The technical term for a successful web transaction is called a “conversion”. It rules over any amount of traffic. It’s defined as that point when you take a web surfer from visiting, to buying a product, calling, sending you a form request, or any other type of measurable goal. SEO experts can promise (and deliver) thousands of visits to your page, but if no one buys, then there’s no point in paying for all that high-traffic.
What you really want your website to do is to make your business grow, and traffic isn’t the answer. Conversions are the answer.
Someone that brings you 100 visits per month with a conversion rate of 5% will outperform the guy just sending you 10,000 visits per month. Stop thinking traffic, and start thinking conversions.
The type of conversion that will work best for you depends on your business. For a non-profit organization, a conversion could be a donation, or simply a facebook “like”. A consulting group might give away a free informational pdf for anyone signing up for their mailing list. This too is counted as a conversion.
Determine what conversions you will have in place. These are user actions, something that they “do”. Set up your web tracking system (Google Analytics, etc) to track these actions by web users, and start measuring!
