What do you do with your Web site Traffic?

Have you ever noticed how much everybody talks about Internet marketing? It seems to be one of the hottest topics on the Internet over the past few years. The funny thing about it is that with all the talk that has been going on very few people actually understand some of the fundamental principles of Internet marketing. For example, what is the most important aspect of your Internet marketing campaigns? What is the most important area to focus on in order to make your business succeed? If you answered "getting traffic to my website" then you are not alone. This is one of the most troubling subjects on most webmasters' minds. But it is the WRONG answer! What you should worry about most is "What do you do with the traffic that your website already receives?" Are you throwing it away? Perhaps you are only really holding onto about 1% of it, maybe even less! Before even considering what you are going to do to drive more traffic to your website you need to consider this topic first. For example, let's say that you are already getting 500 visitors a day (that's rather healthy). You sell some sort of product that costs $50 and make on average 2 sales a day (not bad at all!). However, you want to double your sales. There are two ways you can do this. It is obvious that for every 500 visitors you are getting 2 sales. That means that you could increase your traffic by 500 visitors a day in order to obtain your goal. That's pretty easy math isn't it? That's what most people do! They say: "Well, I'm making $50 a day with 200 visitors, so if I get 400 visitors a day then I can make $100!" Then they go off to spend their money on increasing their traffic. Hey, if they can double their traffic for less than $50, then it's a good deal! HOWEVER, there is another way to double your sales. Think about it this way: You are only converting 2 out of every 500 visitors into customers! That's a 0.4% conversion rate. What you could do instead is improve your website so that you double your conversion rate. That means that you would get 4 sales for every 500 visitors. And guess what? You are already getting the 500 visitors! Don't look at it as if you are making 2 sales a day; look at it as if you are losing 498 sales every day. How much longer do you want to lose 498 sales? So how do you increase your conversion rate? Well, your website probably can't get any worse than it is right now, so why not change it? Here are a few basic things that you can do: 1. Track everything that you do. If you don't know the conversion rate of your website, look up your traffic logs and write down the average number of visitors you get every day. Then look up your sales records and find out how many sales you get every day. Write this down. 2. Make small changes to your website. Don't change a lot. Maybe clean up your navigation menu a bit. Change the header on your sales letter. Change the background color or image. The key here is to only make small changes. 3. Track what happens next. Now watch your traffic and sales for the next week or so. Did you notice a difference? Did it get better? Did it get worse? If it got better then keep whatever it is you did. If it got worse, then revert back to your old design. 4. Repeat steps 1 to 3. Now go back and record how you are doing. Make another small change and see if it makes a difference. This may sound like a lot of work (and it is), but I guarantee that it will help you to make higher profits on your website, without spending a dime on advertising! If there is one difference that I have noticed between successful marketers and unsuccessful marketers it is that they test and they track EVERYTHING that they do. If you don't know how well you are doing, how are you going to improve? Matthew Glanfield is an Internet marketing veteran of 3 years. Receive his free email course on how to start your own Internet business by visiting http://www.internetbusinessformula.com.