Can You Ever Have Too Much Traffic? Yes, but you can never have too much conversion Monetate

Can You Ever Have Too Much Traffic? Yes, but you can never have too much conversion

Posted November 12th, 2009, by Stephen Cobb

Lines to get in to ad:tech Traffic. Sometimes it’s a bad thing, like when you’re stuck in it while driving to work. Sometimes it’s a good thing, like when you’re running a business. Then you want traffic. Traffic to your restaurant, movie, hotel, airline, or store. And you definitely want traffic to your web site. You want people coming to your online store, your booking system, or the digital place where you promote whatever it is that your business is about. So I’m going to have to defend my assertion that you can have “too much traffic” because it borders on heresy in the world of digital marketing.

But before I do that, a few words about this world of digital marketing. It was on display last week at the ad:tech event in New York, an event that had plenty of traffic of its own. Ad:tech is billed as “the #1 event for interactive marketing” and I don’t doubt the claim. The event outgrew the New York Hilton last year and has moved to the Jacob Javits Convention Center, a bold gamble given the state of the economy back when the decision to move was made, but it seems to have paid off.

At one point the registration line stretched almost the entire width of the Javits then doubled back on itself. And when you got into the exhibit hall the aisles were jammed. (I did a short radio interview from the show floor with Bryan Eisenberg and you can tell from my voice that I’m having to shout to be heard above the noise of the crowd: WebmasterRadio.fm Interviews Stephen Cobb).

That noisy crowd was busy checking out the hundreds of exhibitors selling digital traffic, promoting digital traffic, promising digital traffic. While every ad:tech show seems to have a different mix of products and services on display, they all appear to share this focus on traffic: the people coming to your web site. But as I relaxed on the long–traffic-free–train ride home, something about this started to bother me: What is the point of all this traffic?

The point for most web site owners is conversion. Visitors need to do more than just show up. Your traffic has to do something, buy something, download, hear or view something. Traffic that bounces out without doing anything does nothing for your business. Some traffic merchants seem to be aware of this and they talk about traffic quality. This usually translates as “higher quality traffic has a higher probability of conversion” and typically you pay more for it.

That’s all well and good, but it still misses the point, a point that seemed to be missing from ad:tech. The point that goes like this: Marketing is conversion. Marketing doesn’t end until conversion is completed. So if marketing is all about conversion, what are people doing to make sure conversion takes place? At ad:tech the answer appeared to be: “Not a lot.” And I think this is reflected in the real world.

How often have you Googled a consumer product like “platform bed” or “camouflage pants” and found paid search results that don’t lead to the products you expected? Or search results that offers deals that are not reflected on the site to which the ad takes you? I see this all the time and it reflects a basic marketing disconnect. That disconnect is between the people putting up the ads and the people running the site to which those ads are driving traffic.

Search ads cost money. That disconnect wastes money and squanders traffic. If you are paying for search traffic that you are unlikely to convert because people don’t see what they are looking for when they get to your site, then you are paying for too much search traffic. The same is true of display ads or email campaigns that don’t connect. So, can you have too much traffic? Yes, if you’re paying for that traffic and not doing a good job of converting it.

The solution to this, the way to make money instead of waste it, is to tie the traffic source to the destination. There are several ways to do this, including Monetate. Some approaches can be time-consuming while others, including Monetate, can automate the process. And preferably you will create continuity that goes beyond the landing page, giving your traffic a site experience consistent with how they got to your site. When you do this you get much better conversion rates and can better justify the cost of getting more traffic.

4 comments so far. To add your comment, click here.

Herb says:

November 13, 2009 at 7:11 am

I just heard a HORRIBLE story about an e-commerce company in an extremely seasonal niche that had so much organic search traffic this year that they were actually overrunning their max number of connections and therefore the new visitors were bumping people off the site before they were completing the check out process. Yikes!!

Stephen Cobb says:

November 13, 2009 at 10:59 am

Good point Herb, excess traffic can be a serious logistical issue. Serious online retailers spend significant amounts of time doing capacity planning and site configuration to avoid this nightmare scenario of traffic surges blowing out the purchase process.

This is one more reason that companies should be doing integrated marketing, where all the channels, like search and email, etc. are in sync with a. the site capacity, b. site messaging, c. product inventory.

In an ideal world you will have enough site capacity to cope with a. all the traffic your marketing brings you, b. the demand for whatever you are selling. But there is always a chance that one or more marketing campaigns will exceed expectations, bringing you more customers than you can handle. In bricks and mortar retailing this was typically thought of as “Not a bad problem to have.” You could hand out rain checks, substitute products, and otherwise convert the traffic.

Selling online is way different. Internet shoppers are looking for instant gratification and your nearest competitor is only a click away. Site logistics and marketing campaign logistics need to be managed with this aspect of excess traffic in mind.

Of course, my original point was that paying to get loads of traffic which then converts at a low rate is NOT the way to maximize ROI from your online business.

Stephen

Aaron Savage says:

November 13, 2009 at 12:32 pm

Its not the fact that you have more traffic than usual that is the problem here it is the fact that you have failed to recognise the logistical implications of more traffic. Very often the pipes into a site are left to IT to just sort out with no communication when peaks and troughs are planned. Burstable3 bandwidth is a great idea and should be on the lips of every marketer who is planning a campaign, not just left for the techies in IT to figure out at the last minute. This is why digital marketing is such a complex world, it requires a lot of skills that often have very little to do with each other but are essential to deliver success. In this case it is the marketers talking to the techies but there are plenty of other examples too. I would suggest enlisting the help of a digital marketing agency that has an overall understanding of the entire process not simply someone who has ideas but no knowledge of how to implement them.

November 13, 2009 at 2:56 pm

Aaron — You’re quite right about the need to understand the entire digital marketing process, whether you do it in-house or through an agency. In both cases a rock solid digital marketing platform is key to delivering results without fails.

(Just to be clear, Herb’s comment was providing an example of failure to recognize the logistical implications of more traffic. He wasn’t the one who failed.)

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