Why won’t website visitors do what I want?

Posted by Dave CollinsDigital Marketing, General

Pulling-in targeted visitors to your website is relatively easy. There’s Google AdWords, AdCenter, press releases, twitter, blogs and hundreds of other opportunities for jumping in front of the right people and waving your arms around so they don’t forget you.

Getting them to stay, however, is more difficult.

Many small and medium-sized companies make the mistake of too many assumptions.

They assume their visitors understand their terminology. Everyone with a slow windows system understands the need for Registry Optimisation and Defragging.

They assume their visitors know the difference between free download and free trial. Then wonder why their download to sales conversion ratios are low, while their AdWords conversion rates are ten times higher.

They assume their visitors have already researched their competition. When their comparison matrix has the highest exit rate on their website, they don’t understand why.

And they assume they understand what their visitors want and how they go about getting it. This, perhaps, is the greatest mistake of all.

My first tip for 2010: stop guessing what your visitors want and start listening to them.

My second tip for 2010: your server logs contain everything you need to do so and more.

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