“My sales are down, is it just us or is it happening in our market?”

“Interesting to see their sales are on a downward trend like ours.

March, April and May this year are certainly down on the previous year. But I wonder…”

“Which traffic sources do they get most of their sales from?”

“Looks like most sales are overwhelmingly from Direct traffic.

That makes sense to me. They have a very strong brand so people know the site and go directly to it.

We need to get more direct traffic. I’ll arrange a brainstorming session with the team to see how we can increase direct traffic.

But now I want to know…”

“What’s their overall conversion rate from all traffic sources?”

“10.22% – That’s nearly double our conversion rate. Maybe the large number of direct visits are buyers or repeat buyers and that’s skewing the overall conversion rate. 

Let’s take a look at how their Paid Search traffic converts…”

“How well does their Paid Search traffic convert?”

“8.73% – Yep, Direct traffic was skewing the overall conversion rate higher. Now we have a more specific figure to work with.

Now, I want to zoom out a bit…”

“What’s their traffic been like over the last year?”

“I see the usual peak in sales during Black Friday but what’s that peak in February?

Aaah, I know they did a promotion around the Superbowl. Looks like it generated a big spike in traffic – particularly from Organic and Paid Search.

But did it increase sales?

Let’s take a look…”

“Did their promotion around the Superbowl actually increase sales?”

“Uh oh – looks like their sales actually dropped a bit. That must’ve hurt. We can learn from that”