What does it take to boost your website traffic?

Any technology startup is focused on five key metrics: acquisition, activation, retention, referral, and revenue. Growth hacking helps improve performance in all five areas, especially acquisition and activation. It lowers paid advertising costs, generates leads, encourages content sharing, and measures and increases the quality of leads.

Boosting website traffic is one major goal of growth hacking.

Check out these six handy hacks to increase foot traffic and gain more contacts.

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Keep it simple.

When it comes to your homepage, more is less. Minimalist websites trump their cluttered counterparts in terms of generating sign-ups. You can test this yourself. Set up two homepages, one minimalist and one with the usual clutter. You will find that: the minimalist homepage will generate more sign-ups than the other.

Take a hint from companies like Dropbox or Netflix. Choose one clear value proposition and stick with it to boost website traffic.

Minimalist web pages have the following characteristics:

  • The primary element of minimalist designs is negative space.
  • They include large dramatic images to trigger an emotional reaction.
  • Beautiful typography is utilized to create excitement.
  • Contrast is the hallmark of a minimalist design.
  • Crazy simple navigation.
  • Content is simple and streamlined.
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Incentivize sharing user details.

Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little. What kinds of resources can you offer in exchange for users’ information? Users of HubSpot’s Marketing Grader provide their websites and email addresses, and, in exchange, they receive automated reports about their website’s marketing quality and how it compares to others sites.

Think about the resources your users find most valuable. Use them to gain something valuable for yourself: more contacts.

Use surveys.

Surveys are an indispensable tool for optimizing for leads. Survey software, such as Qualaroo, give insight into user behavior, which can result in greater lead generation. Ask your users, “What’s keeping you from signing up?” and provide response options such as, “Unclear pricing” or “This product is not for me,” plus a fill-in-the-blank option. The results will show you what’s working (and what isn’t) and will give you a road map to boosting website traffic.

Proliferate and curate your landing pages.

Think of landing pages as gateways to your website. The more access points you provide, the more opportunities to boost website traffic. HubSpot found that companies that increased landing pages from 10 to 15 experienced 55 percent more sign-ups.

Each landing page should be as distinct as possible–avoid replicating content. Focus on multiple selling points and target different customer segments by diversifying the offers on your landing pages.

Take advantage of higher conversion rates and lower costs per acquisition by directing paid ad traffic to your landing pages.

Test headlines and images with paid ads.

Use paid ads to test out landing pages. Every user exposed to the ad becomes part of your experimental group, and some ad platforms only charge per click. In the end, you will spend less for more results.

Preserve the integrity of your test scores by turning off ad optimization while testing. This will ensure that platforms continue to send traffic to all ad variations.

Try using platforms such as Facebook to test out audience targeting. This can yield valuable information about which demographics convert higher.

Keep navigation links off your landing pages.

Landing page links weaken the impact of your call to action. Conversion rates increase when navigation links are altogether absent from landing pages. Navigation links will ultimately result in poorer conversion rates. Growth hacking should account for both users in the know and chance visitors.

Once you have conquered the categories of acquisition and activation, the next step is to take on retention, referral, and revenue.

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photo credit: Purple Boost Gauge