Don't let this happen to you. This case study shows how we showed a company how to find lost orders hidden in traffic growth from SEO and other campaigns before it's too late. We measured the lost sales - after the fact - and found the company lost 16,400 orders and $927,000 in revenue. Then we showed the company how to keep this from happening again and how to find this kind of hidden revenue as it happens not after the fact.

1. C ASE S TUDY: W EB A NALY TICS
Is 17% More Revenue Hiding In Your Traf fic?
Losing 16,400 Orders and $927,000 In Revenue Took
Months. Preventing It Took Minutes!
Summary: Do you know how to maximize orders from your
traffic building campaigns? Unless you know what metrics to
watch, the extra visitors and orders your campaigns generate
will keep you from seeing that thousands of them spent money
with your competitors, or kept it in their wallets.
C ASE Over two years, though social media, SEO and promotion-fueled
growth, the company drove 6.5M more visitors to its site. Orders
S TUDY: and revenue grew with visits. But it did not watch the conversion
W EB rate of visits to orders; an early warning of lost sales. We
A NALY TICS analyzed monthly conversion rate to reveal, after the fact, that
growing visits and orders hid a 30-month and 43% drop in
D E C . 2009 conversion rate–a $927,000 blind spot to 16,400 lost orders.
NO. 1011
Blindly, the company lost the full value of 6.5M additional visits,
plus the cost to attract them. We showed how to eliminate blind
spots, set warnings, and maximize orders from traffic growth.
T H E P ROBLEM : I N C O M P L E T E K.P.I.Ê S
Order growth, and analytic tools that failed to show conversion rate made it easy
C O M PA N Y: not to identify other
UN- key performance
DISCLOSED indicators. The
company measured an
I N D U S T R Y: incomplete set of
ECOMMERCE K.P.I.’s–changes in
& R E TA I L ; traffic, revenue and
GIFTS & orders–but not
N O V E LT I E S conversion rate.
PROFILE: In 2007, 2008 and 2009, highly seasonal web visits grew 6.5M (82%) from
P R I VAT E LY 8.1M to 12.1M to 14.7M.
HELD Simultaneously, average orders
2007 R E V = per 1,000 visits each month
$168M E S T. dropped 43% from 7 to 5 to 4. This
(B N E T ) cost 16,400 lost orders worth
$927,000 in 2008 and 2009. If
only the company knew to look
beyond visits and orders, it would
have discovered that as visits grew
conversion rate dropped; in real
time–not after the fact.
Bruce E. Segal ● 610-667-8188 ● BruceESegal@gmail.com

2. Page 2 of 3
T H E S OL UTION : I D E N T I F Y A L L K E Y P E R F O R M A N C E M E T R I C S
Before: This funnel report demonstrates how easily good news stops you from analyzing data
further, or evaluating
additional key
performance
indicators. It reports
from 2008 to 2009:
• 21% more visits,
• 25% more orders,
• 13% more revenue.
Visits, orders and
revenue all grew. In
fact, the total number of orders for 2009 that emerged
from the tip grew slightly faster than the number of
visitors who entered at the top. So, orders grew faster
than visitors; more good news. For 2009, the funnel
makes sales performance look healthy and greater
analysis unnecessary.
In 2008, the table shows, total Visits grew by 48% and
Orders by 21%. Because they show growth, they make it
easy to miss that Visits growing faster than Orders
hints at lost order opportunities.1 Looking only at year
to year comparisons, these KPI’s fail to show if the number of visitors who ordered each month,
conversion rate, kept pace with other growth; a key indicator of the quality of new traffic, ease of
site navigation and success of marketing
campaigns.
After: We analyzed monthly growth and
conversion rate trends, and revealed that
the growth in visits should have generated
even more orders in 2008 and 2009. And
even though 2007 had the lowest number
of visits and orders, it had the highest
average monthly conversion rate.2
For 2008, we revealed that in every
month the conversion rate was lower than
in 2007. (Graph 1) Visit growth of 48%
hid poor conversion rates, and 14,500 lost
orders worth $821,000; 17% of 2008
revenue.
Graph 1 | Source: Bruce E. Segal
1 We analyzed both “Visits” and “Unique Visitors” and found comparable opportunity cost.
2 Yet, even 2007 lagged a conservative external benchmark of 1.8%-18 orders per 1,000 visits-reported by Shop.org in 2000 as an average sale
conversion rate. Conservative, compared to 2.3% reported by the 2004 Fire Click Index.
Bruce E. Segal ● 610-667-8188 ● BruceESegal@gmail.com
1011 ESQunltd Case Study Web Analyt Conversion Rate Undisclosed v2.doc

3. Page 3 of 3
For 2009, we found the conversion rate in each of the first 9 months of the year was lower than in
2008. (Graph 1) Then it climbed at the end of 2009, the peak traffic months, thus showing 25%
order growth for the whole year,
out paced 21% visitor growth and
looked healthy. But 9 months of
poor conversion rate hid 1,900
lost orders and $106,000; 2% of
revenue spent elsewhere.
Graph 2 shows the trend is a
yearly step down in average
monthly conversion rate. In
2007, 2008 and 2009, the
average number of orders made
per 1,000 visits each month
dropped from 7 to 5 to 4; a 43%
drop. Yet, in the same years visits
grew 82% from 8.1M to 12.7M to
14.7M. Good news of visit and
order growth hid bad news of lost
sales. If only the company knew
to watch conversion rate, it
would have had an early warning Graph 2 | Source: Bruce E. Segal
that it was missing the full value of traffic growth before loosing
16,400 orders, $927,000 and 9% of revenue. Unknowingly, the site wasted the cost of attracting
millions of extra web visitors by failing to capture the full sales value of their visits.
T H E R ESULT: U S E T H E R I G H T M E T R I C S . M A X I M I Z E O R D E R S .
Insights 1, 2 & 3:
1. Visit growth increased orders, but hid a measurable and preventable failure to maximize sales.
2. Lost opportunity=16,400 orders, $927,000, 9% of revenue visitors spent elsewhere.
3. Measuring monthly and trended conversion rate against traffic and order growth provides
early warning to potential lost sales, and if SEO programs, online ads or email campaigns
bring visitors but not buyers, or if site design impairs orders.
Immediate Actions: Measure and monitor visit to order conversion rate daily, weekly and
monthly to establish a steady state and see sudden changes greater than 1 standard deviation.
Monitor conversion rate for each marketing campaign, site design change and traffic change.
Insight 4:
4. Even in 2007, the best year for average monthly conversion rate, the rate was still 2.6x lower
than a conservative external benchmark. In three years, no month ever hit the benchmark.
Mid-Term Actions: Increase conversion rate to exceed external benchmarks by testing and
tracking marketing campaigns and separate web design changes.
To see if Bruce and E*S*Q unlimited can help ensure you use the right performance indicators and set
warnings to catch lost orders, call Bruce at 610-667-8188, or e-mail BruceESegal@gmail.com
Bruce E. Segal ● 610-667-8188 ● BruceESegal@gmail.com
1011 ESQunltd Case Study Web Analyt Conversion Rate Undisclosed v2.doc