Use data to increase website traffic
Use data to increase website traffic
1. Build feedback loops within your sales funnel that give customers an opportunity to tell you about themselves and what they want.
You should be looking to gather feedback at every opportunity possible. This might include: Welcome emails Purchase receipts Thank you pages Surveys for customers who’ve been with you for 3/6/12 months Unsubscribe pages. Some ideas include: Interactive chat or surveys on high touch sales pages (whichever drives more response) Interactive surveys on category pages (help refine your content strategy by category) Triggered survey for non-logged in returning visitor who has navigated multiple pages on site The moment they subscribe to your email list Right after they’ve consumed your lead magnet If they haven’t opened an email in some time If they open, click, but never buy After buying their first product from you After buying multiple products from you After buying from you for several months Customer feedback forums Interactive chat inside the app When they haven’t bought for a while If they didn’t become customers after free trial For example, if you wanted to form more strategic partnerships, you might automate a survey that goes to the customers who have been buying from you for 6 months and asks: Why do they shop with you? What’s their lifestyle like? Where else do they shop online?
2. Conduct market research to understand what ideal customers might search for, what synergistic interests they might have, and where they hang out.
Use what you learn to develop content that your ideal customers will find compelling but others won’t. You want clicks from people who will move through your sales funnel with the least amount of friction. Do most people look at the page and close it right away? Are you satisfied with the conversion rate from visitors to leads? Of those leads, are you satisfied with the conversion rate from leads to customers? For example, the Australian Air Force ran a banner ad on an Australian IT news website with a clever incentive to click: Upon inspecting the source code, visitors would find the following: Even with a limited budget, this ad won an advertising award, massively increased job inquires for the Australian Air Force, and reduced the average cost per enlistment. Considering that the “ad” was hidden in the source code of the page, it spoke exclusively to the target market—nobody else could see it!
3. Split test your ad creatives on a sample group that’s large enough to get reliable data but not so large to cost you a fortune.
Change one variable at a time and use similar conditions on each test, like the same time of the day, same bid (although bid prices vary), same length of time, etc. Look at the lifetime value of customers who came from specific ads, or if visitors from one ad converted faster than others, as well as basic click-through and conversion rates. Change to a new ad after a few variable tests. Rotate your ads frequently to avoid boring your audience with repetitive content.
4. Run competitive analyses and look at the most popular content shared by your competition to inform your ad content choices.
Look for similarities in popular content – do you see shared themes, styles, or esthetics? On Facebook, if you do a graph search for “Pages liked by fans of [competitor page]” and add those pages to a dedicated Facebook list, you can get a real-time feed of the images everyone is using to grab your market’s attention.
5. Conduct customer research to find out where on social media your ideal customers tend to go, who they're connected to, and what they do there.
When it comes to social media, you need to figure out where your ideal customer is hanging out and to whom they’re connected. There’s a whole world of social media beyond Facebook pages and branded Twitter accounts: Facebook groups; Twitter hashtag chats; Instagram hashtags; Shared Pinterest boards; Specialized forums; Comment sections on blogs. Where and how you engage depends on who your target market is and how ready individuals in those groups are to hear your pitch. Different people conduct themselves differently on various platforms. As a byproduct, they also expect different kinds of content to fit within the culture of the platform.
6. Find the best audience and timing to use for your social media posts by looking at the performance of previous posts and data about your followers.
Facebook, for example, gives you loads of info, including how many people saw the post, the type of content that got the most interactions, and how much engagement each post received. In the CXL example above, the top seven posts: Asked for interaction Gave valuable tool lists Related to ecommerce or design. You can also learn from the image types, how the post was worded, and the subject matter. For example, you might find that UX & Persuasive Design articles perform better on Facebook, while analytics posts perform better on Twitter. Using the time of day report on Followerwonk, you can see when most of your followers are online. You can see roughly where in the world your followers Tweet from: Search Twitter bios for targeted keywords, locations, and min–max followers: As well as segment your – or anyone else’s – followers by social authority.
7. Test headlines on Twitter by Tweeting two different variations at nearly the same time, but at least an hour apart.
Compare the data and choose the winner, then reuse it later. Sharing tweets more than once typically leads to better performance the second time around.
8. Re-optimize title tags and meta descriptions and add rich snippets to popular pages on your site, using data from Google Search Console.
In Google Search Console, find high-impression, low-CTR queries by navigating to Search Traffic > Search Queries section and looking at the average Impressions, Clicks, CTR, and Position for all keywords for which your site appears in search results. Also check Google Analytics for bounce rate and time on site for pages corresponding to those high-impression, low-CTR queries. If you have a high bounce rate but impressions and clicks are decent, what people are looking for and what you’re offering probably do not match. You have four options: Tweak the Title and the Title Meta tags. Build more links to the page to increase rankings. Aim the page at a different keyword; Rewrite the content itself. For example, you might check the Search Results Page (Serp) for Customer Lifetime Value & see there’s already a ton of content around “calculating” customer lifetime value. You could rewrite this title tag using language that speaks more closely to the user’s search intent. Due to some visual changes Google’s been testing, you could also use Moz’s Title Tag Preview Tool to ensure proper formatting. Rewriting the meta descriptions to include calls to action was one of the things Redstar did to bring 200% growth for a client.