Tips Distributors Can Use to Drive Website Traffic

In many instances, distributors will experience improved traffic and users to their site, but come to find out that these visitors are not buying. In fact, most are leaving without making it past a single page (a “bounce”). Simply put, they are not having a good time. But why?  

The reasons are simple, and all revolve around the infrastructure of your site. Check the following: 

• Responsiveness: Is your site mobile friendly? Does it resize and automatically adjust to any screen size? Can users access the same content on a mobile device just as easily as they would on a laptop? If not, you’re in big trouble and should fix this immediately. Google will not even show a non-mobile-friendly site in search results.  
• Page load time: Does your site take too long to load? Humans now have the attention span of a goldfish, so you have about 2-3 seconds to get that page up. Page load time is also a ranking factor for search engines. In fact, for eCommerce sites, two seconds is the threshold for acceptability, and at Google they aim for half a second. Pro Tip: Use Google Search Console to test the speed of your site.  
• HTTPS: Is your site secure? Any transactional website must be placed behind an SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate, as it provides standard security for online communications. When applied correctly, your URL will change from HTTP to HTTPS. Thus, the user trusts doing business with you more. And yes, you guessed it, it is also a ranking factor. 

Driving More Traffic 

There are a multitude of additional strategies to drive traffic to your site, including: 

• Google Ads or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising: Bid and priority keywords can drive traffic to your site. It can be very successful, but it’s expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing. 
• Social Media: The channels that work best here are LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. If you have an existing Twitter account, you may continue to post to it. While you could attract buyers in this space, the largest benefit is that tweets are crawled by search engines, giving you one more way to show up in a SERP. If you are starting from scratch, focus on the other three channels.  
• Email Marketing: Make it a mix of product and educational sends. Start with two emails per month if you are limited with time and resources. Wholesalers often have programs to support dealers, but you can also utilize any email marketing software program, like Constant Contact. 

There are countless ways to both increase and strengthen your digital presence; these are the fundamentals. After all, your website is your business card — the face of your company that should always showcase your expertise, authority and trustworthiness. You are the subject matter expert; you can get your customers what they need quickly and efficiently. Your website should showcase that.  

Jennifer Rae Stine is president and founder of Fortune Web Marketing and Photobomb Productions, specializing in comprehensive marketing strategies, with a focus on digital and video production. Fortune Web has been servicing the industry for 15 years.  

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