“Good traffic, bad traffic”: are we asking the wrong question?

Traffic is up 25%.
Revenue is flat.

We've all been there. It's a conversation that happens in ecommerce trade meetings up and down the land on a regular basis.

DIGITAL MARKETING TEAM: “GOOD NEWS, TRAFFIC IS UP 25%!”

ECOMMERCE TEAM: “GREAT… BUT… REVENUE IS FLAT.”

(AWKWARD SILENCE)

And then comes the inevitable question: “So… is it bad traffic?”

It's a fair question. But it's probably not the right one.

Before good or bad,
ask why it exists.

First: where has the traffic actually come from? Before deciding whether traffic is “good” or “bad”, we need to understand why it exists in the first place.

If paid search traffic has increased, what's driving it? Is it brand or non-brand? Shopping? PMax? Has investment increased? Have we expanded into broader, more generic searches?

If paid social is responsible, what campaigns are running? Are we retargeting people who already know the brand, or have we just launched a prospecting campaign designed to introduce thousands of new people to it?

Because those visitors aren't equal, and we shouldn't expect them to behave in the same way. Someone searching your brand name and clicking a Shopping ad may be very close to purchasing. Someone seeing your brand for the first time on Instagram probably isn't.

If we've deliberately invested in reaching new audiences, an increase in traffic without an immediate proportional increase in revenue doesn't automatically mean we've attracted the wrong people. It might mean we're doing exactly what we intended: filling the top of the funnel.

Then the baton passes
to ecommerce.

Getting someone onto the website is only part of the journey. What happens when they arrive?

Look at conversion rate, but don't stop at the headline number. What's the conversion rate for new customers versus existing customers? How does it differ by channel, campaign, device and landing page? Where are paid campaigns actually sending people?

If we're spending thousands of pounds attracting new customers but dropping them onto a generic category page, are we giving them enough reason to stay? Can they immediately understand the product? The brand? The proposition? The USPs? Delivery? Returns? Reviews?

And then there's checkout. How many steps are there? Are there unexpected delivery costs? Are the payment options people expect available? Is the mobile experience genuinely good? Where are people abandoning?

Traffic doesn't stop being marketing's responsibility when someone clicks an ad, and conversion isn't solely ecommerce's responsibility once they arrive.

Put the whole journey
on the table.

This is where the “good traffic, bad traffic” conversation can become unhelpful. Marketing says: “We’re delivering the traffic.” Ecommerce says: “But it isn’t converting.” Neither side really wins. Instead, put the whole journey on the table:

AUDIENCE → CAMPAIGN → CLICK → LANDING PAGE → PRODUCT EXPERIENCE → BASKET → CHECKOUT → CUSTOMER

Then ask a much better question: “Where can we make this journey work harder?”

• Maybe marketing needs to tighten targeting.
• Maybe the landing page needs improving.
• Maybe we're asking a cold prospect to make too big a leap on their first visit.
• Maybe checkout is creating unnecessary friction.

Or maybe the traffic is doing exactly what we wanted, but we're judging an awareness campaign against a conversion KPI it was never designed to deliver immediately. If we know a customer visits the site four times on average before converting, we need to remember the full conversion picture.

One customer journey.
One team.

The best ecommerce businesses don't have marketing and ecommerce sitting on opposite sides of the trade meeting table. They recognise that they're responsible for different parts of the same customer journey.

Marketing's job isn't simply to generate more traffic. Ecommerce's job isn't simply to convert whatever turns up. The goal is to collectively attract the right people, give them the right experience, and make it as easy as possible for them to become customers, whether that's today, tomorrow, or three weeks from now.

So next time traffic is up 25% and revenue isn't, don't immediately ask: “Is it bad traffic?” We all need to ask: “What's the traffic trying to achieve, what are those people doing next, and where can we make their journey better?”

This will make for a far more useful trade meeting.