Is Your Website Header Ruining Your CTR, Sales and Your Website Traffic? 

You’ve Got 3 Seconds To Keep Your Website Traffic
Someone once said, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." When it comes to the Internet, first impressions are everything!

When a person arrives at your website, they quickly make a split second decision, (actually, it takes the average person around 3 seconds) on whether they are going to click the back button or click the infamous RED X in the right hand corner.

If you fail to capture their attention in that first few seconds, your Internet Marketing dreams are going to be dashed again and again and again and infinitum. Then you’ll be stuck on that job you so desperately want to tell the boss to take this job and shove it!

My Website Traffic Doesn’t Stick Around, What’s Up With That?
Ever scratched your head and asked yourself this question about your website traffic? If I only knew what my visitors were looking for? Since you asked, here’s your answer… surfers do this almost unconsciously.

They glance at the overall layout, the color scheme, the graphics, the readability of the website in terms of the font size, how long it takes the website to load and if there’s a lot of white space or if its cluttered with a bunch of protruding advertisements, pictures or other time gulping scripts.

Think of it as a beautiful woman in search for her soul mate. How is she going to approach this matter? Have you been out of dating scene that long? She’s is going size up every potential suitor she meets within a matter of a few seconds. He’s too tall. He’s too short. He didn’t smile when he looked at me. All he wanted was sex. He just kept staring at my boobs. He has dimples, yada, yada, yada!

REMEMBER This Truth; Website Traffic Are People; Not Inanimate Objects!
When people are surfing the net, they are seeking potential suitors to provide them with information, products, humor, help, advice, a love connection, an auction or whatever it is they are seeking. The million dollar question is, “Does your website make a terrible, bad, good or great first impression?”

If it does, you get massive website traffic and still strike out; people and companies do it everyday. One gentleman contacted me because he was tied of scratching his head over his high PPC bill that was producing no results. He was drawing massive website traffic through PPC, articles, press releases and television ads; still nothing, nada, zilch!

How To Take The Guesswork Out of Website Traffic
There are two keys to take the guesswork out of website traffic. First and foremost examine your CTR, which is your Click Through Rate. If your CTR is low, as they say, Houston, you have a PROBLEM!” What is a good CTR? It depends on the niche but I will share this, I have over fifty live websites and my lowest CTR is 7.14%. That’s because I design all of my websites and all of my client’s websites with a clean, crisp, uncluttered look. The colors are always inviting, the graphics are not over bearing and I stay away from over exposing surfers to advertisement overload. That being said, one of the first things surfers see when they arrive at your website is your website header.

You Do Like My Website Header, Don’t You?
If your header looks like it was slapped together by one of those cheap or free website header template software programs, don’t fool yourself; people will recognize it. Some Internet marketers believe the hype of those selling that type of software, but all they are doing is under estimating their visitors; don’t fool yourself, THEY RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERENCE! And horribly low CTR’s don’t lie!

If your website header looks amateurish or worse third graderish, I promise you, your visitors won’t stick around to see your sequel. Consequently, you are hijacking and destroying your CTR, sales, return visits, opt-ins and referrals and dog gonnit, you need to STOP!

Hey Website Traffic, Why Don’t You Stay… Just a Little Bit L-O-N-G-E-R!
Secondly, look at your bounce rate. My bounce what? Remember the song, “More Bounce to the Ounce?” Guess what? It’s got nothing to do with your bounce rate. Your bounce rate represents the percentage of people who landed on your site and departed, (rather quickly) without clicking on another link in your website. A high bounce rate signifies that your website traffic is not liking what they are seeing in terms of the layout and color scheme or what they are reading in terms of your content.