All Brides are GO!

Ok so it’s been a little over 4 months since I posted any sort of post. In that time, we’ve had a long season of successful Holidays, a new president has been elected, we’ve entered the year 2009 and now it’s time for me to show you guys the standings for traffic during that entire time.

We all know, if you’ve been doing any type of online marketing, that January is the month that brides flock to your website. Why? For many reasons, here are three;

1. NEW YEAR’S or CHRISTMAS ENGAGEMENTS
2. THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER, OH YEA, WE HAVE A WEDDING TO PLAN
3. NEW YEARS RESOLUTION TO FINISH THEIR WEDDING PLANNING

1. NEW YEAR’S or CHRISTMAS ENGAGEMENTS

Christmas is probably one of the days that, us guys, think it’s a great idea to proposed to that loved one.

Our thought probably go something like this: “We’ve gotten her sweaters, perfumes, dresses, jewlery… We love her, what else can we get her?? Oh, yea a huge diamond engagement ring, she will surely love me now!!!”

Ok, so a bit of humor there, but it really is one of the most popular days to get engaged. So once Christmas is over and New years has gone by. The first thing they have to do, is start searching for people to do their wedding. Everything is usually closed New Years and Christmas day, so most Brides go online to do a few web searches to see who the top dogs industry are. Where do they go…. It’s almost a verb…. Google.com, they ‘Google’ their vendors. Ok so it is a verb, just not in the dictionary yet.

From the comfort of their home, they get to read your websites and your Sales Copy to see if you have what they are looking for, more importantly if you can convince them to buy from you!

2.THE HOLIDAYS ARE OVER, OH YEA, WE HAVE A WEDDING TO PLAN

During the Holidays, it’s hard to do any research for wedding related planning. Most brides, well most of my brides at least, do all their planning all the way up to November, after Thanksgiving, they enter into Holiday Mode, where, if they have the time, they will completely procrastinate their wedding planning up until the holidays are over. Unless their wedding is the Month of January, February, or March, chances are they will not be looking online for a wedding vendor. This is also a huge part of why there is such a huge rush of brides to your webstie. If you don’t know this… shame on you.. you don’t know what you are missing… Top paying brides looking for wedding vendors, again, from the comfort of their very own home.

3. NEW YEARS RESOLUTION TO FINISH THEIR WEDDING PLANNING

Ok, this one is not as popular, but it is a reason why brides rush your site during the month of Januray.  Brides make it a part of their new years resolution to finish that harsh, endless, job of planning their wedding. Planning a wedding is hard, it’s no easy task, that’s what Wedding Planners are there for. But a lot of brides decide to do it for themselves and before you know it, they are behind on all their tasks and their goals have gone out the window. So they have to do something like, make it a new years resolution to finish planning the wedding by March 13th… The day before their wedding!

BONUS: THERE ARE NO OTHER HUGE DISTRACTIONS

Here is a bonus reason why brides rush to your websites during the month of Januray. For once there is a month with no distractions! There may be a Bridal Show or two to attend, but for the most part. There are no huge distractions during January. The brides have time to relax, clear their head, go to their computer and calmly take a few minutes to do a quick search and find the local talents. What better way to relax than to the calm sounds of your home, sitting in front of your computer, and searching for vendors to fulfill their needs and expectations!

Why did I not Put Bridal Shows?

Ok, so most of you are wondering, why would I not put Bridal shows like the Houston Bridal Extravaganza, or the Bridal Symposium, or Sonja’s Bridal Showcase… Well, mainly because I don’t attend those events and I sitll get more traffic than 90% of the people that do attend. Most of the time it’s the exact same brides… Why?  Good question, I will answer that in a later post, just remind me. Don’t get me wrong, bridal shows are a great way to drive traffic to your website, but what’s the point, you’ve already had a one-on-one with the bride, a personal Sale is a lot more important to me than a remote sale, or selling them through your website. I think the reason you want people on your website is to drive them to call you or set up an appointment. Not to drive them away once you meet them. That is not good business and it makes no sense to me why people tell the bride, when SHE’S RIGHT IN FRONT FO YOU, “just go to the webstie.” My interpretation, if I were the bride, you don’t want my business.

Compare the Results

Lastly, you want proof. You want to see that I’m not just making this up. Of that I’m sure… So I logged on to my Google Analytics program to get a display of the past few months of traffic. Additionally, I have another visitor tracking program on my website, which I think is more accurate and I will display some details from there.

Elegante Entertainment Web Site Statistics

In the image above, you can see that starting from September 2008, wedding inquiries died down little by little all the way until December 2008, and in January 2009, they just sky rocketed almost doubling the number from December.

Elegante Entertainment Traffic Results for December, January, & February

In the image above you can see the actual numbers as reported by the visitor tracking program I use on my website, which is called Trace Watch. That is probably the greatest, or second greatest, tool I installed on my website. Without it I am blind as to what to do and more importantly, when to do it. And if what I did resulted in a positive or negative outcome.

What do the terms above mean?

• Unique Visitors: The number of unique visitors to my website that day, or under the months, that month. The way it is measured is that it counts each person once per day. So if I visit my website more than once, it will only count me one time. However, the next day, it will count me again, but just one time.
• Sessions: This one counts me or any other person, every time the access the website, leave and come back again. So if a bride visits me once in the morning and once in the evening, it will count her twice, as two sessions.
• Page Views: Pretty self explanatory, the number of pages viewed by the visitor, or bride. Page Views are also known as hits by other trackers.
• Robot PViews: This one is important, it tells you how many robots visited your website in one day. Robots are sent by the search engines to gather new information. This information is then stored by their databases and displayed when a user goes to the search engine to perform a search. Robots, are not counted in the Unique views nor are they counted anywhere else.
• The rest are daily averages of all the other results. Those are more important on the far right hand side, where you can see your daily average, for that month.

As you can see, by the above images, my DJ Website gets over 150 Hits a day, which is awesome, it’s more than most wedding directories and most local wedding websites can get. Those people you pay money to be on their website… They don’t get nearly as many hits as Elegante Entertainment DJ Website does on a daily, consistent basis.

YOU DON’T NEED THEM. Stopy paying them money for nothing!!!!

Remember the Bridal Extravaganza Show in Houston??? Well even because of that, I got some traffic. Wanna know how???

Well if you are smart enough to figure it out, you can try it on your website, and you will see for yourself… Below are two images,  One for the number of total visitors the Elegante Entertainment DJ Service and the other of what the people who arrived at Elegante Entertainment DJ were searching for (keep in mind that the Houston Bridal Extravaganza Show was on January the 10th and 11th of 2009):

Elegante Entertainment Search Results for the Bridal Extravaganza Show

Google Results for Elegante Entertainment on January 8th, 2009

These are the results for One Day, through One Search Engine. The first image show the number of results for three days and many different search engines, the second image shows you what people actually typed into the search engine to arrive at Elegante Entertainment’s DJ Website.

Well, that’s all for today, that should get you going on installing a blog onto your website. They are effective and they work. It may be too late for this January, but more than right on time for next January: January 2010!

Happy Bloggin!

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|o| Simply Frank |o|
Bloggin Wedding DJ in Houston