by S Srinivasan
At the end of a long day in office, we are often too tired to look back and analyze what had happened during the day. Small things give pleasure though they may not have a lasting impact on your career. Your website is also one of those living organisms, which live through the day, counting their small blessings. If the Alexa ranking goes up a notch you celebrate, else you look for some other good omen. The search never ends. But successful sites are those which look within to find fulfillment. Who are you, by the way?
Traffic is not everything
I see website owners who are obsessed with traffic. In fact, the entire industry is geared towards traffic. Google Analytics, Alexa and hundreds of other tools are feverishly churning out traffic figures as if your life depends on it. In the meanwhile, we are missing the woods for the trees. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of us are actually losing out because of the traffic obsession. We must be talking about fulfillment. How many customers actually bought our services or products? What is the profit margin per sale? Are we selling ourselves at basement bargain price? Are we part of the indistinguishable crowd? These are the questions which we must ask ourselves.
Niche blogging /websites
As a niche blogger or website owner, you are never going to get traffic like a retail site does. What you must look for is fulfillment. What you must look for is quality of traffic — conversion is important. Numbers on their own are worthless piece of statistic. For example, website of Tissot, an exclusive, branded watchmaker, is never going to get millions of hits in a day. Does it mean that their website is worthless or unsuccessful? Of course not. By its very nature, Tissot will get very few people visiting their site. If these few convert into sales, the job is done. It is the same for Medifast coupons and Nutrisystem discounts — you can bet on it that there won’t be a million hits on this site.
Embedding value is the real thing
I always advice people to forget about traffic and focus on creating value. What do you sell? Does your product or service provide value to your customers? Does my website clearly define the value proposition? Does it answer the most important question which a customer asks — ‘What is in it for me?’ I am not talking about a retail store here. This is all about selling your thing — selling yourself. Unfortunately, most of us are stuck with SEO and keywords. I don’t dent the importance of SEO. But we must not obsess with it in exclusion of everything else. The focus should rather be on building value or embedding value into your website. Your online persona is like your personal self. You have to be careful about the company you keep. Once people classify you as crap, you will stay that way. Never underestimate your visitors. Their opinion can move mountains.
Conclusion
We have to look within ourselves and reflect on our values and value proposition. Are we providing value to our customers? Is our product or service creating wealth for others (and not for ourselves alone)? Are we benefiting others? These are crucial questions which will mold our future course of action. From this basic premise our strategy would emerge. In this scheme of things, traffic becomes another number — not the sole reason of our existence.
S Srinivasan is a techno-philosopher who likes to delve on the other (hidden) side of moon. S Srinivasan also blogs, for a living, on diets and weight loss program and offers Medifast coupon codes for 2011 and coupon for Nutrisystem diet plan