In the past few months, we’ve been trying a few different marketing strategies to increase the incoming traffic to WooThemes (including WooCamp & The Showcase of course) and we found that by far the hardest part of that is to ensure that the traffic comes in constantly and consistently i.e. not peaking every 2 weeks and then just flattening out.
And we believe we’ve been relatively successful, considering that our unique visitors are up 16% and pageviews, 25% from June to July. Also, if you look at the following two traffic graphs, you’ll see that the incoming traffic line is a lot flatter in July compared to June. Weekends will obviously be more quiet, but the aim is to even get visitors to your site then…
June traffic showing considerable decreases in traffic over weekends
The traffic graph for July shows a much more consistent, "flatter" line
*Yellow lines above shows the days on which we published new content.
In June, traffic on the weekend dropped about 22% (per day) in comparison to the average weekday, whilst we managed to decrease that to about 14% in July. That means we’ve already gotten a 36% improvement in just one month! Here’s how we did it…
1. Publish regular content
Seems like a silly thing to say, but most people ignore this. We’ve tried to publish content regularly during the week and then at least once over a weekend. Also – instead of publishing 2 / 3 posts on one day, we’re spacing that out to different times during the week, which means that the site is getting more clicks & pageviews on an increased amount of days.
2. Publish often
This may also seem kinda obvious, but the more fresh content you add to your site, the better your chance to improve your traffic stats. In July we published 18 new posts on the WooThemes blog, compared to the 15 in June. So whilst not a massive difference, the 3 extra posts definitely brought in additional traffic and pageviews.
3. Engage your readers
Here the aim is to ensure the reader actually comes back to the same post a few times, because they’ve left a comment and want to continue to conversation. Looking at comments on WooThemes, we managed to go from 378 comments in June to a whopping 669 in July. So assuming that increased conversation is directly related to increased pageviews, engaging content is a definite if you’re keen on getting a steady influx of traffic.
4. Be interactive
We’ve found that posts with voting polls or another element of user feedback works great, because you are involving the reader and in this way they have a kind of “stake” in the outcome of that post (meaning they might come back to check up on progress or an end-result).
5. Split posts into 2 (or more) parts
Another way of ensuring multiple pageviews from the same user, is to split posts into more than one part. Not only does this add value (since the content is more), but when the first part is very good, you’ve sold the user and you’re assured of getting that second click on the next part in the series.
This is a good recent example: We show you teasers – Part 1 & Part 2.
6. Contests & freebies
Nothing beats free stuff and it definitely has a very positive contribution to a site’s traffic. One of our recent competitions (it had two parts as well) really upped the traffic on the blog last week, whilst the icons freebie on WooCamp has gotten almost 4500 unique visitors to date.
7. Publish at appropriate times
Check where the majority of your web traffic is coming from and publish posts during work hours in those countries, not in the middle of the night, since your content then gets lost on Twitter (i.e. most people don’t check past tweets the next day). Alternatively, tweet about your content twice during different times of the day, so that all your potential users will see the tweet / link.
8. Interlinking
We’ll finish off with another rudimentary tip, but one that is often neglected. I think we’ve managed to use quite an efficient strategy now, whereby we link to content on the WooThemes blog from WooCamp and vice-versa (this would’ve been evident from above as well). You’re not also pushing your content to the reader in this way, but you’re actually providing contextual, additional value to the reader.
We’d love for you to try these out on your own websites sometime; whilst we won’t make any concrete promises, we can assure you that if these tips are executed properly, you’ll definitely see an increase in your traffic. We’d also love to hear from you with regards to ideas on how we could take this up another notch! 
26 Responses to “8 ways to guarantee steady, incoming traffic”
Excellent strategy post. I often do click on the related post.
Love this post Adii. Will retweet fo sho!
Great insight!
One thing, under point 7.:”…since then get lost on Twitter…”, doesn’t make any sense in the context.
Great post. I’m curious to hear how increases in traffic to the blog effects sales. Have you seen a direct increase in sales from June to July?
Be creative on tackle the traffic is very efficient…
Great post. I also have that same problem with traffic during the weekends on my blog. I decided to schedule a couple extra posts for the weekends. While this reduced the gap between weekdays and weekends, those posts ended up with fewer pageviews than the ones published on weekdays… I guess it’s just a question of internet habits, people surf at work…
Great tips! Any suggestions on writing more engaging content to encourage comments (#3)? That’s a huge jump in comments for 1 month’s time.
I never really thought about reader participation. Since I am planning on showcasing original short story fiction on my blog, maybe I could include my readers in the process? Have a poll on what should happen, and encourage the readers to get involved in the comment section. Of course, this could apply to regular blog posts as well. Way to go adii, you’ve got my brain juices going now.
Thanks man, you guys are the best….. not just your themes are brilliant but even your blog posts and good.
Good advices… but I am not sure if point 5 is of real value, pageviews for the sake of pageviews? Will of course look better in the stats, but the user haven’t really got anything out of it, has he/she? I guess there is a thin line between usability and statistics
Regarding pageviews, I think more pageviews can mean more reader engagement because they stick around longer. Of course, there can be a number of reasons for someone to view many pages. For example, they may just not find what they are looking for which would be a bad sign. On a well structures site like this with a wide range of products, I would generally take it as a good indicator. Of course, in the end, you have to compare it to sales and see if they increase also.
Would be interesting to see whether more pageviews / unique visitors on the blog lead to more sales on the main site.
Cheers!
Very refreshing and Informative post for us Internet Marketers..
nice article man..do you have a free version of your templates?
Great post. Taking notes…thanks!
This is slightly more difficult, as there are quite a few things that changed around WooThemes in the past few weeks. Plus, June was an above-average bumper sales month due to us running a 4-for-1 special for a week. Generally though, increased traffic does mean increased sales if I plot sales vs traffic on a graph.
LOL… That’s what happens when I copy / paste a suggested tip from Mark…
Corrected it now!
Yeah sure, but there’s definitely still some people that do surf over weekends. I might however add, that we definitely don’t publish our “best” content over weekends either.
Just as TV and Newspapers, I think “special” weekend content is the key. Instead of giving people more work-related topics to start thinking about, give em some fun & work-related timewasters.
Hi
Great post Adii
On the content @Josh plase read this post by master Hugh MacLeod:
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/005067.html
//
I think the easiest thing to do, is to ask your readers a question (or questions), especially at the end of the blog post. This way, you’re almost telling them “it’s really okay to be totally opinionated when you comment on this blog post”. If you look at the WooThemes blog in the past month, there are multiple posts, where we specifically asked for reader feedback and opinions; so it definitely works.
And secondly, I think it’s about keeping the discussion going after those people have commented the first time. I try to selectively comment on all the comments on WooThemes, as that way, I firstly get to “tie the conversation together” and I’m also potentially evoking another response from another reader.
Hehe, thanks Chris. Glad you’re finding value in our products, as well as us blogging about the journey in creating those products.
That’s awesome and exactly what these kind of posts are for; inspiring your own unique ideas.
I don’t think there’s only a handful of set 1-2-3 step processes that could work and the challenge allround is to learn from others’ experiences and then make those experiences your own with your own ideas.
I definitely think there’s a positive influence from increased pageviews to increased sales. Definitely not in a 1:1 ratio, but positive nonetheless.
Sure, we have 7 free themes available here: http://woothemes.com/themes/free
Well, positive is what counts
Glad to hear.
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