitors. Then track, change, and track again until business success is achieved.
