Bill,

A careful analysis of your site's web-analytics will help you find the
answer. Although there will be broad industry-level metric but each website
is very different from another when looked in detail. 

 

I would investigate it as follows:

 

1.       What does increased traffic mean? Increased page views or increased
unique visitors? What's going on?

2.       It's possible that the redesign has added more pages e.g.
confirmation message on a new page as opposed to on the same page, thank you
pages etc.

3.       What does decreased conversion mean? Is it a % of unique visitors
or page views - and then answers to question 1 will help you find more
detailed answers

4.       Can you investigate your sales-funnel one step at a time - where
are the max. dropouts?

5.       Is there increased traffic from Search Engines, Aggregators sites
that Shop but don't Buy.

6.       Where is the maximum traffic coming from? Is there a trend? Many
companies trawl competitor websites for price comparisons etc.

7.       Have you introduced new functionality e.g. Check-in that doesn't
lead to a Sale

 

Hope it helps.

 

Regards,

Anshuman

 

Program Director - Enterprise Solutions & Consulting Group | MindTree Ltd.,
London | Travel Industry page on our website
<http://www.mindtree.com/industries-we-serve/travel-hospitality-leisure/trav
el-hospitality-leisure>  |  <http://www.linkedin.com/in/singhanshuman>
LinkedIn 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: ACM SIGCHI WWW Human Factors (Open Discussion)
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Phillips, William [HDQUV]
Sent: 16 February 2011 21:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Question about traffic and conversion

 

Hi - Although I am not a usability expert I have worked on web sites for

over 15 years and I have learned much from this group.  I have a

question I was hoping the group might have some insight on or perhaps

even point me to a white paper or literature on the topic.  

 

As our web site traffic has increased (mileageplus.com), we have seen

the actual conversion decrease, although the overall YOY conversion is

higher.  I was under the impression this is standard; since we're

driving more traffic to the site and have optimized it with new

features, more users are looking and browsing and ultimately purchasing.

Since the numbers were so low in the beginning, only those users really

interested in purchasing were using the site.  My management finds the

drop in conversion worrisome.  Is there any particular school-of-thought

on this?  

 

Many thanks,

Bill

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bill Phillips

Project Manager | Mileage Plus

Email: [log in to unmask]

Phone or Fax: 312.997.8166 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

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