A lot of work goes into attracting organic website traffic, but once you start ranking on page 1 and getting the visitors to your site, what next?
SEO is important for growing website traffic but the most important website metric is conversion. How many of your visitors are taking action? Action can be:
-Filling in your contact form to get more information or book a call
-Purchasing your product online
-Downloading your lead magnet
-Signing up to your email list
If you’re noticing a steady stream of traffic but aren’t noticing an increase in engagement metrics, then this could be because of a few things:
You’re attracting the wrong type of traffic
The SEO keywords you’ve targeted have a different search intent to what you first thought. Website visitors might be landing on your page and then quickly leaving.
Your website doesn’t offer something at each stage of your buyer’s journey
This happens when you’re too focused on users who are almost ready to buy, rather than capturing potential clients/customers at the very first stage of the buying journey and then nurturing them until they are ready to buy.
Think of it like going to a networking event, shaking hands with someone you’ve just met and then they’re asking you to buy their thing. Ewww x 1000.
A better approach would be to build and nurture a strong network of connections and see what comes out of it in future.
What can your website offer that helps people at the very early stages, when they’re simply gathering information? And how can you capture their interest and nurture them through your sales funnel?
Your website has barriers that are preventing action-taking
From buttons that don’t click, to links that are invisible and pages that no longer exist, there are many possible barriers on your website that are stopping users from taking action.
The great news is that these barriers are easy to overcome, with a website audit and action to fix any technical issues.
What are the most important engagement metrics?
The following are important engagement metrics for your website:
Page Views
Average Time on Page
Average Session Duration
Traffic acquisition (where did your website traffic come from?)
Pages per Session
Bounce Rate (are users quickly leaving your website without taking action?)
New Visitor Sessions
Repeat vs new users
Conversion Rate
Exit Rate
Top Exit Pages- are these typical pages you would exit from? Has their problem been solved?
Revenue Attribution
Event Tracking- events such as purchases, form completions, downloads.
How to measure engagement metrics
Google Analytics and heat mapping tools such as Hotjar are great tools for measuring engagement metrics.
I use Hotjar on my website to monitor user behaviour on my course sales pages. I use both the heat mapping tool and the recording tool.
The heat mapping shows spots on the page where users have taken action. The heat spots have different colours according to how many times a user has taken action in that spot. Red shows “hot” areas of the page where the most action is taken.
The recording tool records a user session, so you can watch how the user behaved on the page. This is really interesting as you can see what the user is doing (can feel a bit creepy too- I once saw someone highlighting my whole page, which tells me they were probably copying my text and doing who knows what! A competitor, perhaps?!).
For my sales pages, I noticed that users were stopping at certain sections of the page.
This was helpful to know, and I ended up making changes by cutting out some of the copy, changing the CTA microcopy and moving some of the testimonials closer to the top of the page.
I also noticed that some users were scrolling quickly until they got to the pricing information. Perhaps users are sick of reading through sales copy on very long sales pages and just want the information upfront. You can’t fool people!
What you can do to improve website engagement
-Have a look at your Google Analytics account and find out how people are behaving on your website- which page are they landing on, which page are they leaving from, where have they come from and how much time are they spending on your website.
-Create a Hotjar account and use the free option to start heat mapping your most important pages. Start recording behaviour on your sales pages and check them regularly.
-Get your website audited- check that all the buttons are working, links are going to valid pages, sign up forms are actually signing people up properly, pop ups and downloads are working.
SEO for better website engagement
Search intent is one of the most important aspects of keyword research. You need to know why people are using a certain keyword, so that you can decide if the keyword is suitable for the page you’re trying to optimise.
Need help with keyword research and ensuring the most relevant keywords are used in your copy? Contact me about my outsourced keyword research services.
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