Rant: Fluctuating ratios (and my innability to come to terms with them ...)
 

I know, I KNOW, it's the nature of this business, but I still cannot help but feel as if I've been kicked in the balls repeatedly when one day I send 4094 hits and 16 signups, and the next I am at 3665 hits and 1 signup. My average is about 1:400, so both those days are unusual ratio-wise, but especially the latter one (1:3665).

Tell me I'm micro-analyzing, tell me it's the nature of this industry, I don't care ... this kind of fluctuation will always have the direct effect of working my panties into a bunch (even after years lolll).

:2 cents:

/rant

join the club

it's paycom

Better than my conversion ratio of 0:119 - you only need get yourself worried when you are in the 0: territory (i.e. my home turf).

Those conversions are well within the "norm" stastically. There was a dicussion a few weeks back, and IF the quality of traffic was consistent with the same number of protential successful sales existing in the sample, then something like 1:6000 was still stastically "normal" if the median conversion rate was 1:500. Or something like that, can't remember the exact numbers.

ive got an extremly fucked up ration over the last two weeks @ a sponsor....... 1:6000 :disgust

You are not alone. I see these wide fluctuations daily and from multiple sponsors. Even the sponsors I've talked to in private see these types of fluctuations. I really wish there was a solution to fixing these kinds of problems, but I can't come up with one. Believe me, as someone who buys a large amount of traffic every month, this is extremely painful to watch some bad converting days.
WG

0:119? that's not enough traffic to make any kind of judgment.. Do you expect to make a sale with ever hit you send? How can 1:3000+ be better then your 0:119? first of all, he sent way more hits than you and made only 1 sale so that in no way makes it better then your 1:119. Your 0:119 is not even relevant in this case.

it's paycom :)

Haha pwnt :P

:winkwink:

Somehow your rant just made me feel better, thanks Yngwie.

Glad to have been involved indirectly in that process, even if my ego did get a bit tattered in the process. :uhoh

it always works in mysterious ways

the largest fluctuation we usually see in sales is 30% from day to day. It's of course either up or down, so there's always a mean value to consider.

Now if you try to apply that in to monthly base, you'll see from month to month the ratio goes up or down at a very small %. Ours is from 0 to 10% top and we have a steadily growth in sales for several months in row. As webmaster myself i can tell you that if your traffic has the quality to get 16 sales or so per day frequently, the drop to 1 is not normal.

Good post.

Get out of my head.

For the record, in the last few hours of the day yesterday we pulled in 4 more sales, ended up with ~5000 hits sent and 5 sales total. Off our conversion mark by about 100%, but not so horrible as to make me .. ehhhem .. post a thread about it :winkwink: lol

I think you also should consider the very small sample data set your using. In the mainstream stuff I was doing, we'd send hundreds of thousands of hits before even determining a ratio. Less sample data = greater fluctuations = less real understanding. :thumbsup

Yeah I know, see my first post in this thread "Tell my I'm microanalyzing..."

:)

Even in brick and mortar, some days people come in at not so great a pace, but everyone seems to buy SOMEthing. And the very next day you get twice as many people, all browsers, and almost nobody buys anything. It's just the way it is.

The company I worked for before adult had traffic and sales stats (right down to how the weather was that day in history) going back 70+ years. I had stats of how many receipts were written on average for the whole life of the store for each particular hour of the day, and was asked to schedule employees accordingly. Nevertheless, sometimes I had to give them busy work because it was dead, and other times it was too busy for the number of people I had on..

Whats the moral of the story? Well I dunno, at the VERY least, start a spreadsheet to track your numbers. But keep in mind that sometimes it's just kick ass sales, and sometimes it just sucks ass and both can defy explanation.

if you are not making at least 50 sales a day numbers mean nothing


the luck factor is too high

Well that depends on what someone's normal ratio is. If someone has 10,000 hits but normally only get 1:500 is that any better of a sample size than somone that has 500 hits but normally gets 1:25? No. Of course the larger the sample size tyhe better. But if you normally get a ratio of say 1:25 to wait for 10,000 hits or even 1000 to decide to do something if you have zero sales, that is retarded.

I agre.Their role needs to be looked at.
I'm 1:4500 today on very qualified traffic.