I had an email the other day which went along the following lines:

“We’ve had some advice and we’re only getting 600 hits a month. This is not sufficient”.

Hmmm….where do I start this?

Hits

Many moons ago I blogged about why hits means nothing, but the person was getting confused as their site has Google Analytics running which doesn’t report ‘hits‘; its basic metric is “unique visitors” – actual people visiting your site – a much more meaningful statistic.

When is enough, enough?

So now we’re at least talking the same metric; how do you answer the question: am I getting enough traffic?

Again, a tricky one…

I mean, if you sell Nimitz Class aircraft carriers and, out of your 600 visitors a month, you convert one into a sale – then I think you’d be pretty chuffed. Hell, if you convert one every 25 years I’m sure you’d be happy.

But If you sell pencils and can’t convert visitors into sales then you have a problem. Or, more to the point, your site has a problem.

Soooooo, traffic is relative. And it is only part of the bigger problem.

Can your website convert?

Good websites are a mix of a lot of qualities; they typically look good (to the target audience at least), the message is right, the content is focused on the user, no distracting bells & whistles. And clear call to actions so that your website visitors just know what you want them to do. Ah! Lambs to the slaughter!

If your website sounds like the above then, chances are, you’ve got an engine. A finely tuned, high performance engine. But an engine means diddly without fuel; and with websites that fuel is traffic However, if you’re engine resembles something you could find in the Arkansas Chuggabug, then you have a problem. And a problem which traffic alone won’t fix. You can throw as much traffic at a bad website as you like;  but it aint gonna convert much – so, not enough traffic? You may be worrying about the wrong thing.

To End

So, is 600 visitors sufficient? I dunno. Are you converting them? How are you measuring & improving conversion? If you’re happily converting, what are you doing to attract more? How is blogging, social media & inbound marketing working out for you?  How much are you investing in growing your online presence?

Questions…always questions…

Joel

p.s. let’s end with some Wonderstuff