Why Isn’t Anyone Visiting My Website? A Small Business Owner’s Guide to Understanding Website Traffic
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You’ve put in countless hours building your website. The design looks great, your services are clearly outlined, but… where are all the visitors? If you’re feeling frustrated by the lack of traffic to your site, you’re not alone. As a web designer who works with small business owners, I see this challenge come up again and again.
First Things First: Do You Know Your Current Traffic?
Before we dive into strategies for increasing your website traffic, let’s talk about how to actually measure it. After all, you can’t improve what you don’t measure!
You have a couple of solid options for tracking your website visitors:
Google Analytics
This free tool from Google gives you detailed insights into your website traffic. While powerful, it does collect quite a bit of data about your visitors.
Fathom Analytics
If user privacy is a priority for your business (as it should be!), Fathom offers a privacy-focused alternative that still gives you the key metrics you need. As someone who cares about protecting my clients’ data, I use and recommend Fathom Analytics. You can try it free for 30 days and get $10 off your first invoice with my referral link.
(Bonus: If you’re on a WordPress care plan with me, Fathom Analytics is one of the premium plugins you have access to for free.)
Whichever analytics software you use, you’ll want to look at:
- How many people visit your site
- Where they’re coming from
- Which pages they spend time on
- What actions they take
If you’re not looking at the data, you might be thinking “I’m not making any sales, so obviously no one’s visiting my site.”
But here’s the thing—you could actually have plenty of visitors who just aren’t converting into clients and customers. Sage Grayson explains this so well in her Triple Your Traffic workshop (which I attended live and rank it among my favorites). The goal isn’t just to get more people to your site—it’s to attract the right people who actually need what you offer.
Two Main Ways to Get Website Traffic
When it comes to getting visitors to your website, there are two main approaches I like to focus on:
1. Search Engine Traffic
This is when someone searches for something on Google and finds your website in the results. While SEO (search engine optimization) might sound intimidating, it doesn’t have to be. Start with the basics:
- What problems do you solve for your clients?
- What questions are they asking Google?
- How can you create content that answers those questions?
I’m actually doing a bit of search engine optimization right now, to get a little bit meta. In Kate Kordsmeier’s SEO + Organic Traffic Mastery course, she explains how updating old content can help improve your site’s performance in the search rankings.
So, I’m going through all my current blog posts to make them more helpful to you. 😊 It’s amazing how much potential lies in content you’ve already created!
I mentioned getting to know your own data better earlier. If you’re looking to get more comfortable with Google Analytics, Kate’s course includes a tutorial on how you can install GA4 (the latest version of Google Analytics) and create your own simple reports snapshot. So much good SEO and traffic inside this course!
2. Direct Traffic Sources
SEO not your thing, or something you don’t have time to tackle just yet? Focus on where your ideal clients already hang out!
People land on your website from all sorts of places:
- Email newsletters (my favorite way to stay in touch with website clients!)
- Social media posts and profiles
- Professional directories and listings
- Word of mouth referrals
You may have more control over your traffic than you think!
You can actively guide people to specific pages on your website instead of hoping they find you through a Google search. One of my favorite takeaways from Sage’s Triple Your Traffic workshop, and something I’ve implemented in my own business, is the idea of sending people back to my website to download anything they sign up for.
That means, instead of emailing people a link to a PDF that lives in my Google Drive or Dropbox (which does nothing to help my traffic), I can keep that PDF in my WordPress media library and direct people back to my website for more good stuff!
Common Traffic Blockers (and How to Fix Them)
Sometimes the issue isn’t about getting more traffic—it’s about removing the roadblocks that keep visitors from finding you. Let’s look at some common problems:
Your Site Takes Forever to Load
We’ve all done it—clicked away from a site that’s taking too long to load. Your visitors will, too. Run a quick speed test at GTmetrix.com or Pingdom.com to see how your site performs. If it’s slow, this might be why people aren’t sticking around.
Your Site Isn’t Mobile-Friendly
Pull up your site on your phone right now. Can you read everything easily?
Navigate to all the important pages? If not, you’re probably losing mobile visitors—and that could be up to half your potential traffic!
Your Content Doesn’t Connect
Sometimes we get so caught up in the technical stuff that we forget the basics: Are you clearly explaining what you do and who you help?
Your website content needs to grab attention quickly and show visitors they’re in the right place.
Ready to Take Action?
If this all feels a bit overwhelming, don’t worry! I’ve created a free guide, “6 Steps to Website Success,” that breaks down exactly what you need to focus on to get your website working better for your business. Inside you’ll find a section on attracting more of the right visitors to your site.
The key is to start somewhere.
Pick one thing from this post to implement this week. Maybe it’s setting up analytics to understand your current traffic. Maybe it’s making sure all your social media profiles link back to your website. Whatever you choose, taking action is what matters!
Want to dive deeper into attracting more visitors to your site? I’d love to help! Send me a message from my contact page or book a website audit where we can create a plan to get more of your ideal clients finding and choosing you online.
