Suppose, for a minute, that your online business deals with the delivery of large steel mailboxes within the US and Canada. After stringent SEO and some smart marketing, your e-business has taken off nicely. You receive orders from your areas of service and make deliveries accordingly. All in all, you are quite happy with the way your online business is thriving. But, there is a small problem.
Your webmaster says that your website is getting a very large volume of hits; however, the actual volume of consumers who contact you for business is far smaller. Additionally, you receive a large number of calls from countries that you are not servicing. Some of these calls are from consumers who would like to enjoy the same service, but, a majority of these calls are nothing more than pesky sales calls from people who want to sell their services to you. Soon, you realize:
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Your web analytics is giving you a skewed picture because a large volume of people visiting your website are not coming to buy steel mailboxes after all.
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You are wasting precious time and resources fielding queries from areas you do not service.
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Many companies from around the world are calling you up so that they can sell to you – and they are getting your contact information from your website.
So, how can you prevent these unfortunate yet money depleting fallouts?
One of the easiest and most effective options for any online business that services a limited geographical area is to ban access to its website from countries that are not serviced.
The benefits of doing so are easily discernible:
- Research shows that most websites get more than 10-20% of their traffic from outside key service areas. By banning certain countries, you could eliminate traffic from outside service areas. Going back to our example, you could ensure that only visitors from the US and Canada access your website.
- You can significantly reduce the number of unsolicited calls and form submissions from say countries like China, India and Africa.
- Most importantly, once the ban is implemented, you could get an accurate picture of your website’s performance within the targeted market areas, that is, US and Canada as per the example. In this way, you can ensure that your website acts as a super-efficient sales funnel for your business. You also get to monitor the traffic as well as conversions, making it possible for you to adjust your marketing strategies and get immediate response from your target.
How is it possible to ban certain countries from your website? Does the ‘World Wide Web’ allow that?
Fortunately, there is a way. Websites are identified through a unique IP address. This IP address is different for different countries. Therefore, countries may be blocked using their IP addresses. So, if a visitor from a banned country tried to access the website, they would be redirected to a page with a message. It’s as simple as that.
But, before you go ahead and ban a country, you must find out if your web based business actually benefits from banning a country to your website? The following list should help you decide:
- Is your business serving a limited service area?
- What is the volume of hits coming from areas outside your key service area?
- Is this traffic draining your resources? If so, in what way?
The answers can help you make an informed decision.
