A Balanced Equation for Web Site Success

For small businesses today, the web is a significant tool for promotion, advertising, lead generation, customer relationship management, and many other business-related activities. But there’s more to a successful web site than just the web site itself. For instance, you may have the best site ever built, but if nobody visits the site, how does it help your business? And conversely – if you have a constant stream of potential customers flocking to your web site only to be disappointed or dissatisfied, you have gained nothing (and may have even lost credibility in the eyes of your visitors!).

The fact is that your web site must have both halves of this equation right – a content-rich, up-to-date web site AND a steady stream of quality web traffic – in order to really work for your business.

Party Time

Imagine that you have just been asked to put together a very swanky black-tie charity fundraiser for your favorite charity (with all associated costs donated by sponsors). In order for this event to be successful, you will need to get the word out to lots of potential guests – in fact; the more guests who attend, the more money you will raise for your charity! But of course if you do not let guests know about the party, then certainly no one will show up.

Of course, there are many ways you could promote the event. One way would be to send out beautiful, engraved invitations complete with a self-addressed, stamped R.S.V.P. card to a list of previous, wealthy donors. Another might be to place ads on targeted web sites or in local publications. I suppose you could even put flyers up on the grocery store bulletin boards with those little tear-off phone numbers to call for tickets. And then there’s the whole “word-of-mouth” approach where you tell your friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc., and everyone spreads the word to their friends, co-workers, and neighbors.

By now, you probably know where I’m going with this metaphor….that the charity fundraiser is like your web site, and the “invitations” are like the ways in which you can drive traffic to your site.

On the Guest List

To carry the metaphor a bit further, the engraved invitations would be like the quality inbound links that you get from sources like search engines, article syndication, authority sites, etc. And the grocery store flyers would be like the lower-quality inbound links that come from reciprocal linking or less-than-authoritative sites and directories (still somewhat valuable, but not likely to raise as much money for your charity!).

The social networking component is easy to spot in this metaphor, of course, and would operate in much the same way for your web site. By using your social network of friends, co-workers, etc., you create the possibility that your network will in turn share the information with their own network of people, who may then continue to spread the word further through out their social networks.

An Affair to Remember

So now let’s say that you have put together a wonderful, perfect event that provides something for everyone, is inviting and memorable, and is on track to become the most successful charity fundraiser ever produced. Then the big night comes, but only a few people show up – what a disaster! After spending all that time, money, and effort, what a waste that ultimately, the event fell short of fulfilling its purpose of raising lots of money for the charity.

Although a worse scenario might be that after working so hard on spreading the word and getting out the invitations, you ran out of time to adequately plan for the event, ordered take-out pizza served on paper plates, and forgot to complete the paperwork necessary to accept donations. In this case, you would have not only failed to raise money for your charity, you would have probably offended and disappointed your guests to the point where they would not be interested in attending the event again next year.

Getting It Right

The moral of the story, of course, is that to make your web site successful for your business, you must pay attention to both parts of the equation; the web site itself, and driving good, quality web traffic to the site on a regular basis. Your web site needs to have solid, useful content that provides value to visitors, and it must be updated regularly so they have a reason to come back (and to trust you). But driving quality traffic to your web site is equally important; since you have 0 chance of converting visitors or making sales with your web site if people cannot find your site in the search engines or other trusted sources online.

By now you surely know that your small business needs to have a quality web site that gets updated regularly and provides real value to customers and potential customers. Just be sure that you are balancing that with adequate online promotion, e-marketing initiatives, and search engine optimization to bring a much-needed, steady flow of web traffic to your site.