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Steady website traffic versus offer-driven spikes suggests loyal customers keep coming back, but the typical online entrepreneur might be more curious about those offers.

The Bouncing Ball Of Site Analytics

Ammo Marketing's Gary Stein made it onto the Compete blog with a brief discussion of a client, a competitor, and site analytics. Gary compared his client's traffic to a close competitor and noticed a trend:

Never mind the actual numbers: a clear trend emerged. While our client’s traffic stayed stable, the competitor’s bounced up and down like a SuperBall. Intelligence received. Our client had a loyal following; the competition was offer-driven.

The actual data was not shared in the post, thus depriving the reader of seeing how closely the two sites compete.

Loyalty is the keystone to long-term success. Customers who keep coming back make it easier to sustain a business, since the cost of acquiring that customer has been repaid.

If two competitors have been running neck and neck for customers within a niche, that steady loyalty looks great, but those spikes in interest for the other site have to be intriguing. How are they consistently building offers that boost traffic?

There may be two success stories here, one of a steady company that keeps its customers happy, and one that really knows how to grab the attention of the customer base. Only the webmaster knows how well those offer-driven people convert upon arriving.

The spikes will prove instructive immediately to the site publishers. If they rise above and then return to a baseline of traffic, the offer probably performed as it should have.

When a website's traffic lives and dies on the offer, with no loyalty, it means someone needs to take a closer look at the business and its visitors beyond that marketing effort. Are they abandoning shopping carts at the shipping price screen? Do they arrive at a landing page of product information, and then exit?

The reactions may indicate something the business can change for the long-term good of the website. With all things being equal, customers who only stop by and convert when the price is right are telling the site publisher what they think of the everyday business.

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