Brochureware or Lead Generation?

Websites can range from a static page with few images and sparse words to a database-driven, e-commerce site with thousands of products presented dynamically based upon the source of the site visits.  For our purposes, we are going to focus on two basic types – electronic business cards that validate your business to people who know you or lead generation sites that attract prospects with problems your services might solve.  It is worth keeping this in mind:

“People rarely stumble across a website without actively looking for something”.

With over 2 billion websites, why would someone come to your URL (the address of a web page)? Typically, either Paid Media (say, pay-per-click), Earned Media (public relations) or Owned Media (your content matching a search) are the main reasons an individual visits a website.  Personal referrals is another, although less frequent reason to visit a site.

So, what type of traffic and how many visitors do you expect to attract?  How will you go about driving traffic to your site?

Google has 9 main channels of traffic – with the most popular ones being direct, organic, referral, social and email.

Direct Traffic

The simplest way to think about “direct traffic” is when someone types in the web address in the browser.  If you read, the New York Times, typing in nytimes.com would be an example of direct traffic.  For the school you attend, where you worship, your bank, or other repeatedly visited sites, you type in the address.  After a while you may bookmark the address or the address begins to auto-populate from the first few keystrokes.

Visitors may come to your site directly because they are past customers.  Perhaps they’ve typed in your URL because you have a physical location or a store receipt publicizing your website so they know where to find you.  Alternatively, you were referred to them by a trusted source – such as a family member, a neighbor, or some other acquaintance.

If your firm is famous, such as Nike, you will attract traffic due to that branding.

The point is, direct site visits are not random.  There is existent knowledge of a site due to brand awareness, some type of media campaign or a personal referral.

Search-Engine Traffic

It wasn’t long ago that much of advertising was broadcasting – a one-way conversation from advertisers using a megaphone.  An increasing percentage of advertising is approaching a two-way conversation, often initiated by consumers.  The analog model presumed, for example that a large percentage of people watching a football game are male and a large percentage of those men enjoy beer, ergo broadcast a beer commercial. The digital model waits until a user reveals their interest, via search query such as “home painters near me,” and returns with multiple relevant results.

A Google search is really a question.  When customers are searching for your branded company name or generic phrases that describe products you sell, how visible is your service as an answer?

A key driver addressing the above question is your website.  How well is it coded?  How often is it visited?  How relevant is the content?  Does it dovetail with what web-surfers are looking for?  How much are consumers engaging with your site?  What other credible website links to yours? Traffic that results from search queries is considered to be part of the “organic” channel.

Referred or Linked Traffic

Referral traffic could be personal (from your neighbor or friend) or digital (from a banner advertisement, content from a social platform, or an email link).  Digital referrals are what is considered to be “referral traffic” in Google Analytics.  A referral could have the benefit of being timely and trustworthy.  The challenge with referrals is they are often unpredictable, episodic, or out of context.  While referrals are good to have when you can get them, unless they stem from a source such as an organized email campaign or sustained banner advertising, they fail to offer consistent lead generation.

Tell Customers Your Service or Answer Your Prospects’ Questions?

Ultimately, websites can be segregated into one of two orientations – from the inside out or the outside in.  If telling customers what to do has served you well and your company is recognized for its thought leadership, then your site can be more of the former.  In our experience, the latter gets more traffic since it is customer-centric. A site built for SEO is optimized to be visible to search queries and more specifically Google, since it dominates 90% of search. A study about B2B marketing explained it this way:

“Most of your growth potential lies in reaching people who won’t buy from you today, but who will buy from you in the future”.

Whichever way you choose to execute your site, remember:

It is important to convey your value proposition to your target audience

It is as simple, and as difficult, as that.  By analogy, the game of soccer is a simple game of 11 versus 11 on a field 100 yards by 50 yards played with one ball to be kicked into either opposing goal.  If you’ve ever played the game, you know that the touch required, the conditioning, the tactical awareness, the strategic gameplay, and the overall competitiveness results in only the most passionate players practicing their craft frequently in being above average, let alone exceptional.

So it is with executing an exceptional website.  What question is being asked and what is the best way to answer it?  What methods are tried, proven and true?  What new methodologies are developing?  When and how best to incorporate those developments into your web presence?  We sweat the details in the website design to give you the best results.  We reflect on our own experience and work with a large network of world class marketers to bring you our very best.

Be Internet Worthy

Unless you have a gated website with member-only access, your presence is accessible 24/7 from anywhere on the World Wide Web.  You  get only one chance to make a first impression.  Visitors decide in seconds whether they want to invest more time on your site or simply type another web address.  Is your website Internet-worthy?  If you’ve traditionally enjoyed fantastic word-of-mouth with your clients, why not replicate that same interactive engagement digitally?  Call us today if you are ready to have your website better represent your brand and you are interested in generating leads with your web presence.