There could be a million reasons people aren’t using your site – maybe it’s summer vacation time, maybe there’s something going on in the news that’s diverting their attention, maybe you don’t even have a site yet – but I think there are three main barriers that keep people from visiting a site.
Here are those top three reasons and what you can do to remedy them.
The Problem: You don’t know your site visitors.
Which is to say, you either haven’t found your target audience, or if you have, you haven’t reflected that on your website.
The Solution: Find your target audience/market.
This Target Market Worksheet (in PDF format) from Entrepreneur is a valuable exercise for any nonprofit.
The Problem: You don’t understand your site visitors.
A big part of making sure people are using your site is understanding what they do when they get there. If you pay attention with some analytics tools, you can learn a lot about where people are going or not going when they hit your web address.
The Solution: Get hold of some analytics tools and start using them.
Some of my favorites:
The Problem: Your site visitors don’t know or understand you.
Sometimes it’s as simple as they can’t find your website. Or maybe when they get to your site, they can’t figure out what to do there.
The Solution: Start promoting your website (a topic I visit often in this blog), and start to apply some usability techniques.