| Increasing Hits on Your Website |
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One of the key items that people have in their minds
regarding their website is increasing the traffic and number of "hits".
Here are a few things to consider:
1 - What are the needs of your target audience? Who visits your website? What are their needs? When you are thinking
about your target audience think beyond your client base. Your target audiences may also include your
board, volunteers, potential and current donors, members of the community and
the media. Each of these may need
different types of information. For some
organizations you also may cater to the interests of different age groups -
maybe a "kids" section would be useful and of course this might have very
different language and visual appeal for that age group.
2 - How do you learn about the visitors to your
website? Check with your webmaster about
the website statistics. These may come
from your hosting server, or they may be added on with special coding from
sources such as statcounter.com or Google Analytics. You can see more information about these on
my blog.
3 - Survey and ask your visitors. Surveys can provide you with useful
feedback. You could post your survey
link on your website, your blog, or send it out to your email list. If you are using Constant Contact to manage
your email newsletter, there is also a survey module that you can try out. Or you could use survey software such as "Survey
Monkey" that has very reasonable pricing (or free) depending on the size of
your survey. If you keep the survey
short you may be pleasantly surprised at the good response you get.
4 - Team up with another organization. If you share common interests it may be
useful for two organizations to team up and write a short article that will be
included in the other's email newsletter.
Of course the link should be with your article to go back to your
website. Both organizations can benefit
by reaching a new email list. Your list
members also benefit by getting useful information. Be sure to include information about how they
can sign up for YOUR email list.
5 - Building traffic is not just about hits. Getting more hits on your website is just
part of the objective. Ultimately you
want people to DO something - e.g. sign up for some information, attend a
seminar, donate, volunteer, buy something etc.
Be sure that you have clear "Calls to Action" on your website. Remember
that people often need to develop a relationship with you and regular contact
before they will take a large step in action.
This develops over time so send regular communications and build the
relationship over time.
For more information on building traffic to your website see
articles on the blog http://alephconsulting.wordpress.com
Your comments and feedback are welcome on any of the
articles.
To try out Constant Contact for a free 60 day trial click here. Constant Contact has many tools
including email newsletters, online surveys, and auto responders that will help
you to build regular correspondence with your email list.
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