Most people measure their web site success by the number of visitors.
However, which site is more successful.... one that receives 1,000 visitors a
day and no sales... or one that receives 50 visitors a day with 40 sales?
I once had a designer tell me that he was designing a site to attract
doctors.
So, rather than make a site with all kinds of medical information, he designed
a site with great golf tips, updated stock prices, vacation spots, etc. The
plan worked great.
Really, if we measured our success by page views, we could all put some
select pictures of Pamela Anderson on our sites and have 10,000 new visitors
tomorrow, but are they visitors we want?
The
wanted and unwanted
You can break your potential visitors (that's everyone with access to the
Internet) into four basic groups:
Known, wanted - These are the visitors you are seeking. In the example
above, the designer was after doctors. This is the known and wanted target
market.
The designer knows some general needs/wants and can design the site to attract
this group of visitors.
Unknown, wanted - These are visitors that the designer still wants but
who don't know about the site. Here is where promotion helps reduce the unknown
people and make them known and wanted. It can also be another group which the
designer didn't anticipate. For instance, let's say the site also attracted
dentists and nurses. They may have been an unknown group, but still wanted by
the designer (and advertisers).
Known, unwanted - These are visitors who find the site and like it
even though they aren't the target market. In this case, the site also attracted
a great many (unwanted) lawyers :-)
Unknown, unwanted - These are all the other people who don't find the
site and don't care about it.
For sites which sell banner advertising by impression, no visitor is a bad
visitor. However, advertisers like to see a high click-through ratio, so large
numbers known unwanted visitors can hurt a site in the long run by lowering the
click through to impression ratio.
Knowing what kind of visitor you are after can help when you design content
for your site. What kind of content will attract the most target visitors?
Obviously, for most sites, not every visitor is a wanted visitor. My site
attracts many students doing research. They are known wanted visitors, and I've
designed some great research areas to fulfill their needs. It also attracts
students who want to "have fun with" my serious visitors in the chat
rooms. These are known unwanted visitors.
I recently read where the owner of a pornographic site was actively against
the use of spam e-mail advertising of pornography. His reason was that
undirected e-mail spam attracted a high percentage of underage visitors to his
site. Kids don't have credit cards, so they waste his bandwidth. He is one of
the few porno operators who realizes that there are better ways to attract
wanted visitors.
Knowing what kinds of visitors you want to attract... and what kinds of
visitors you WILL attract, helps in the design of your site and your promotion.
Seeing your hit counter spinning is not necessarily a true measure of success.
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