- One glass of great bourbon vs. 10 glasses of terrible bourbon?
- One wonderful husband/wife vs. 100 one-night stands?
- One delicious steak vs. 10 Big Mac meals?
We all know that quality always trumps quantity.
Yet when it comes to our websites and marketing, many of us fall into the trap of focusing entirely on quantity.
Let me share an example with you.
There’s an independent hearing care clinic based in Texas that has an average of 28,000 visitors to their website.
For reference, the average clinic gets between 300-1500 visitors per month (depending on their location).
In many people’s eyes, this clinic in Texas would appear to be a unicorn, and they could even be described to have “the highest performing website in the industry.” (I’ve yet to see a site that gets more monthly traffic.)
Yet when you scratch at the surface, it becomes very clear that quantity does not mean quality.
That’s because you learn that the large majority of the traffic to this website is international (not local to the clinic) and 90%+ of the traffic is directing to a blog about “Hydrogen Peroxide in Ears” that they rank in #1 position for.
They get a lot of quantity, but the actual percentage that are local to the clinic or in any way motivated to seek treatment for a hearing challenge is INCREDIBLY low.
Don’t Get Caught in the Trap
So many clinics desire MORE traffic, but quantity is completely irrelevant.
You could double your website traffic tomorrow by adding a new page called “Nude Ladies XXX” – but just because a bunch of perverts would land on your website doesn’t mean it’s going to make any impact to your clinic.
There are only TWO stats that you should be focused on:
- Number of conversions (form completions/events)
- Percentage of visitors that converted to inquiries
This is all that matters.
Let me give you an example of a truly high-performing website.
There’s a clinic that we partner with through our Inner Circle. Here is their website traffic across April, May, and June 2023.
Not huge numbers.
Over the quarter, they had 3,380 visitors.
But here’s what the number of goal completions/events (aka: actions taken by people on the site) looked like over the quarter.
Goal completions are made up of appointment requests. Total events are appointment requests, all form completions, and phone calls.
Across the quarter, there were 713 total events through the website.
That’s 713 people taking a form of action from the website.
3,380 visitors converting to 713 actions.
That is 21% of visitors converting to an action.
This is what quality over quantity looks like.
The strategy for the website is to attract traffic of motivated individuals that have challenges that they have solutions for, and one in five that visit the website see enough evidence that we can help them with their challenge that they make an inquiry.
Summary
Striving for more traffic is rarely the answer … your goal should always be focused on the quality of traffic.
Next time you receive a report from your marketing group, run two calculations.
- How many total events happened through my site (conversions/phone calls/actions).
- What percentage of visitors took an action.
If less than 3% of your visitors are converting to an inquiry, then something is not right.
Remember, if you would like me to review your website, share some feedback, and deliver you no-obligation advice around your marketing strategy, then you can schedule a Strategy Session with me by clicking here.
It would be awesome to talk!