How to Get Website Traffic that Converts to Sales

In one sense, getting more converting customers is all about one thing: more traffic. If your website converts at a 1% rate, pulling in 100 customers gets you one sale. Want to increase your sales? Pull in 1,000 customers instead. Want even more? Pull in 10,000 people. The more volume you have, the more your website will convert.

The problem is, this isn’t a sustainable business model. You can increase your volume to a certain point, but beyond that point your diminishing returns make it infinitely harder to keep up your growth. Instead, you need to figure out a way to increase that conversion percentage. The way you do this is through targeting your traffic growth. Rather than pulling in 1,000 people at that same 1% conversion rate, pull in 500 people at a 5% conversion rate.

It’s worth noting that ecommerce conversion rates typically range between 1.84% and 3.71%, while the average across all industries sits between 2.35% and 5.31% according to Geckoboard. These benchmarks are useful when setting realistic goals and measuring your progress.

Of course, the best option is to do both. If 1,000 people at 1% is good, and 500 people at 5% is better, 10,000 people at 15% is amazing. Thankfully, with good targeting and a well-optimized sales funnel, you can snowball up both of those numbers. Keep in mind that research from Episerver found that 92% of first-time visitors to a brand’s website are not ready to make a purchase, which means nurturing those visitors over time is just as important as getting them through the door.

Target Forums and Communities

Every industry has a community surrounding it, people who are passionate about it, people who make careers out of it, people who are merely hobbyists. These people like to gather and discuss their passion, and so those people turn to the Internet. Web-based communities have always been one of the major strengths of the Internet, and you can take advantage of them.

Your first step is to identify those communities. There will be some big ones, like Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Reddit subreddits, and niche Discord servers. There may also be large, popular web forums, like Stack Overflow for programming or dedicated communities on platforms like Reddit and Quora. You might be surprised at the communities that exist.

You need to make sure the communities you’re targeting are active and not just full of spam. Take a look, registering a dummy account if you need to, to see whether the most recent posts are legitimate or spam. If they’re legitimate, make sure they’re recent, and that there’s a reasonable volume of traffic. Nothing is quite so desperate as trying to advertise on a forum with three semi-active users.

Of course, if no such community exists, you may be able to start it yourself. It’s relatively straightforward to set up a dedicated Discord server or a subreddit, though it takes some time and energy to moderate if you don’t have a team in place. You would then gain the benefit of a community directly tied to your brand, though keeping it unbranded may attract more organic users.

Of course, you need to avoid being banned on these forums. That means, typically, following their rules against direct advertising. You may be limited to a link in your profile or to in-context links you add during a discussion. Never dive in and start a self-promotional thread unless you want to be ostracized.

Targeted Blogging

Blogging is a multi-faceted way to create more targeted traffic. It helps you in a number of ways. First and foremost, every blog post you create is an opportunity. Every post you create is a chance to rank in organic search for a given query. Every post you create is a possible landing page for a link from some community, blog, social network or news agency. Every post you create is another potential conversation for which your content will be relevant.

The point is that you should be blogging consistently, covering a well-planned range of interrelated subjects. If your focus is too narrow, your blog posts start to crowd each other and you encounter keyword cannibalization. If your focus is too broad, you’re encountering that “high volume, low conversion rate” problem again.

You can also work on guest blogging. Despite predictions over the years that it would lose its value, guest blogging remains a viable strategy when done correctly. The key is to blog for genuine value, not purely for links. A single well-placed, in-context link back to your site from a relevant, authoritative publication can drive highly targeted traffic that is far more likely to convert than cold organic visitors.

Targeted and Focused Ads

Paid advertising remains one of the fastest ways to drive targeted traffic, and the platforms available today offer remarkably precise targeting options. Facebook in particular has one of the most robust ad targeting systems available, and the numbers back it up. The benchmark conversion rate for Facebook ads across industries is around 9.21% according to Invesp, which makes it a powerful channel when used correctly.

You have several goals with paid ads.

• Identify the precise characteristics of the people who are most likely to convert.
• Identify the types of images and copy that attract those users.
• Identify the types of landing page content that best converts those users.

You can accomplish the first part by building a following on your chosen platform and implementing conversion tracking on your site. When you identify the people behind your clicks, you can learn all about them and figure out how best to speak to their needs.

The second and third parts require a lot of split testing, some investment in PPC ads and plenty of time. You’ll want to run ads that experiment with copy, visuals, and targeting parameters. You’ll also want to experiment with your landing page. The trick is, an experiment tells you nothing if you change more than one element at a time. That’s why this process requires patience and consistency.

One often-overlooked factor in paid ad performance is page speed. Research shows that a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% loss in conversions. Additionally, Vodafone found that optimizing their Core Web Vitals led to 8% more sales, while Yelp boosted conversions by 15% simply by improving their First Contentful Paint score. Before spending heavily on ads, make sure the page you’re sending traffic to is fast and technically sound.

Once you know the sort of copy and landing pages that attract converting users, you’ll be able to expand through Google Ads, programmatic networks, and other paid channels.

Nurturing Leads

All of this is designed to help you gain leads. Your landing page might only be asking for email addresses to register for your newsletter. Once you have these leads, once you have this following, you need to nurture it and grow it into an actual conversion. Remember, since 92% of first-time visitors aren’t ready to buy, having a strong lead nurturing sequence isn’t optional - it’s essential.

Personalization plays a major role here. Research from Accenture found that 91% of customers prefer brands that provide personalized recommendations and offers. Segmenting your email list and tailoring your messaging based on where a lead is in the buying journey can significantly improve your conversion rates. Also bear in mind that nearly 70% of e-commerce shoppers abandon their carts before checking out according to Mailchimp, making cart abandonment email sequences one of the highest-ROI tactics available.

Identify which nurturing techniques your audience is most susceptible to, and put those into action. This will take experimentation, and you have to be careful not to drive your leads away with high-pressure sales tactics.

Ideally, once this whole process is complete, you’ll have a high conversion rate and a high volume of incoming traffic. There’s just one problem: the process is never complete. There’s always room for improvement.