4 sales in a thousand visits - should Dave be worried?

Dave needs 10 sales out of every 1,000 visitors to be profitable. He runs a test and gets 12 sales. How can he be 95% sure that this isn't just good luck, and that the site will continue to be profitable?

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Profitable conversion rate = 10 / 1000
Profitable conversion rate = 1%


Visit this calculator: http://vassarstats.net/prop1.html




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Using the laws of Expected Value, we would expect:

Number of expected sales = Visit x Per-Unique-User-Conversion-Rate

We know the visits. Dave's profitable conversion rate is 1%.



Number of sales to be profitable  = 1,000 x 1%
Number of  sales to be profitable  = 10


Now this could be good, or it could be bad. Dave gets 4 sales for 1,000 visitors, should he be worried about this profit?

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No. Dave is cool - 4 could still be profitable. 




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How to work this out for your numbers? Visit this calculator: http://vassarstats.net/prop1.html

What do you think of this?

What the feck is attribution?

A common question I get asked is "What's attribution?". Here's one answer - 42. OK Ok ...

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the story begins:

Meet Aaron, he's 24, young, full of life, uses too much hair product, and works in MacDonalds.

Aaron is going to Malaga and wants to book a car.

So he searches for "Car Hire Malaga" and sees this ad.

1

He clicks on ad 1 and browses, but doesn't book.

Some time passes. Pay day comes. Horray for the big mac.

Aaron then searches for "Hertz Car Hire" and clicks on this ad 2:

2

He books his car.

Which ad gets paid? 1, 2, both* or neither?

Write your answer down on a scrap of paper.

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The answer: You're wrong.

There probably isn't a true right answer.

Answering that question is Attribution.

Now go eat some french fries. Subliminal messaging works.

* And if both, split 50:50, 90/10, or other?

P.s. I have more pointless stories using Michael (he's multi channel, geddit?). And Gonzales - always in a hurray. Comment for more or less amusing versions of this.

What the frell is CLV !?!?

If you don't know what a customer is worth, you're inefficient. You should be thinking like this:









Average Order Profit
         x
Number of orders per year
         x
Average customer length (years)

         =

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)


CLVs are important if you are selling anything.

...
CLV is not (here) a reference to how fast CDs work.

The mysterious case of the sick visitor, or why bounce rates make me vomit.

What's a bad bounce rate? If 90% of your shop visitors straight out, is that OK? Choose a number.

To
Firstly, what's your typical bounce rate? This well hidden bit of text tells you (~30%):

So if you have content that has a bounce rate of 100%, against your site's average 30% - panic stations?

But hold on, that's only 1 visitor - maybe he had a serious case of the man flu?

Here's one fix: 'Weighted sort'. Sort by bounce rate, then go to 'Sort Type', then 'Weighted'. Voila!

Here the important sources are direct, the .com site, and then the .co.uk site. Are these different enough from the 30% site average to invest your time in?

What's in a goal?

I get asked fairly frequently what are examples of goals. If you don't use them properly, how do you know when your website is successful?  Goals are a way of linking what your site does with what your organisation needs to do. So you can make sure you are using your time wisely.

Here's a list of goals (targets) in no particular order:

My recommendations ... are you ...

Selling on-line? Set up Revenue (E-commerce).

Getting customer details? Set up URL (Leads) goals.

Building interest? Set up 'Time on site'.

Something else? Ask me!

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How to set up a goal? 

Log in to your analytics software, visit 'Admin', and then add a Goal.

Set it up like this: