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Surprise Finding: Website Traffic Source Analysis at the Shopping Cart

Your website is a leaky bucket. The more traffic (water) you put in the top, the more it spills out. On average only 2-3% of website visitors convert, while only 3 out of 10 people that get as far as the shopping cart convert. That’s less of a bucket and more of a sieve.

So why are we as an industry so focused on website traffic and not on plugging the leaks? Most emarketers want traffic above all and are willing to invest big bucks to get it—through SEO, paid search, display advertising, referral, social media, and so on. These all drive traffic with varying degrees of precision.

However, if you analyze the traffic sources that drive conversions, as opposed to the overall volume of traffic, then a different story emerges. A member of the SeeWhy research team pointed out that email was often the largest source of traffic for ecommerce conversions. Email as a significant source of conversions, yes… but the largest? This warranted further analysis. (…)