How To Set Traffic Goals In Trinidad’s Online Market

In my last article An Un-Scientific Analysis of the Trinidad & Tobago Online Market I made a general estimate of the local online market and said that the best indicator was Facebook’s statistics which put the figure around 380,000 users out of our population of 1.2 million. I also listed the top 10 local websites with the top performing ‘private’ website being the 12 year old Trini Tuner with a confirmed 8,000 visits per day. Let’s see how you can use this info to set your own targets.

For the record, Trini Tuner’s number is 8,000 visits overall with 85% being local traffic which works out to around 6,800 visits per day just from T&T. While such mighty figures may be fine in the absolute sense and more is certainly merrier, there are many other factors that go into determining a good traffic figure and traffic is only means to an end, the end being CONVERSION.
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What is conversion?

Plain and simple you want visits to your site for a reason and that’s for the visitor to do something that would increase your bottom line. The point being that you want them to actually do it. When they ‘do it’ then you’ve ‘converted’ that visit. So they may come to your site and do one of the following:

• Buy your product right there and then if it’s an online store
• Inquire about a product or service on the site via an online form you’ve provided
• Download a coupon/flyer to take with them to your physical store
• Sign up for an email newsletter
• Perform any other CALL TO ACTION

[alert]Though absolute figures differ by industry the general conversation rate of visits to actual orders is around 1%-2%. This means that an average of 99% of your site visitors will leave your site without doing anything.[/alert]

What is Call To Action?

A call to action is exactly that, words or phrases on your website that compel your visitor to act right away. This doesn’t necessarily mean only loaded phrases like ‘Act now’, ‘Try it for free’ , ‘Limited Offer’ and the like but any that you think will attract your Trini demographic and have them do what you want. Always remember that this is Trinidad and the Trini will only respond to good, positive Trini mamaguy but not shameless deceit.

How to set traffic goals

Firstly it depends on your demographics because you have to slice and dice those 380,000 souls into the component parts of your market which obviously means your actual market will be smaller. Quite simply it depends on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. Now a hard question, should you focus on increasing your conversion rate or traffic?

High conversion rate trumps high traffic in the short and long term

The Trini business person didn’t come out to play, as we say ‘dollycook’. It will be an easier task to configure your website content in a more compelling way to entice that ‘Call To Action’ than increase traffic in the short term. There is actually a high probability that your traffic would actually increase as a direct result of a compelling call to action by virtue of a visitor telling their friends ‘Girl check out this site they have a real good deal!’

Set a traffic figure based on your minimum tolerance level

Since you’re not playing dollycook there must be an absolute minimum figure that would add value to your bottom line while reassuring you that your website is actually working and earning its keep. Use the worst case scenario that 1 out of 100 visitors will answer your call to action: how many answers per day would make you happy? You’re a business person so can you now do the math?

The 99 window shoppers who left are not necessarily wasted

Though they leave without doing anything they still are valuable to you as they know about you. Marketing 101: Awareness > Interest > Desire > Action. They are aware just not interested. Figure out how to pique their interest.

An average healthy traffic figure in Trinidad & Tobago

This is what you really want to know, an actual honest to goodness raw number so I won’t delay. On the low side, around 3,000 visits per month which works out to 100 visits per day for small to medium business in a niche market. For a business with a wider appeal, figure about 300-400 visits per day which works out to 9,000 to 12,000 visits per month.

Notice this is not anywhere near the 8,000 daily visits like Trini Tuner because that’s a completely different type of website more akin to a community site. I also didn’t pull these figures out of the sky, they are based on real data I have for a variety of websites which I’m privy to their actual traffic count.

These figures will be at least double for sites doing very active marketing and not just online marketing via Facebook and referrals. There is also a difference between active marketing and a national campaign (a specific, well constructed marketing plan for the really serious) and most won’t be doing a national campaign so these numbers don’t reflect such. This is Trinidad we’re talking about, so first step is to try to get your traffic up to 100 unique visitors a day before taking the next step.