At Mountain Mojo Group, we love working with small business owners who are passionate about their online presence. Two common questions our Clients ask are, “How much money is my site making me? What is the ROI of my website?” These are essential questions you should be asking. But sometimes, people ask those questions for the wrong reasons- they don’t have faith in their website as a revenue stream and, therefore, question its legitimacy. We are here to inform you that the opposite is actually true: your website is a crucial marketing tool, and increasing your website’s traffic can actually bring in more revenue.
Your Website Traffic Explained in Dollars and Cents
When you check your Google Analytics dashboard and see last month’s reports, you might see your overall website users were 400 and website sessions were 2,000.
That’s great! Right?
The next question you might be asking is, “How do those numbers translate into dollars and cents?” The simplest answer to that question isn’t in the form of a dollar amount but rather, “You’re not tracking what you need to be tracking.”
As SEO guru Neil Patel wrote:
“Tracking page views and visitors to see how much traffic you’re getting is incredibly important, right? WRONG. Finding out if your website actually helps your business is MUCH more important.” – Source
So, what do you do? Swap out your old metrics (like site traffic and users) for these:
- How many phone calls did I receive?
- How many times did someone leave my site to get directions?
- How many newsletter signups did I get?
- How many contact form submittals did I get?
- How many ebooks or resource downloads did I get?
- And the granddaddy of them all: how many sales did I get from the site?
Assuming your website has a phone number listed, contact form, newsletter, ebook, Google Maps widget, and/or eCommerce, tracking those metrics takes minutes! Neil Patel has a great guide outlining how to do so. If not, book a consultation with us; we at Mountain Mojo Group can help!
If you don’t have a phone number listed, contact forms, etc., we recommend prioritizing getting those attributes set up first.
Once everything is set up in Google Analytics, it is easy to figure out your ROI! Let’s take some fictional numbers and metrics for a website and figure out the ROI for a period of 30 days:
- Total number of web sessions: 2,000
- How many phone calls did I receive? – 20
- How many times did someone leave my site to get directions? – 15
- How many newsletter signups did I get? – 2
- How many contact form submittals did I get? – 2
- How many ebooks or resource downloads did I get? – 1
- How many sales did I get from the site? – N/A (site doesn’t sell online)
Total leads from the website: 40
Average lead to customer (conversion) rate: 20%
Average sale per customer: $150
Total customers gathered from the site (leads x lead to customer rate): 8
Total revenue generated from the website (total customers x average sale per): $1,200
Cost of website per month (labor, hosting, fees, etc.): -$500
Net revenue of your website over the last 30 days: $700
Congrats to that example website! They walked away with $700 in revenue they didn’t have before! Now, clearly, you can plug in your business’ own numbers and calculate your website’s ROI- and we recommend you do that each month. Once you get a hold of how much money your site is bringing in each month, you can start to optimize your site to bring in even more revenue. We’ll cover some simple ways in a little bit.
Why Should You Increase Your Web Traffic?
Seems like a silly question, but what would happen if you increase your web traffic? In the simplest of terms, you will get more leads and more revenue. We can defer to our fictional example again for an experiment.
Increasing web traffic is easier to achieve than the other metrics. For everything except web sessions (traffic), we’ve increased the metrics by 20%.
- Total number of web sessions: 4,000 (increased by 100%)
- How many phone calls did I receive? – 24
- How many times did someone leave my site to get directions? – 18
- How many newsletter signups did I get? – 3
- How many contact form submittals did I get? – 3
- How many ebooks or resource downloads did I get? – 1
- How many sales did I get from the site? – N/A (site doesn’t sell online)
Total leads from the website: 49 (up from 40)
Average lead to customer (conversion) rate: 20% (same)
Average sale per customer: $150 (same)
Total customers gathered from the site (leads x lead to customer rate): 10 (up from 8)
Total revenue generated from the website (total customers x average sale per): $1,500
Cost of website per month (labor, hosting, fees, etc.): $600 (20% increase)
Net revenue of your website over the last 30 days: $900 (up from $700)
As you can see, increasing both the web traffic and leads through our example website directly increased revenue. We should mention that the metrics above and our formulas are purely to demonstrate the power of increasing your website traffic and subsequent leads. Each one of the attributes listed above can vary a lot! But one thing remains generally true:
More traffic = more leads = more revenue. Plain as that.
8 Ways to Increase Your Traffic Right Now
Now that you understand the importance of web traffic and how it directly relates back to your leads and future revenue, the next logical question is, “How do I increase my web traffic?” Fortunately for most small businesses, there are a few low-hanging fruit steps that you can take to start increasing your traffic immediately.
- Create a Google Search Console account and submit your website
- Write amazing content through a blog
- Add relevant keywords to your industry to each page
- Make sure each page of your website has at least 300 words on it
- Promote your site’s content through social media channels
- Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
- Increase your site’s speed: make it load in under 3 seconds
- Build out a Google Business Profile
There are many more ways to increase your web traffic besides those 8 ways. In order to maximize your website’s ROI, if you follow those 8 ways, you should be in good shape.
Warning Sign: Your Website Traffic Is Increasing But Your Leads Aren’t
This situation is a common one- you grow your traffic by leaps and bounds but you’re not seeing an increase in leads and revenue. There are probably several reasons involved, including:
- Your website’s design needs some work
- Users don’t know what to do on your site when they’re on it
- The site isn’t loading fast enough
- Users are bored or not engaged
These are four common reasons that your website might be falling flat with getting users to buy your products or services. The easiest way to dive into the effectiveness of your content is to look at your Google Analytics. If your bounce rates are above 80% for most of your main pages, you might be looking at one of the situations from above. Look at the pages that have the highest bounce rate percentages and have your coworkers, friends, or family members take a look at the page. Gather their feedback and suggestions. Chances are, they will mention one of those situations from above.
Summarizing
Your website is more than just a digital brochure- it is a gateway to leads and revenue. If you use it correctly and set up meaningful ways to measure your ROI, it can be your greatest source of business. And like most lead generation tools, the more you update your website and analyze its performance, the better off you’re going to be. Increasing your website’s traffic will bring you more revenue. Don’t ever dismiss or forget that! At Mountain Mojo Group, we understand the importance of these elements and their consistency to the success of your business. Together, we’ll create a website experience that leaves a lasting impression and sets you apart from the competition. Contact us today to inspire and elevate your online presence to new heights!