It is so easy to get caught up in traffic numbers. We all want to know how many people are visiting our sites and platforms. But what really matters is sales. Traffic is only as relevant as the people you’re attracting. That means visitors who are interested in your product and therefore more likely to engage and purchase. 100 highly engaged visitors are more valuable than 1000 browsing ones.Below is a very true case study that proves how little traffic matters.

Quality of Traffic Trumps Quantity of Traffic

A few years ago we tried something bold. We recommended to our client that they completely eliminate all banner ads and SEM in Q4, their busiest season. Traffic generated through banner ads and paid SEM can be ineffective. Tactics like these can result in high bounce rates and low conversions. Quality referrals generated through high-value targeted content is a better way to generate leads. And this can be measured by tracking actual revenue.

Having recognized that buying clicks does not equate to generating valuable traffic, our reduced its significant paid SEM budget to $0. They reinvested this money in producing content that their target audience (the foodie community) found relevant.

With our client, we launched a food blog publishing recipes featuring the product line. Creating and distributing food-centric content, drove traffic to the e-commerce site organically through social media channels and referrals. Tweaks were made to the e-commerce site to improve the path to purchase as well.

Visitors continued to find the site thorough Search, but because we were now relying on organic search generated through relevant content, those visitors were much more engaged than previous visitors.

As a result of the new content approach and e-commerce UX updates, traffic actually decreased but the number of relevant visitors coming to the site resulted in a marked increase in sales.

Year over year results

• Online sales increased 38%.
• Shopping cart abandonment was reduced 90%.
• The average order size increased 22%.

30% less traffic. 38% more sales. Stop measuring the stats that don’t matter

Disclaimer: There are some cases where traffic matters. But they are few.