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Myths About Site Traffic and Optimization
Lots of folks have been asking us lately about the connection between site traffic levels and online optimization strategies. There are definitely some correlations, but there also seem to be some myths or mis-perceptions about those connections.
We often get asked:
How much traffic do I need before I start optimization?
Do I get enough traffic to my site to even consider optimization?
Will my tests take forever to run if I don’t have a lot of traffic?
How fast can I expect to see the results of optimization if my traffic is low?
These are natural questions from folks who haven’t dipped their toes into the optimization waters, but these questions indicate a few myths that I’ll attempt to dispel.
Myth #1: Traffic is the ‘magic metric’ when it comes to optimization
The fact is that the number of conversions is at least as important as traffic levels. We’ve always said that a minimum threshold to do formal online testing is 5-10 conversions per week, and that this amount of conversions (regardless of traffic) can at least get you results in a matter of weeks instead of months. A simple tool that illustrates the relationships between site traffic, conversion rate, and test durations is the Google Website Optimizer Duration Calculator. This free tool lets you play around with data points and estimate test durations before you start your experiment. I can personally say it has saved me a bunch of grief by warning me away from certain client experiments due to the duration estimates being way too long! Try changing the page views metric, and see the impact on duration. Now, try changing the conversion rate metric, and you’ll see it, too, can have a drastic impact on the duration.
Myth #2: Low-traffic sites won’t see results from optimization
The fact is that low-traffic sites can still see improvements from optimization. Remember that “optimization” doesn’t just mean formal testing using a tool like those provided by Omniture or Google. Optimization is about getting your company on a program of continuous improvement through hypothesis, change (via formal testing or not), and monitoring of the results of those changes. Once you have “results,” you feed those learnings right back into the program and keep going. Lower traffic sites may or may not be good candidates for formal testing methods like split testing or full factorial multivariate testing, but they may be great candidates for optimization! We often try formal testing on low-traffic sites, and if it’s not productive, we switch our focus to “serial testing,” which means benchmarking the performance of something (an ad, a landing page, etc.), making a change, and then monitoring the impact of that change. Either way, we tend to get results.
Myth #3: Testing and optimization doesn’t really work for low-traffic sites
The fact is that optimization can definitely work, and even formal testing can work if you do it right. One way to do formal testing on low-traffic sites is to focus on higher-trafficked pages. Another is to test micro-conversions (e.g. reading product reviews as opposed to buying the product). Still another is to make a B2C “view cart” page the conversion point instead of the purchase confirmation page. There are plenty of methods to shortening the duration of a test, but we’ll keep a few of those to ourselves for now 
Myth #4: It’s better to defer optimization until site traffic grows
The fact is that the time to optimize is always “now.” There’s an opportunity cost associated with not doing anything, when you could at least be doing something less-than-optimal. Your traffic may be less than optimal, but you can still optimize, and when your traffic becomes optimal, you’ll reap the rewards of earlier optimization work. We’ve always used the metaphor of the “leaky bucket”: If your conversion funnel is a bucket with a bunch of holes in it, why would you spend marketing money to pour more water (a.k.a. traffic) into that bucket? Wouldn’t it make more sense to fix the holes, then start pouring more water?
We’re definitely invested in dispelling any other myths about testing and optimization, so feel free to ask questions or contact us if you think you have a unique case and aren’t sure if optimization is right for you.
About the author
Brendan Regan is a Senior Persuasion Analyst. Prior to joining FutureNow, he worked in B2C online travel and B2B marketing. He likes to grok web design, user experience, and persuasive copywriting.
More articles from Brendan Regan
- Nobody wants to read your sh**!September 21st, 2009
- Redesign? Ask The Right Questions!September 18th, 2009
- Cross-post: How to Improve a Product Page, Part 1September 15th, 2009
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October 30th, 2009
1:04 pm
As far as I know, the minimum number of samples you’d need before you can draw any meaningful statistical conclusion is 40 and usually the bar is set at 100 (to be in a reasonable confidence interval). Correct me if I’m wrong.
October 30th, 2009
6:34 pm
“Now” is always the time to optimize. If you optimize effectively, traffic will increase and, ideally, conversions. Web content and copy also plays a key role in optimization. Check out http://www.onlinemarketingconnect.com/website-content-strategy/
October 30th, 2009
6:53 pm
Smaller websites can have excellent results from basic search engine optimization because they tend to be so “un-optimized” to begin with. It is easy to double the traffic for a site getting 500 visits, generally speaking.
October 30th, 2009
8:12 pm
So is there any point to optimize a site with 20-50 users/day? Or should I just focus on getting more users?
October 30th, 2009
8:15 pm
@Kim: how many conversions are you getting per week? Consider a 50/50 approach where you’re simultaneously working on generating more traffic, and doing light optimization.
October 31st, 2009
4:29 pm
Hey, thanks for the great article.
I think it’s always a good time to optimise your website even from the beginning.
Some of the website i’ve optimised even from the beginning get around 500 uniques per day and still manage to generate a decent flow of $30 a day, which is good enough.
It’s good to optimise it even from the beginning. Though I agree if you’ve only got a small member count you might want to work on promotion more than anything, yet optimising can have a big impact on optimising.
Just my thoughts, thanks.
October 31st, 2009
4:31 pm
more traffic, more money
November 1st, 2009
3:00 am
it is not a myth about sites traffic.. has to be optimize
November 1st, 2009
3:37 am
Always looking for new ways to improve my traffic
November 1st, 2009
4:39 am
very informing, good post
November 1st, 2009
10:56 am
Your Foruth point “It’s better to defer optimization until site traffic grows” just opened my eyes wide.
Thanks for the great information.
November 1st, 2009
4:43 pm
very informing, good post
thank you
November 1st, 2009
9:46 pm
Yes…i agree with that. Many people still having mind like that. Traffic is doesn’t take effect with your SEO
November 2nd, 2009
7:30 am
Always looking for new ways to improve my traffic
November 2nd, 2009
7:30 am
#
very informing, good post
thank you
November 2nd, 2009
7:34 am
it is not a myth about sites traffic.. has to be optimize
November 2nd, 2009
11:13 am
Great Article for the fact, no real facts are there
November 3rd, 2009
2:17 am
Now when you say optimization, you are referring to SEO correct?
November 3rd, 2009
3:46 am
There are really some big myths specially among clients like some think submitting same article to 20+ sites is a good idea
November 3rd, 2009
11:36 am
@Toronto SEO: No, we’re not an SEO shop. We do conversion rate optimization, i.e. what happens after the SERP.
November 3rd, 2009
2:09 pm
I like your comment about the time to optimize is always “now.” I really don’t know how people expect that their web site will ever get noticed at all if they don’t optimize. I always found that to be a very strange assumption, but so universal none-the-less.
November 4th, 2009
8:33 am
Smaller websites can have excellent results from basic search engine optimization because they tend to be so “un-optimized” to begin with
November 4th, 2009
11:48 pm
Optimizing is always an ongoing process and it is always good to start early
November 5th, 2009
12:08 am
I can see optimizing being a big benefit for low traffic sites that are competing with other low traffic sites.
November 5th, 2009
2:27 am
Optimization is so important, and it’s not that hard to do either. The sad thing is that most people don’t know where to begin with SEO. Hopefully those people will make their way here and learn a thing or three.
November 6th, 2009
3:31 am
Low number of traffic to the site does not have any effect on optimization. When we do optimization certainly within a span of time you will see the improvement.Onpage optimization contains keyword research and off page optimization contains creating backlinks. Optimization is very important.
November 6th, 2009
7:44 am
Having more sites with low traffic, I agree with you.
Good article with good reminders.
November 6th, 2009
3:21 pm
nice info gan…
more traffic.. more money…
November 6th, 2009
4:04 pm
Blog muy interesante que he favoritos traducida a través de la RSS de TraducirRSS
November 6th, 2009
11:02 pm
I have to admit I had fallen victim to #4. Great article newbies should definitely have a read.
November 7th, 2009
2:05 am
Nice tips to improve the traffic of website
November 7th, 2009
5:58 am
all i know is nice blog, nice content, nice traffic and great money would come.
November 7th, 2009
10:33 am
He is right, I mean if you don’t start trying, how on earth are you going to improve. Every method is good, its just a matter of what finally clicks for you, so try everything and keep trying, you never know what might work for you.
November 7th, 2009
9:00 pm
Very useful information, i am about to get to work to fix some things. Thank you very much for your information.
November 9th, 2009
12:09 am
You are right,generally low traffic sites should not optimize as the results may take a long time to come.
November 9th, 2009
9:34 am
Some great info, I agree that Google does suggest way to much traffic
I am interested to know how Omniture stacks up compared to Google? Is it worth the investment?
November 9th, 2009
11:17 am
A really good post.
I’ve always believed that optimization, traffic and conversions are mutually inclusive.
In order to increase your traffic – you need to optimize your site. In order to optimize your site – you need to find out what your converting traffic is, in order to find your converting traffic you need traffic in the first place.
It’s about constant vigilance and tweaking the optimization to rank for the converting keywords as the campaign progresses. Optimization should be an integral and ongoing part of any online marketing campaign.
November 9th, 2009
12:20 pm
Good tips to point out.
November 9th, 2009
12:20 pm
Good tips you pointed out there. Very useful for my future design endeavors.
November 9th, 2009
12:49 pm
Thanks, very nice article about this topic
November 10th, 2009
5:56 am
Those tips are very usefull. Thank you
November 10th, 2009
8:48 am
As always, test, test and test some more! Traffic will come but before it does you should have sufficiently tested and optimized to see what works and what doesn’t.
November 10th, 2009
5:41 pm
more traffic is very problem for people on the world
November 11th, 2009
5:12 am
Good content is always ranked and admired you will get high traffic no matter what
November 12th, 2009
3:42 pm
[...] You Don’t Need Tons of Traffic to Optimi… Brendan Regan, of the now Bryan Eisenberg-less Futurenow Blog, dispels the myth of needing minimum traffic volume to make website optimizations. [...]
November 13th, 2009
11:10 am
good to know Ive always heard these myths and thus been reluctant to try it on some small sites but it looks like i should just give it a shot…
November 13th, 2009
12:17 pm
Maybe it’s just that I don’t have a clear understanding of the subject matter but it seems like this article is a little short on actual concrete advice.
For example, what should a low traffic site be testing since it doesn’t have much data to draw from?
And it seems like the word “optimization” is used a lot without providing a clear understanding of what’s being optimized or what “optimization” consists of.
Again, not trying to be critical, I may just be too uninformed on the subject to follow along.
November 14th, 2009
5:25 pm
[...] You Don’t Need Tons of Traffic to Optimize Your Site: Brendan Regan, of the now Bryan Eisenberg-less Futurenow Blog, dispels the myth of needing minimum traffic volume to make website optimizations. [...]
November 15th, 2009
9:53 pm
[...] You Don’t Need Tons of Traffic to Optimize Your Site: Brendan Regan, of the now Bryan Eisenberg-less Futurenow Blog, dispels the myth of needing minimum traffic volume to make website optimizations. [...]
November 19th, 2009
1:04 am
[...] You Don’t Need Tons of Traffic to Optimize Your Site: Brendan Regan, of the now Bryan Eisenberg-less Futurenow Blog, dispels the myth of needing minimum traffic volume to make website optimizations. [...]
November 22nd, 2009
6:01 am
[...] Source:Myths About Site Traffic and Optimization Share and Enjoy: [...]
November 22nd, 2009
4:33 pm
can we say “you dont need to have any traffic for optimization”
December 6th, 2009
7:15 am
thanks, great information, i need more traffic
December 10th, 2009
9:33 am
avarmaarrok
rfof
December 17th, 2009
1:25 pm
Your website’s great I’m very happy, I am very happy to find the information I was looking for
December 23rd, 2009
1:39 pm
I have had my site tested and been advised to formally optimize my site for the search engines.What does that mean.
January 7th, 2010
1:58 pm
Thanks for another good article.
January 25th, 2010
3:09 pm
Good tips…if you buy an expired domain that is 10 years old does it mprove optimization techniques really easily?
March 12th, 2010
2:27 am
Traffic, traffic, traffic. So many people think they need more of it, yet what are they doing with the existing traffic they have?
March 12th, 2010
12:34 pm
Brilliant ideas. I wouldn’t mine having more traffics through SEO. I believe it would really help my online business.