5 Ways Small Businesses Can Drive Customers To Their Sites

Here’s how to drive traffic (and customers) to your small business website.

If you’re running a business in 2017, you know your website is the most important sales tool you have, simply by the fact that if you didn’t have one, it would repel almost every consumer who considered your brand. In order to have a successful site, your customers will need to be able to find it, and they’ll need to be able to use it. Seems simple enough, right? Here’s how to drive traffic (and customers) to your small business website:Make Sure Your Website Is Up To DateThere are few things more off-putting to customers than landing on a website that looks like it hasn’t been updated in years. Not only does this indicate that it will likely be difficult to use, but it also is likely to lack modern security protocols – which means they’ll be afraid to send you money through your system.Optimize Your ContentWhen was the last time you put up new content on your website? Do you have a blog? If your answers were “I don’t remember,” and “no,” respectively, your lack of content is likely dragging your website down in search engines. In short, your site is not search engine optimized, or SEO’d. This is a simple fix, though not an easy one. It’s important that you provide fresh content on your website on a quite regular basis – the more often the better, but at least three times a week. Unless you’re updating your product listings this frequently, a blog is the best means for providing these updates without making nonsensical or meaningless changes just to make them. On top of this, make sure you have your development optimize your blog as well as install the necessary plug ins to make sure you’re maximizing views. Unless your a seed stage startup, don’t settle for cheap hosting options that will make your site take forever to load, causing you to lose leads. Instead, pay the extra dollars for a major hosting company like Amazon, Shopify, or Rackspace to make sure you’re site is in tip top shape.Invest In PPCSEO is incredibly valuable and can yield great results over time, but short term goals can seem much more urgent. Enter: PPC.PPC and SEO should be treated as two sides of the same coin, and work best when used in unison. Create a common goal that both campaigns should work towards, and have them support each other. For example, if your main goal is more site visitors, you’ll want to start off with a heavy emphasis on PPC, while working on increasing your SEO in the background. Over time, as more users come to your website, you’ll focus more on quality content and maintaining your SEO, and will need to spend less on PPC.Get Active On Social MediaIf you aren’t doing it yet, it’s well past time to start! A great way to get the attention of your audience is to have an active and engaging social media presence. Using social media to generate leads can be an incredibly effective tactic, and is completely free aside from the time needed to pull it off correctly. How do you start? Design a brand personality, and stick with it – and then start talking to your audience. Be a part of the community, and the community will support you.Measure EverythingIn order to know if your efforts are succeeding, you’ll need to measure your progress. Just as you wouldn’t have a child study and never test their knowledge, don’t continually invest in the campaigns that seem right, without testing whether or not they’re actually helping. The main metrics you’ll want to measure are: • Site visits • Bounce rate • Conversion rate • Follows/likes on social media You can easily achieve the first three by installing Google Analytics, Hubspot or a similar software. For the last, make sure to make a record of the number of followers you have on each social media account, and check back every month or so to see your progress. Bringing more visitors to your site is a great goal for any small business, but make sure that you’re ready to serve them, and that your site lives up to the expectations you set in your marketing and advertising. Invest in your website the same way you would invest in your storefront, and your success will know no bounds. Source: 5 Ways Small Businesses Can Drive Customers To Their Sites