Nov 3, 2007

Surveying your visitors



A lot of times I see SEO or Online Money Making Bloggers keep telling people to focus in advertisement of some sort as an effective way to increase traffic, this is great and all but a lot of times they fail to point out way to retain your traffic which is really the heart of the problem.

Advertisements get you the traffic but to keep the traffic that has came to your site is how well you retain and understand your visitors. For example, when you purchase a computer such as Dell obviously the functionality and how well Dell present its computers to you is very important in making your final decision. However, it is how Dell service you afterwards that retain you as a customer of a lifetime not more advertisements. Let's just say that their customer service is horrible, do you think anyone would go back to Dell although new and fancier advertisements are being presented? Most likely not.

If you consistently get new traffic from different venues of promoting your site, imagine the magnitude of loyal visitors if you keep them all happy? I can tell you as an experienced webmaster that the growth is exponential. Now the next question that you may have in your mind is how do you keep your current visitors happy? The answer to that is simply survey or ask your visitors! You might think, why should I ask my visitors or why would your visitors help you right? Surprisingly enough, from my personal experience visitors are quite informative in telling you exactly what they want and how they want it if you just take the time to ask. An example of a simple survey would be, "what would you prefer to see on my website?" then you offer them different choices that you have in mind and leave the last option up to them to provide a feedback to. Put the survey out for let's say a month, it's probably a good amount of time and most of your loyal readers have probably seen or given you inputs then. Just by looking at the result you can see exactly what's needed to be done in terms of your focus or the needs your visitors coming to your website.

Believe me guys, this advise is golden. A survey takes you only 5 minutes to make, but the impact can fair well steer your site's future as well as improvements based on suggestions directly from your visitors. Making money online a lot of times it is similar to your real life businesses, if you understand your visitors better then your competitors you would then leap out as the leader of the pack instead of a follower or a copy cat. -Swapw


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