Low Traffic, High Conversions

[Laustin1878]

I began working with a brand new business a few months ago as I continue to get my feet wet on my own. The site was non-existent in Google and now has a growing presence. The industry is fairly competitive for the area. Personally, I would like to see more traffic but the conversions are pretty good, despite the low traffic.

At the end of the day, the conversions are where you stand to make your money, not traffic. I could send all the traffic in the world to the site but if nobody is calling or filling out forms, it's a moot point.

There have been no complaints. I'm happy that after a short period of time, there are conversions. I've worked with sites that have taken much longer to see conversions. Being as though I have nothing to compare it to, I am unable to set a benchmark of any kind.

I am not quite sure how to convey the message that the plan is working despite seeing that traffic is not abundant. I may not be looking at it properly but I'm of the belief that if conversion rates are good, then something is working. Yes, I want to increase traffic so I can increase conversions but I'm personally satisfied.

Is this a good way to approach the situation? I want to be sure I'm not getting too hung up on the % of conversions and not too narrow minded. Frankly, I have not seen conversion rates this high but I am still dealing with a low number of overall visits.

 

[Dave]

Geez:

Every business type is dramatically different in terms of things like conversions. I don't think one has any idea about actual conversion rates until one gets steeped in the industry type.

I did a review with a local business that generally was experiencing a 75% Close rate on every call and contact. That is terrific in my book as the 2 types of smb's we work with have close rates that have respectively run at a broad range of 20-40% and 30-50%...the former off of all leads...the latter off of more qualified leads.

But every business is so remarkably different.

Besides that there are tremendous differences between qualified customers and lookers and feelers.

You could get huge volumes of traffic if you focused on the informational aspects...but if it doesn't connect to buyers it might have little value.

Its a tough question to respond to imho as I have no idea about the specific business, service, products, the market, the competitiveness, etc.

 

[Phil Rozek]

I second what Dave said. It's also hard to comment on your situation in the abstract.

One thing you'll need is to capture names + email addresses. And I'm not talking about a lame "newsletter" or "subscribe to updates." You need something more-compelling - like some sort of how-to guide. Doesn't matter what industry you're in. Not doing it is an enormous waste. Those signups are actually something you can track - in Google Analytics and in the conversion-tracking area of AdWords. More important, building an email list where you offer free, useful, no-pitch info is the best way to turn some of those tire-kickers into customers.

Then if you do that, you can cultivate "traffic" all day long and it won't be a waste, because (1) you're learning what sorts of people become customers, and (2) you're giving them more choices than "pay us / call us now or leave the site."

 

[Kristen]

I agree with Phil. Capturing names and email addresses will give you another benchmark to measure.

If traffic is low, consider looking at adding additional keywords to the mix or add local landing pages to capture traffic in surrounding areas. If their conversion rate is high at a low volume of traffic, they must have a pretty solid website, so create additional benchmarks with various other sources of traffic.

Assuming your agency provides PPC services, another idea might be to look into additional traffic sources like Adwords. That would help you better establish an accurate conversion rate since you can easily control the flow of traffic.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I am not quite sure how to convey the message that the plan is working despite seeing that traffic is not abundant. I may not be looking at it properly but I'm of the belief that if conversion rates are good, then something is working. Yes, I want to increase traffic so I can increase conversions but I'm personally satisfied.

Is this a good way to approach the situation? I want to be sure I'm not getting too hung up on the % of conversions and not too narrow minded. Frankly, I have not seen conversion rates this high but I am still dealing with a low number of overall visits.

Where do they rank? If traffic is low getting them ranked higher would help. If there isn't much traffic to begin with and your client ranks C, they will just be getting a small sliver of that small amount of traffic.

Also things like review stars and author markup, would help get more eyeballs and therefore improve click-through - so those great conversion rates could have a chance to kick in.

But if they rank #1 already and have review stars and still aren't getting much traffic then what I think is this... in some markets & industries even when you rank high there just is not a lot of traffic. There just isn't. However you can tell the client if they didn't rank at all or were still on page 2 or whatever, then that highly targeted traffic that is looking specifically for their service, will not find them and the clicks will go to competitors. So even if the traffic is low, they still need to be on top of page 1 to get a good shot at whatever traffic there is.

 

[Dave]

Where do they rank? If traffic is low getting them ranked higher would help. If there isn't much traffic to begin with and your client ranks C, they will just be getting a small sliver of that small amount of traffic.

Also things like review stars and author markup, would help get more eyeballs and therefore improve click-through - so those great conversion rates could have a chance to kick in.

But if they rank #1 already and have review stars and still aren't getting much traffic then what I think is this... in some markets & industries even when you rank high there just is not a lot of traffic. There just isn't. However you can tell the client if they didn't rank at all or were still on page 2 or whatever, then that highly targeted traffic that is looking specifically for their service, will not find them and the clicks will go to competitors. So even if the traffic is low, they still need to be on top of page 1 to get a good shot at whatever traffic there is.

I liked how Linda phrased this. Some smb's and niche smbs simply don't get a lot of traffic. They are small topics with limited market appeal.

I also liked what was said above about tracking emails. Get those emails. Get back to old leads. Depending on the smb there are plenty of sales to be had by follow up/ remarketing ....however one phrases it.

With changes in volumes of leads its one reason I like adwords. With a large adwords campaign for some types of smb's we track search impressions by our market region. I don't want google trends or webmaster tools keywords impressions for traffic around the world. I want to know what traffic is like in my region. Is demand up or down. Keywords impressions tells you that.

Of course I want an adwords ROI that works. That is critical. But I want to know demand and for some smb's dependent on search adwords is an excellent way to track that info.

I want it for my region. If my area had a wet summer I don't care about world wide results for home "fire fighting equipment" it could be high in California but if my area was wet it will probably be low and a local ppc campaign will tell me what the demand is for critical keywords where I am selling "stuff".

For one of our smb's lead volume started tanking as of the last 2 weeks of august. We checked ppc impressions. Demand for the $ keywords has been down.

We are taking actions to try and increase demand for us...not necessarily our competitors but us. If demand overall is down it will hit all the competitors. We want to be reacting more quickly.

But some smb's have low volume clicks and searches. One needs to know that.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I began working with a brand new business a few months ago as I continue to get my feet wet on my own. The site was non-existent in Google and now has a growing presence. The industry is fairly competitive for the area. Personally, I would like to see more traffic but the conversions are pretty good, despite the low traffic.

At the end of the day, the conversions are where you stand to make your money, not traffic. I could send all the traffic in the world to the site but if nobody is calling or filling out forms, it's a moot point.

There have been no complaints. I'm happy that after a short period of time, there are conversions. I've worked with sites that have taken much longer to see conversions. Being as though I have nothing to compare it to, I am unable to set a benchmark of any kind.

I am not quite sure how to convey the message that the plan is working despite seeing that traffic is not abundant. I may not be looking at it properly but I'm of the belief that if conversion rates are good, then something is working. Yes, I want to increase traffic so I can increase conversions but I'm personally satisfied.

Is this a good way to approach the situation? I want to be sure I'm not getting too hung up on the % of conversions and not too narrow minded. Frankly, I have not seen conversion rates this high but I am still dealing with a low number of overall visits.

You're just asking the classic question of conversion vs traffic. The answer is both. You want to convert well and the more traffic you have, the higher number of sales you will have. You want to have a lot of traffic and the higher percentage you convert at, the higher number of sales you will have. Both are important.

If you converted 100% of visitors but only got 1 a week, you're probably not doing very well. If you get 10,000 visitors a week but only convert at .0001%, then you're not doing any better than the above example at 1 a week. It's about both.

At the end of the day, it's not conversions or traffic that matters, it's sales. Traffic and conversion both play a role in that.

As for your question on if you should be satisfied or not, that's a more a business philosophical question. I would just ask yourself, "If this was MY business, would I be satisfied with this. Or would I want more?" I imagine if you ask yourself truthfully, you would want more.

If you're converting well, I would just work on getting traffic then.

It sounds like maybe you're also asking in what light to present it to your boss as well?