Skip to content

In the web design world we often pride ourselves on chasing bigger numbers.

When businesses hire a web design studio such as PJWD, the goals are usually to make it better and attract more page views, more signups, more enquiries, more sales, and so on.

We love a graph, especially one pointing upwards. In many ways, positive growth validates our existence!

But recently I’ve come to question the idea of ‘more’ and the notion of endlessly growing your business. When does more become enough?

This may sound counter-intuitive for an industry obsessed with growth. But there are many reasons to consider this idea, including:

Perhaps it’s it’s time to make your website champion quality interaction rather than quantity?

Your digital carbon footprint

From an environmental perspective, a small amount of energy is needed every time a web page loads (how much depends on how eco-friendly is your website?).

These small bits of energy add up over time. Ideally, people will only visit (and load) your site for good reason.

In theory, it’s more positive to have a small number of people visit your website and do something useful, rather than attracting thousands of people who don’t accomplish anything when they get there.

Learn more about reducing your digital carbon footprint.

Seeking fewer enquiries

Nothing triggers a dopamine hit quite like getting a message via your website.

However, it’s only worthwhile if those enquiries are the kinds you want. It’s a waste of time to sift through them and reject irrelevant messages.

Again, this may sound counter-intuitive, but if you find yourself swamped with attention-sapping non-messages that just say “Call me”, take pre-emptive action. Consider putting a few hurdles up so people have to invest some time in contacting you.

You’ll get fewer enquiries, but the people who get in touch are more likely to be the right ones who are of genuine potential value to your business.

Learn more about improving your contact forms.

Find your right audience, not a mass audience

To make your online activities more focused, it’s important to be clear about:

  1. The purpose of your website?
  2. Who exactly are you target audience?

For example, if a restaurant specialising in vegan food optimises its website for the phrase ‘Vegan restaurant Manchester’, they’ll likely get fewer impressions than for the broader term ‘Restaurant Manchester’. That’s because it’s more niche. However, it’s far more likely to be found by its intended audience – vegan diners – while filtering out those looking for a meat-based meal.

Repelling people who wouldn’t buy from you anyway is not a bad thing!

Useful page titles and meta descriptions help people know what to expect before they click on your Google listing. So the ones who click through are more likely to be the right ones.

Learn more about attracting your right audience via search with my SEO for Small Business video course.

How can your website better serve your existing customers?

Talking about your right audience, who better than the people with whom you’ve worked before, or people who previously bought from you?

Not only do you know you’re preaching to the right choir with your marketing, but it’s super cost effective. It’s widely believed that acquiring new buyers is about five times more costly than retaining existing ones.

Perhaps you can use your website to build a stronger relationship with your existing audience? This could mean providing content such as:

A side benefit of doing this is that this shows potential new customers you actually care about people who buy from you.

Reviewing your content

Do you know how many pages your website has? Once you consider old blogs, media files and pages for post categories and tag archives, you probably have more than you think. Like an overgrown garden, sometimes it’s good to prune off content that’s no longer useful.

I review the aim of my site every three months and delete any pages that no longer serve this purpose.

If you are worried about losing SEO traction from removing a page, you can set up a 301 redirect to another relevant page.

Also consider your purpose when creating new content for your website. You could write a blog purely to cram it with keywords and hope it attract lots of visitors. But if the content doesn’t offer real value, those people will bounce off again, wasting everyone’s time and energy.

Instead, focus on content that will really help them solve a problem or offer a fresh perspective.

Less is more

I hope this blog has made you consider that it’s not necessarily a bad thing to consciously aim for fewer page views, fewer visitors and fewer enquiries! What is more important is attracting higher-quality interactions with the right people.

Here’s a quick checklist to help you get started.

Doing so will help improve the quality of your customer base, free up extra time in your day and reduce the impact your business has on the environment.