Website Visitor ROI

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January 6, 2018 in Website SEO

Estimate the value of your website visitors.

Business owners are very conscious of the (ROI) on investments made in equipment, people, software, and services.  If not, they likely will not be in business long.  Every investment should return a value greater than the investment over time.  Website visitor ROI can be a crucial metric for your business.

Investment in a company’s website and resources required to drive visitors to the website is no different than any other business investment.  Forget about intrinsic value and other platitudes describing why a business should have a website.  “Build it, and they will come” doesn’t apply here.  The only reason to have a website and spend marketing dollars to get people to view the website is ROI, return on investment, and the dollars spent.

The actual number of monthly visitors.  #

You can get this from several sources, but your marketing people should know.  If not, have them register your website with Google Analytics.  We can do this for you quickly if you can’t get a number from your team.  Just call or text 727-888-1959 and include the website URL/name.  GA will show details of the number of total visitors for the month in a few minutes.

Conversion of visitors to leads. #

This can vary widely based on the content on your website, the offers on the page, the attractiveness of the pages, etc.  Studies have shown that this number exceeds conversion numbers for traditional advertising, which is .05- 1.7% by as much as ten times. I’ll discuss the reason for this difference later.  If you don’t know your conversion rate, try using 5%.  Multiplying the visitors by the conversion rate is the estimated monthly leads.

For the ROI calculator below, use the actual number of leads.  This number will be those people that signed up for a newsletter or wanted more information.  You should have more than one of these lead magnets on your website to capture leads.  

The qualification rate of leads. %

Yourself or your sales staff will have a good handle on this number.  Depending on the effectiveness of the sales pitch or value proposition, this could vary from 5% to 70%.  Since the web lead at this point is usually qualified and in need of the service, the number may be higher than the normal sales process; if you don’t know, start at 20%.  This assumes someone has some skill in sales and closing.  You can improve your website visitor ROI with a better conversion of leads generated by visits.  

Conversion to customers. %

A percentage of these qualified leads convert to customers if you don’t have a firm number from your sales staff use anything from 5-20%.  Whatever makes you feel better about the effectiveness of your sales team!

The lifetime value of each sale or client.  $

Website visitor ROI is dependent on how much revenue your business typically receives from each new client.  All business owners should know this number.  For a barber, it might be $15 a haircut.   Painter, $1,500 a house.  Roofer, $12,000 per house.  IT services or equipment, $20,000.  Use one-time service or product here, but you could use lifetime customer values also.

The total is the estimated value of the monthly visitors to your website.  The change in value based on the increasing visitors will give you an incremental value of additional visitors.  Subtract the cost of increasing the number of visitors, and you should have a positive number.

Use this for the true ratio of cost/value or just an increase in revenue due to investment.

The number will provide you will some guidance on the value of your website traffic.

A business with good tracking mechanisms can compare costs for various methodologies for attracting visitors with the improvements in conversions and or revenues.  It is my opinion that efforts to improve organic search results through SEO, search engine optimization will provide a better ROI than many of the more traditional marketing methods.  The primary reason for this is searching for a potential customer who is looking for information with the intent to purchase sometime soon.  In traditional push marketing, you are out searching and attempting to convince a potential customer to purchase.

Website Visitor ROI is Only part of the equation.

Getting people to the website is only part of the equation.  Traditional marketing still applies to how the information is presented to the visitor.  Are the pages welcoming?  Do they clearly convey your value proposition? For both the visitor and Google, do the content and value demonstrate your authority on the subject?  Is there a call to action?

Copyright 2017 Wescat, Inc.

Questions?  Feel free to contact us.

 

 

About the author 

John Hamerlinck

John is a former USMC veteran that has spent years working in industrial leadership roles, including engineering, IT, mfg operations, marketing, business development, and sales. He earned a BSEE and MBA in marketing and finance from Lewis University.