As I was driving my son home from football practice the other day, I was thinking about a big search engine marketing project we are about to start for one of our clients. I was thinking mostly about businesses I have come across that spend a lot of money on targeting prospects using search engines but don’t make the investment to improve the performance of the Web site they’re trying to drive people to. That’s when it occurred to me; you wouldn’t build on-ramps to non-existent freeways right? So why drive search engine traffic to a website that’s not ready to take site visitors where they need to go, or where you need them to go?

You really need a well developed site to make search engine marketing worthwhile or you’re just throwing money out the window. Here are two examples of what I’m talking about.

Company A

Company A spends a significant amount of money on Google AdWords and is driving a lot of highly targeted traffic to their site. But their conversion rates were lower than they wanted. The bottom line was that sales just weren’t high enough to justify the AdWords expense.

The owner of this company approached NewPoint and asked for help increasing conversion rates. This business owner had the right attitude – he didn’t want to tear down his on-ramp because he knew they were working. He just wanted to make his freeway better.

After examining Company A’s Google campaigns, traffic patterns and his website, NewPoint was able to make some great recommendations for improving his website, increasing his conversion rates, and retaining his visitors once they become customers.

The point is, Company A was working on the correct end of the problem. He knew Google was doing what it promised but his website wasn’t quite ready to move his visitors down the path they needed to go. And for a minimal investment, his conversion rates are much higher and his customer retention better than ever.

Company B

Company B also spends a lot of money on Google AdWords and they see a lot of traffic as a result. And wouldn’t you know it, this company has the exact same problem – low conversion rates. People are visiting the site but not taking the next step in his sales process.

Unlike Company A however, the owner of Company B will not make the investment required to improve the rate at which site visitors take desired actions, which would not only make the return on his Google investment higher, but make him more money!

Without getting into the gory details, his site is very confusing, contains mixed messages on service packages and price, and contains no clear call to action for prospective customers to take to enter into the next phase of a relationship.

But rather than working on the problem he just keeps dumping his money into Google. His fixes would be minor and would pay for themselves many times over.

Conclusion

I hope you were able to connect the dots with my lame analogy between on-ramps and freeways and driving traffic to your website. I’ve never been great at making analogies.

But the key takeaway should be this… Targeting and driving traffic to your website is critical to online marketing success. By all means you should be doing it. But all the traffic in the world will not make up for a poorly performing website.

If your website can’t convert strangers into prospects you will never see the return on your investment in Google, Yahoo! or any other traffic-driving initiative. What you will get however is frustrated and broke.

But with some planning and forethought, you’ll not only see your traffic increasing, but your return on investment as well.

More Resources:

• The Anatomy of a Conversion Path
• Best Practices for Conversion: The New Engagement Funnel in 7 Steps

About author:

Internet Marketing Coach & Consultant

All entries by Todd Jones