24

Mar

By Dennis R. Mortensen
5 comments
Rand Fishkin interviews Dennis R. Mortensen on Tracking Traffic Spikes using Analytics

My second low priority post in a row – (..I am almost on my way into a Danielle Steel mini-series) – Rand Fishkin caught me on the floor while at SMX in Santa Clara and invited me into his wildly popular whiteboard Friday show – and this one filmed on-location. I tried to illustrate and bring up the fact that a traffic spike “woo-hoo” moment might actually be a “boo-hoo” moment.

Cheers
Dennis

  • Mr. Optimize Your Web

    Great video, the point I see in it that we often miss the most simple observations and link the strangest things together specially when it comes to reading web analytics data. Keep on the good work Dennis.

  • Dennis R. Mortensen

    Thanks a lot. I really laughed hard; hearing my new found mantra “a woo-hoo moment might actually be a boo-hoo moment”.. :-)

  • Søren

    Definately an interesting interview!

    But I think both of you are making a mistake I see more and more often: Remember that people take time to convert!

    So if the spike in traffic is delivering a bunch of new visitors to your site, you won’t immediately see them convert. And thus the conversion rate will be lower than normal.

    But once those visitors has had time to complete their real world shopping process (checking the purchase with their wife, comparing prices to brick’n'mortar shops etc.) they’ll convert!

    So don’t panic if you saw a traffic spike yesterday, and a lower conversion rate. Keep an eye on all the other metrics. And if the conversion rate doesn’t go up within the next week (or however long your customers time-to-convert is) THEN it’s time to panic :-)

  • Dennis R. Mortensen

    Hi Soren,

    I am really glad to see your input. I took a decision on the floor of SMX – which was – not to bring campaign or traffic attribution into the picture; which is actually a very exciting dialogue. AND as you say – this is quite important in measuring success.

    And I completely agree that an instant conversion (converting in the same session) is unfair to most retailers. Here at IndexTools we work primarily with three types of attribution:

    Original (first touch)
    Direct (last touch)
    Intelligent (first paid touch)

    BUT you would also be able to create customized attribution using custom metrics. Should the built in ones not fit your need.

    So the boo-hoo or woo-hoo should arrive at the end of your typical sales cycle.. he he.
    Cheers and again – tusind tak for input :-)

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