TRAFFIC OR CONVERSION: WHICH IS MORE IMPORTANT?

Let's start by saying that conversion is important.

I'm not trying to prove that it's useless.

I'm not trying to convince you that you shouldn't test the conversion of your blog posts, or that it will be good even if you don't work on it.

In this article I'll show that:

Investing time and effort in generating traffic is almost always more profitable than in increasing conversion.

Notice I said "almost."

If you focus only on attracting traffic that your site doesn't convert at all, then you should work on turning visitors into customers.

However, this doesn't apply to most of you.

Most likely, you already convert traffic — but you achieve fewer results than you'd like.

In other words, you spend time and money on increasing conversion.

And you're not the only ones who have chosen this path.

74% of companies assign the highest priority to interacting with visitors, putting selling them their products first.

Increasing the number of site visitors comes in second place.

Is this correct?

Of course, this approach has the right to exist.

But will it be optimal?

Is it worth increasing conversion at the expense of traffic?

That's exactly the question I've answered in this article.

I'll explain why, for most of you, the better site development strategy will be working on increasing the number of visitors rather than on their conversion into buyers.

I know that conversion is commonly considered the main indicator of a site's success.

There are many articles online, written by various authors, who argue that conversion is more important than generating traffic.

My article argues the opposite.

Now I'll give you 4 reasons why I consider traffic more important than conversion.

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Traffic Increases the Number of Sales

What is needed for high content conversion?

Which solution is the most effective?

You'll get the answers to these questions in this chapter.

Do you believe that quality traffic increases the number of conversions?

However, there's no need to believe — let's turn to the math.

Look at the average conversion rates in your field of business.

I'll warn you right away: you won't like what you see.

Most figures will be below 5%.

This means that out of 100 visitors, 5 or fewer become buyers.

Look at the conversion shown by sales pages in different lines of business.

This is the conversion of pages that gather hot and warm traffic, i.e. visitors interested in buying.

This is the conversion of sales pages, landing pages, whose every element — video, blocks of text, reviews, images — is aimed only at selling one product.

Will your article page be able to sell just as well?

Hardly!

The user will most likely close it if they see something resembling a landing page — they came for information, not for shopping.

They're not ready to buy yet.

To achieve the figures of a sales page, you have to create a sales page and then direct visitors interested in buying to it.

It turns out that for high conversion you need a page maximally optimized for selling and — attention! — quality traffic motivated to buy.

I've already written about creating such pages.

Look at how much time and money it takes to launch a landing page.

Is it worth investing in a tool that will sell to not 5 visitors out of 100, but 6?

Most likely, no.

There's a solution that's much more effective.

It's increasing traffic.

Even with low conversion, you'll be able to get more customers if you increase the number of site visitors.

Let's assume that you increased site traffic by 1,000 people.

At a conversion rate of 5%, this will give you 50 new customers.

This is easier and cheaper than getting 50 additional customers by investing resources in increasing conversion.

Investments in it are justified when you already have a lot of traffic.

That's why it's more profitable for most of you to focus on attracting visitors than on increasing conversion.

My experience says that boosting the conversion of beginner webmasters' sites isn't difficult — their mistakes are usually standard. Anyone interested can order an affordable site audit from me with recommendations for improving conversion. Usually you can make the necessary changes yourself by referring to step-by-step guides online.

Look at the trends in B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing:

Obviously, optimizing the site for conversion is not the main task.

Increasing traffic to the website is more important.

Investing in attracting new visitors will ultimately bring more profit.

A strategy focused on increasing the amount of traffic has one more advantage — after reading your company's informational articles, 70% of visitors will be loyal to it.

Use this in your site development strategy.

Attract traffic to the site and build trusting relationships with new visitors.

Use SEO materials — they'll help you start working on promoting your site.

I also highly recommend watching a video about site promotion:

By increasing traffic, you'll earn more money than by working on conversion.

Even if your site's conversion is below the industry average, you'll earn more by increasing the amount of traffic than by trying to change the percentage ratio between visitors and customers.

Do you want to get free traffic?

Are you interested in promoting your site?

Fill out the form below and I'll personally get in touch with you, and we'll discuss a plan for growing your business!

Traffic Works for Brand Awareness

Increasing brand awareness is a component link of your success.

In this chapter you'll learn how to work correctly in this direction.

The more people who know about your business, the more there are who will come to you to buy.

And by increasing traffic to your site, you increase your brand awareness.

Let's take content marketing as an example.

You write useful material for your target audience and publish it on your blog.

Then you launch ads on social networks and send out an email newsletter to subscribers.

In this article you'll learn how to compose an effective social media ad using Facebook as an example.

If everything is done right, the article will attract readers just as honey attracts bees.

Some of them are your subscribers, but most are new users.

They've never visited your blog before, and you can be sure — they've never bought or ordered anything from you.

They knew nothing at all about you and your business.

But now they've seen your logo, read your content, and maybe even subscribed to your newsletter.

In other words, now they know who you are, and most likely they liked what you offer.

Such attention is a serious marketing success!

Attracting traffic and generating leads is the main marketing task for 65% of companies.

If you hold the same opinion, then there's no need to convince you that you need more traffic and leads.

But you might need my help to realize this: increasing brand awareness is more important than optimizing your site to increase conversion.

Did you know that 51% of social media marketing specialists consider increasing brand awareness their main task?

And that 85% of companies use social communication tools mainly to draw attention to their brand?

At first glance, brand awareness seems like something of little importance.

Yet marketers invest a lot of time and money in it.

So why do they invest so much?

Because the more people know about you, the more they'll talk about you with their friends.

Just think about it.

Try to remember what you talked about with friends recently.

How many brands were mentioned in the conversation?

Did you discuss the store where you bought groceries?

Or the new book you recently read?

Or the movie you watched with the whole family?

The thing is, we talk about things that are at the center of our attention.

If your business is at the center of their attention, people will talk about you with their friends.

And that means their friends might visit your site.

Of course, brand awareness is a broader concept than recognizing a logo or corporate colors.

People should also interact with your business — for example, by visiting your website, reading blog posts, and leaving comments.

More than half — 54% — of email marketing specialists say that visitor engagement is one of the main goals of their work.

This means you should devote more time to optimizing your traffic generation strategy.

It's not enough to simply produce content — you need to create remarkable content.

Because ordinary content will attract visitors to your site, while excellent content will not only attract users but also increase trust in the brand.

And if they form a good opinion of your company, competitors will have to try very hard to convince them otherwise.

People don't like to change decisions they've made.

Traffic makes a brand recognizable, because people see you and, if you do everything right, they may even like you.

However, you can be sure: if users don't reach your site, they'll never be able to appreciate you and buy what you offer.

Recommended reading:

1. A/B Test: How to Boost Site Conversion by 1.5-2x (Step-by-Step Guide)
2. Examples of Creating and Checking a robots.txt File

Traffic Works for the Long Term

Buyers abandoning payment on sites?

How to retain customers properly and work for the long term.

$100,000 today or $1 million a year from now — which would you choose?

For most of us, this is a tough question.

After all, you can use $100,000 for your family, business, and life right now.

But in a year you'll be able to spend $1 million, right?

Despite the prospects, you most likely won't want to wait.

The difference between conversion optimization and increasing traffic is a bit like this situation.

Do you know why people abandon paying for online purchases on websites?

As you can see, there are many reasons.

There are quite a few more and less common reasons why people decide not to buy on a given site.

35% of customers don't want to create an account.

27% don't want to spend a lot of time on checkout.

24% are unhappy that they can't see the total amount to pay.

As a result, they leave the site.

For 18%, the key issue is trust in the brand.

Naturally, the site owner wants to change and fix everything possible.

Make account creation optional, speed up checkout, display the total cost of purchases on the page.

Will this increase conversion?

Maybe.

But not as much as they'd like.

At the same time, a development strategy focused on increasing traffic will bring them far more sales in the future.

Why am I sure of this?

Statistics show that 80% of sales happen between the fifth and twelfth contact.

What does this mean for you?

That people must see your ads, site, business, logo, messages, and content much earlier than they make a purchase from you.

This is inherent to human nature.

We want to be sure that we're making the right decision — and for that we have to trust the company we buy from.

And, of course, earning trust takes time.

That's why 88% of B2C content marketing specialists try to increase customer loyalty and engagement.

By focusing on increasing traffic, you most likely won't get profit right now.

But later it will be higher.

In a few months, people will start talking about you.

And ultimately you'll have a wonderful, endless source of passive visitor generation simply because people know your company and talk about it with acquaintances.

Any businessperson will like this.

Marketers allocated an average of 36% of their budgets to creating, managing, and publishing content.

Such a significant allocation of funds is the result of businesses already experiencing the long-term effects of a successful content marketing campaign.

Namely, the fact that people start talking about the brand, generating passive traffic and sales on the company's website.

There's one more fact.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 50% of companies cease operations within 6 years.

For Ukraine, the statistics look even sadder.

In the US, Europe, and China, people are opening more companies than ever, which means there are also far more of those who can't withstand the competition than before.

In this situation, traffic can become the key to developing your business in the medium and long term.

Traffic Lets You Run A/B Testing

Conversion optimization depends on attracting traffic.

The sales funnel and its optimization.

Testing as a source of answers to all marketing questions.

As mentioned above, I don't want you to completely stop working on increasing conversion.

Ultimately, working with traffic will increase the conversion rate too.

I believe that for most of you it's more important to focus on attracting visitors rather than on turning them into buyers.

Conversion optimization depends on attracting traffic.

What do I mean?

You can't run A/B testing of your site, analyze user behavior, and their attitude toward the content you publish without traffic.

You must have traffic so that you can test it.

In other words, traffic lets you test and iterate on your conversion strategy.

Without enough traffic, you won't be able to do anything.

A sufficient number of visitors is a mandatory condition for successfully testing site conversion.

How much traffic will you need?

The more, the better: the more people, the more statistics, the more accurate and faster the analysis.

Analyzing visitor behavior is the only way to test conversion and increase it by iterating and comparing the results of changes.

Do you want to miss out on such an opportunity?

I don't think so.

You want to optimize every page, ad block, column, sidebar, and word in the text.

Ideally, you want to optimize every part of the sales funnel.

But, I'll repeat, the only method that works is increasing traffic to a number of visitors large enough for analysis to reveal patterns in their behavior.

This is exactly what you don't want to do.

You don't want to run tests assuming that your calculations are already accurate.

You spend money, effort, and time making changes at random.

In the end, even if you do see the experiments through, you'll get the same results that testing produces with far fewer resources spent.

Believe me, without enough traffic, tests will give you nothing.

And conversely — with a large amount of traffic, tests will become a source of answers to all marketing questions.

Look at how tests should be conducted.

First, choose which site elements' conversion you'll improve.

Then create a hypothesis — an assumption about what should result from the experiment.

Now make changes to the site elements and run the experiment.

After testing ends, measure and compare the results, and choose what's better — what was, or what became.

If you don't have a large amount of traffic, testing will be biased and will more likely harm than help.

Conclusion

So, conversion matters.

And that's exactly why you should focus your efforts on traffic rather than on it.

Paradoxical, I understand.

But this really will be the best decision in most cases.

And the reasons for this decision are simple.

Traffic increases the number of conversions by raising brand awareness and trust in it, creates long-term business potential, and provides information for testing your site.

Many of you focus too much on conversion and too little on attracting traffic.

Remember, people won't buy anything from you if they don't find out that you're selling something.

They won't be able to find out about it if you don't bring them to your site.

So what are you waiting for?

Go and bring them in!