Riding on Traffic Spikes
Often we get excited when traffic spikes on our websites. Hearts start pounding and our imaginations run wild picturing the new found future of the website.
To define this term, a spike in traffic is when there is a major boost in website traffic and it goes back down to normal shortly after, forming a sharp spike shape in the stat timeline.
The problem here, and I’m guilty of this too, is that when the emotions are high we tend to ride on this spike. “The site is now doing well”, “Traffic is pumping”.
At this point we often tell friends and family the site is doing well, and they congratulate us. They tell their friends and introduce you as the guy who runs the site that is doing well.
You have to really see things as they are.
Take the spike away:
- How many users are visiting a day?
- What is the average time spent on the site?
- How many users are returning?
- How high is your bounce rate?
- How many pages are being viewed per user?
- What have you done in the past month to improve your stats? If nothing, why not?
The answers to these questions is what you want to be telling your colleagues, not riding on a traffic spike you got 6 months ago.
If you’re still riding that spike when you launched your site 2 years ago and your traffic has been dismal ever since, it’s time to see things as they are and move on.
My site got a recent spike in traffic, and I probably didn’t look at it as realistically as I should have. Perfect timing, Rob.