More Website Traffic Or A Smarter Website?

Do you need more website traffic or a smarter website?  People often assume that they can take their current website conversions rate and perfectly scale it up to more traffic — for example if the site has 100 visitors and 2 conversions a day then with 1,000 visitors it will have 20 conversion per day.  While that works great, there are some flaws in that type of thinking.  But more importantly, most websites don’t just need more traffic, they need a smarter website as well.
A smarter website in my mind means two things: targeted traffic and a conversion optimized website.  Let’s start with smarter traffic — in this case quality is much greater than quantity.  I would much rather have 5 targeted website visitors than 500 untargeted visitors because I know my conversion rate will be way higher with the targeted traffic.  Some SEO firms go after keywords with the most traffic — for example “weight loss” — but smart SEO firms go after keywords that will convert well for your business — like “losing weight with resistance bands” for example.  It’s important not to just have a large quantity of website traffic, but it’s important to have targeted traffic that is likely to convert for you.
Now on to the meat and potatoes of this post — having a properly optimized website.  No matter what niche you’re in, there comes a point when you max out your SEO campaign.  Sure we could go after more and more keywords, but there comes a point when you have several thousand visitors per day on your site that we need to evaluate other aspects of your online marketing.  In many cases we actually start out of SEO campaigns with website conversion optimization because it’s just that important.  Think of it this way — would you rather spend a few extra dollars up front to have an optimized website and have say a 5% conversion rate, or would you rather spend months investing in SEO and have a 2% conversion rate with all that new traffic?
Website conversion optimization nearly always pays for itself within the first 3 months — I can’t think of a single website we’ve optimized that hasn’t seen dramatic improvements in the conversion rate.  Conversion optimization truly makes your website smarter, and at the end of the day your website should always be your company’s best sales person.
And website conversion optimization doesn’t mean make your website ugly or have flashing buy now buttons all over the place.  Websites can remain elegant and classy while being properly optimized for conversions.  It’s about getting attention, but it doesn’t always have to be as obnoxious as a guy on the bottom right corner yelling “Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!” — you get the point.
So before you think that your website just needs more traffic to make you more money, think about formulating a smarter website and smarter marketing plan.  Nearly all of our clients who come to us for conversion optimization or redesign work and SEO see a much better ROI than those who continue on with SEO and a website that isn’t setup to convert well.