Why Isn’t Anyone Coming to My Website?
Your new website is live! It looks great, works well, its optimized for search engines, the check sent in the mail, but now what? Where is your return? Where are all the customers? In this blog we take a look at this all too common issue.
How Long Has It Been?
If your new website launched yesterday, you can’t expect a whole lot of traffic the day after. (Unless you did a launch event!) Things take time and most likely Google hasn’t even indexed your entire website yet. Have a little patience with it. We tell our clients it can take up to 60 days for Google to find the website and for it to settle in its place in the rankings.
Are You Pulling Your Weight?
Unlike opening a new brick-and-mortar store that will get curious passerby, if you don’t tell anyone your website exists, nobody will find it. Be sure that your company marketing has been updated to promote your website on business cards, flyers, email signatures, social media, and anywhere else you can put a link back to it. Don’t expect Google to be your only source of traffic, inform current customers and everyone you can that the new website exists.
Are You Incentivizing Customers to Visit?
It’s also important question ito make sure you are giving customers a reason to visit your website. Offering coupons, exclusive deals, web specials, or other incentives to visiting. If they don’t have any reason to visit, customers may not find a use for the site. Provide an easy way for customers to email or call you, get directions, view your menu, or find a location, so that they use the website whenever they think of your business.
Is It Optimized?
If the website is not optimized properly, Google and other search engines may have a hard time visiting the site. This is mostly important for very old websites, more than ten years old, although some newer sites may not be optimized properly. Images that make the page take too long to load or messy code can make it difficult for spiders to find your content or read it properly.
What Is There?
When people get there, what is there to find? Does the website look attractive? Does it lead customers through the site? It’s easy to even D-I-Y your own website, but what is often lacking is the focus on the user experience that a professional web designer employs to layout the website in a way that converts a curious guest into an actual customer. Make sure the site looks great across various devices to ensure guests have a stellar experience regardless of their viewing platform.
Have you Checked your Search Engine Optimization?
If your website isn’t getting any traffic, you should try searching your business as a normal customer would. Your initial instinct might be to slap in your company name or your website address directly in Google. While that’s important to check, people who don’t already know about your business will NOT be looking for you by name, -they don’t know it! Instead, you’ll want to search by the products and services you offer. And to refine it down further, you want to add a physical location at the end such as your city and/or state.
Are You Paying to Win?
You might have heard of “Google Adwords”. WithAdwords, essentially, you set a budget and pay Google for a certain amount of “clicks”. An important distinction with this is that you are paying for clicks, not necessarily actual orders or customers. However, for many businesses this option makes sense. If you are confident your website is up to par but you just aren’t getting traction, Google Adwords can be a great option to stimulate traffic and ensure your website is the first one people see when searching. Adwords is expensive and definitely a risk but it can pay off in many cases.
In Closing
In many cases, you might just need to give the site some time to breathe, but after a while, if you continue to knock down the cobwebs from your site you may need to seek the help of a professional. A website designer can ensure the website is designed properly and that the user-experience is being well-cared for. A professional website developer or SEO specialist can make sure the code is up to snuff and not causing readability issues for search engines. A copywriter can ensure your website text is well-written and engaging. And finally, consider hiring a marketing professional who can run ad campaigns or organize events to help bring in more traffic.
You could also keep all those cooks out of the kitchen and give Starcresc a call. Our team can do all of the above, as we have been doing for over 10 years. Give us a call if your website is feeling a little lonely.
