I know people reading the title of this article are thinking that the cheese just slid off my cracker. But really the logic behind my thinking is simple.

Back in the early days of the web, the fabled “Million Hit Sites” were the ones that everyone were talking about, and the ones people thought were the most successful. And really it sounded so good that people took it as gospel. But what those sites weren’t letting out was the fact that out of those million hits, only less than 1% of them actually turned into sales. Then take into account that a TON of those sites were paying per hit via CPC or traditional advertising, and you can see why the million hit sites went bankrupt well before everyone noticed there was no money being made from those sites.

And that’s only part of why the bubble burst!

But back to reality, I take the simple approach of looking at sales instead of hits. It’s pretty simple really… Instead of going through tons of analytical data and stats, all you need to do is look at the bottom line. If a site isn’t bringing in sales, it’s doing nothing for a business. Whether you’re selling a product or a service, your site should only have one call to action… “Call Now” or “Buy Now”. To drive a customer there, you need to look at a site and see if the site has enough information about that product or service. That’s where a lot of sites fail… they look good, they function well, but they do not have enough info to drive a customer to the call to action.

For a site that has “Call Now” as the call to action, the formula is simple. All you need is clear content describing in detail what the service is, and answers to the most common questions that a customer has before they commit to an order. Then when a customer finds the service, the call they make to you is less of a call for information and more of a call to order. If the web site can answer the calls for information, you’ll have more calls for orders just because customers who have all the information they need are more likely to call you.

The same goes for sites that has “Buy Now” as the call to action, but a little more goes into it. While “Call Now” may seem harmless to any potential customer, “Buy Now” may seem risky to those same customers. There’s 3 common questions that are associated with this…

1. Can I trust You with My Information?
2. How Much Will This Cost in the End?
3. How Soon Will I Receive the Product / Service?

The good sites answer these questions before the “Submit Order” button is clicked, But the great sites answer these questions before the “Add to Cart” button is clicked!

So really, It’s not about hits…. It’s about how well a site can turn those hits into sales. And in the business world, nobody cares about hits also… we just care about sales!