Return on Intention

Imagine setting a goal to double the sales you get from your website. You look at your options and decide incremental changes to a few areas can make the difference. So you look at your sites log files or log into your analytics program to see how your site is doing now. You are shocked to find that your page view per visitor are really high, and so is your average time on site. How can this be? Don’t these metrics mean that the site users are engaged? If they are so engaged, why don’t they buy more?

The answer is because the users of the site are not engaged. They are confused. This example is a true story. Users of the site spent so much time on so many pages just trying to figure out how to use the site that the metrics were through the roof. I was hired to fix these issues, among others, and after working with them we (mindSpace, Inc) also made their total traffic number go down. That’s right, I said go down. Normally, you might think that that is a bad thing; however, in their case after just a few quick changes to their cpc (cost per click) campaigns, their traffic went down about 10% and their conversion rate went up 400%. What does that mean? It means they are spending less money on traffic that does them no good, and now only brings people to the site that actually might want what they are selling.

In this age of accountability, it’s important to remember that numbers don’t tell us anything. They are numbers. They can show us what is going on, but not always why. Develop a solid business strategy and figure out what is important to measure and WHY. Don’t just measure stuff you “think” you need to measure. The numbers are trying to tell you something, but they can’t say it out loud. They are more like signs that point to where to look.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Doin' it right, Mar Comm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.