Ever banged your head tirelessly on a wall in a darkened corner until you saw tiny rainbow coloured elves after you experienced a sharp decline in traffic on one of your online properties? Well maybe you’re not as bad as me, but it’s natural for a webmaster to experience displeasure and even a feeling of failure after a fall in visitors – heck it’s exactly what drives a lot of people to abandon shop. However for the record, every single website on the internet that receives genuine visitors, will at one point or another experience this kind of slump, whether it be in response to online or offline factors.
A true entrepreneur can turn a disadvantage into an advantage, and while I’m no Donald Trump – I can definitely say to you without an ounce of doubt in my mind, that a lack of traffic can be transformed into a positive thing. For starters you’re handed a golden opportunity to re-evaluate your entire operation, and effectively locate and correct the root of the problem. Depending on your personality traits, experiencing a backlash from your visitors may be enough to ignite a savage fire of ambition and motivation, which when handled correctly can be absolutely paramount in getting you over the line and beyond.
Evaluating your website correctly is extremely essential in ensuring its continued survival, and while sometimes blunt honesty can hurt, it’s often just what the doctor ordered. There’s an entire series of checks you can perform in order to rectify the issue that’s sucking the traffic away from you.
1. Re-evaluate your colour scheme, layout and overall website accessibility.
When going over your design, it’s best to keep an open mind. Ask yourself if your visitors are getting lost in your layout, or whether the colour scheme may be driving them into the open arms of your competitors. Ask a friend or two to give their opinions.
2. Ensure your website is compatible with the major browsers.
Make sure you check to see whether your website is compatible with the major browsers - Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.
3. Ensure all links and forms are correctly functioning
A lot of the time, broken links are enough to scare visitors away. They undermine your credibility as an expert in your field, and portray your website as amateurish. Make sure you click on every link and submit every form to ensure they’re working correctly.
4. Test your loading time.
With a ton of web hosts springing up over night, it’s sometimes difficult to determine which one is suitable for you. Employ a third party website uptime monitor and pay attention to the speed of your website.
5. Re-evaluate the relevance and quality of your content.
As much of a cliche as it might be, it goes without saying these days - Content is king, and a lack of quality or relevance is without doubt enough to completely destroy your website.
6. Determine your sources of traffic.
A lot of the time you can pinpoint where you’re lacking by locating the source of your traffic. Compare your statistics to statistics captured when your website was receiving an optimal amount of visitors, and visit the websites brining in a reduced number of traffic in a bid to understand and further solve the situation.
7. Check if all images are loading correctly.
Browse your website in the hunt for broken images. A lot of the time, like broken links, broken images also reduce your credibility with your target audience, and can therefore be very damaging.
8. Re-evaluate your niche.
Is your niche dying out? Sometimes you need to be honest with yourself, and bail out before your target audience is diminished. Alternatively, one can attempt to revive the market but introducing an innovative and highly desired service, product or feature into their website.
9. Wonder over to the competition.
Have they introduced something into their site that may be thwarting your attempts are increasing your traffic flow. If so, it’s time to apply some camouflage paint and get down to good old business.
Remember to seek the advice of some friends, and even visitors as gathering a series of opinions is unquestionably paramount in ensuring you hit back twice as hard. Consistency is key is the online world, and those who continue to get up after every fall, and capitalize on every success will emerge as the winners.
Some of us operate our websites passively, and aren’t really required to make regular updates, while others consider updating, improving and further monetizing their online property a full time career. Then theres the guys who sit in between the two - that is - those who regularly make updates to their website without really considering their online properties to be full time careers.
Regardless of whenever you make your updates or modifications, effective time management will ensure your producing an optimal productivity output in a shorter time span. As of lately, I’ve been employing and enjoying the benefits of a few strategies designed to ensure my content sits at the highest quality I can possibly produce. These strategies revolve around how my time is managed. Heck, what’s next is a solution to eliminate sleep from my life and I’d be able to run the world.
I usually tend to overload myself with mental notes, with about 30% of these notes being forgotten and unknowingly replaced by the hype much larger ideas can often bring. This is exactly why I’ve began making physical records of everything that I’d usually try and remember. Aside the obvious benefits, doing things this way allows you to further process your ideas and even subconsciously expand on them.
While making records of your thoughts and putting cutoff dates to them is without doubt absolutely paramount in ensuring you’re making the most of your available time, it’s important to understand that time management goes much further beyond this.
If you operate a website that continuously produces fresh content, then doing things such as pre-writing your articles gives you an opportunity to expand on your thoughts and further improve the flow of your ideas, while removing the pressure of producing your content on the spot. I’ve recently began writing up draft articles, which I continue to pick at until I’m satisfied that they’re of the highest quality and thoroughly express my full thoughts and opinions.
Establishing a list of short and long term objectives and focusing on achieving them will ensure you remain on course and consequently steer away on wasting time on items of irrelevance. I’ve recently compiled a list of milestones I’d like to reach in the next six months. These include:
- Publishing unique, well written content pitched from a unique angle.
- Reaching the 500 RSS Subscriber mark.
- Taking the unique visitors per day from xxx figures into the xxxx figures.
- Establishing a solid list back links in the mid xxx range.
- Publishing at least 155 blog posts in the next six months.
Don’t be afraid of aiming high - if you’re willing to dedicate yourself to ensuring you reach and even exceed these objectives. Listing a set of objectives is the first step in a series of planning and scrutinizing your website - a step often followed by a strategic plan designed to ensure these goals are met. Throughout the life of this blog, I’ll be detailing how I plan to reach these figures, with comprehensive reports on how my marketing attempts have panned out.
I cannot stress the importance of planning the direction you want your project to accelerate in. This in the past has been key to my success. It injects motivation, defines success itself, and pretty much holds your hand as you reach the pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow.
I also wanted to say that I won’t be posting for a few days, as I’ll be celebrating with some family and friends. Stay safe, and have a wonderful holiday season, and I’ll see you all soon!
I’ve been responding to a few requests for help on the Digital Point forums lately from webmasters who are having a few issues getting their message across to potential consumers and/or visitors. And you know what I’ve recommended in most cases? Viral Marketing
Like a virus, viral marketing is designed to spread amongst a targeted community, ‘infecting’ person after person through word of mouth, consequently creating a knock-on effect. It is without a glimmer of doubt, extremely effective and simultaneously proven to work rather well. So the question is, how can we get viral marketing to work for your website?
One of the most classic examples that comes to mind in the online world, is Hotmail and their now famous viral campaign. It was a simple and effective concept, that helped drive the email giant into becoming what it is today - and did I mention it was simple? The concept was setting up a free email service, in which anyone could sign up, and placing a small advertisement in each users signature; “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com”.
Viral Marketing can be also mean staging an event to get people talking, whether it be something rather outrageous, hilarious or simply unique. I remember some years ago, a major mobile/cell phone carrier (Vodafone) had someone run into the middle of a sporting event - naked, with their company name written on them. From memory I think this happened in the UK - but please feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.
To get people talking you need to stand out. Some very quick ideas for viral marketing campaigns are;
1. Announcing a product/feature with a minimal amount of detail, and issuing a countdown to ’something’ brand spankin’ new. This also has the potential to backfire if your feature or product does not live up to the hype, so you’d want to be sure you do this one correctly.
2. Engaging in some sort of challenge with your viewers. Some examples that I’ve come across over the years are; “If I can’t raise $72,000 from affiliate marketing - I’ll walk around in a dress for a day” or “If I reach one million unique views - I’ll donate xxxx to charity”.
3. Pulling a stunt, writing about it and/or video-taping it, and publicizing it on your website. The CEO for Host Gator recently pretended to be homeless and attempted to find out how much he could earn by asking people for money. He then issued a money making challenge to his staff members, and later donated the money to charity.
4. Engaging in something controversial. Controversy sells! I’ve seen many bigger websites get themselves into disputes with the little guys, and when attempting to publicly shame them, they often send buckets of traffic to the smaller site.
I was talking to a friend earlier today, and I think this one wins it. I think I’ve found the most ridiculous excuse from an online business.
Basically my friend ordered something from these guys a few years ago, and he received an email recently asking him to pay $55.00. He rang their technical support department, and after leaving his phone number, he was assured the issue would be appropriately addressed.
Earlier this morning, he received another two emails - each one requesting a sum of $704.00. Now he was pretty sure somebody wasn’t purchasing these items without his permission, partly due to the fact that these guys require payment through check and simply ask you to fill out a form without requiring you to register an account.
He went ahead and gave technical support another call, and demanded answers this time. After advising him they’d put him through to accounts, the lady simply went ahead and decided to hang up on him. After he decided to ring back, this time leaving a message with his phone number, he received a phone call a few minutes later advising him the emails were - please get this - part of a test the IT department was running with their systems.
And these guys aren’t a backyard operation either - they’re actually a multi-million dollar corporation.. Needless to say, I don’t think he’ll ever be heading back there.
Have you had any experiences with companies who pumped out some pathetic excuses? Go ahead and leave a comment, I’d be very interested in hearing what you’ve got to say.
I don’t really remember how I came across Entrecard, but I’m definitely glad I did. While it’s a little too early to make any definitive conclusions on how effective this blog network is, I can safely say as of yet things have been pretty good - easily much better than expected.
Entrecard is practically a virtual business card which is specifically intended for bloggers. By ‘dropping’ your business card to other blog owners, or by simply receiving drops, you are awarded credits which may then be used to purchase advertising space on any blog which permits advertising. You may also sell, trade or give away your Entrecard credits.
Other blog owners need to access your site and click on your Entrecard widget in order to send you a drop, consequently yielding traffic. Now I know what you’re thinking … everyone knows this isn’t going to work out because any blog owner visiting to submit a drop will probably spend about five seconds on your website before bouncing off to the next blog on his list.
In one sense, your thoughts are correct - but lets try and take a look at this from another angle. You’ve got a whole range of fellow blog owners visiting your website, often every twenty four hours (one drop per twenty four hours). I see a window of opportunity here, especially if your blog is of any direct benefit to fellow blog members.
You have five seconds to capture your fellow blog owners attention - so what are you gunna do?
In my opinion, offering your Entrecard referred traffic some sort of incentive to engage in some sort of activity in your blog is the first step. But before we jump the gun, lets focus on how we’re going to visually capture their attention first.
Setting up a widget next to your Entrecard, in a of bold, eye catching colour, detailing your bid to have these five second readers converted into loyalists, is in my opinion a very sound idea. Better yet, you can insert this text inside the Entrecard widget, therefore placing it in their faces. Seeing as Entrecard allows you to give away credits, running some sort of credit give away in exchange for some sort of involvement would be absolutely ideal - especially as the webmaster is really only on your blog because they’re seeking to up their credit count in a bid to purchase some advertising.
Encouraging these webmasters to contribute a genuine, 10 word comment usually means their going to have to at least skim through one article on your blog - and if worst comes to worst, you’ll still be remembered as the blog that gave them free credits.
I’m very interested to hear how Entrecard is performing for you.. Are you raking in much traffic, whether it be from advertisements you’ve dropped or card drops?
I, like a lot of other webmasters, have at one point or another, opened up our wallets and shouted at the top of our humble voices that we’re giving our cash away. Well that’s what we’ve practically done anyway, and while there’s without question an ocean of reliable paid advertising resources on the internet, there’s just as much free resources which many overlook because they costs nothing but time. Now days, a lot of us in the webmaster community seem to be under the impression that if it isn’t paid, then it’s useless.
Here’s a list of resources that can be beneficial to the development of your website;
Online Forums
Forums are surprisingly effective when it comes to bringing traffic to your website. Setup a signature, advertise in the appropriate sections, and post away! Remember to keep your posts informative as this will reflect upon your knowledge about your particular niche.
Google Submissions
Submitting your website to Google will speed up the process of your site getting indexed. This is more of a long term thing, which can only really be of benefit to you in the future.
Web Directories
There are a series of free web directories out there, that can send traffic over to your website, while also assisting your Google rankings. I feel a lot of people tend to overlook web directories, and since many are free, there’s not much harm in giving them a shot.
Link Exchanges
Exchanging links with other websites, when done correctly, can often yield sizable results, and also adds to the amount of back links your site is receiving.
Blogs
The blogosphere is rapidly expanding, with internet users warmly embracing the concept. Besides offering to exchange a service in order to have a blog review your service (which can deliver excellent traffic and branding), going that extra step and creating your own blog can entice more recurring visitors. It also provides you with a gateway to connect with your users, and receive feedback on your website, services and/or services.
Commenting blogs
Genuinely commenting other peoples blogs (when you have something to say), can be an effective source of traffic for your website, as many blogs allowing you to leave your URL behind. This also allows you to forge business relationships with people in your industry, which may later flourish to both of your benefits.
Controversy
While this isn’t really a resource, controversy is absolutely gold when it comes to bringing attention to your website. As the saying goings, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
In an era where technology permits us to establish a fully functional website at the click of a few buttons, many webmasters are witnessing their projects hopelessly die out, often before they even get off the ground. A whopping nine out of ten or 90% websites will inevitably fail. What’s even more alarming is that a good majority of these websites could have quite easily prevented their downfall by employing some very simple strategies into their overall model. Here they are, in no particular order;
1. Lack of goals and direction.
Many webmasters often share a profound interest in a particular subject, which fuels their motivation to fork out money, and invest time into producing a website - and while this is nice, it’s simply not enough to keep you going. You need a sense of direction. Where do you want to go with your website.. Are you in this to pull in some extra money, or do you want to keep this as a hobby? If so, how will you sustain web hosting and other miscellaneous fees?
2. Lack of advertising and promotion.
While your passion and ambition may be overwhelmingly strong, a sense of marketing is required to survive in the online world. You need to take a step back, and determine how you plan to market your website. Check out my following blog post for some more information on this.
3. Lack of patience and commitment.
If you plan on doing this right, you need to have patience. In the past, especially when I was first starting out, I was quick to give up on a few concepts that could have been very profitable because I had a lack of patience. You need to have patience, as you would with an offline business (regardless of whether you intend to generate a profit with your website). You need commitment to get through the periods where it seems that the online world seems to ignore your property.
4. You have not submitted your website to Google.
Sure there’s other search engines, and as much as I dislike the idea of one corporation with such dominating control over the internet, I’m simply saying it as it is. Especially for the newer websites, Google can potentially make or break you. It’s best to make a submission to the big four (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask), and get started with some SEO optimization.
5. You are unoriginal.
Content is absolutely everything on the internet, and when you find yourself in a position where you cannot generate unique content, then you’ve got a rather large problem. Why would people head on over to your website when they can pickup a lot more with your competitor?
Just checking in to let everyone know I’m working hard on a few things before I resume posting. Aside from the new design, and a few cool widgets (some aren’t visible yet), I’m focusing a lot of energy on the model for the blog.
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