[thelist] Sales and Visits

[Fred Jones]

> So, "Sales" is the number of new accounts from the website (i.e.,
> excludes all business from recurring customers and excludes all
> business from channels other than the website (phone, print, in-person
> marketing, word-of-mouth, etc.))? And the sale month is determined by
> the date when the order is sent in from the website?

No, Sales includes all sales, no matter what. Recurring customers are
told to just make a new purchase on the site. There is no other way to
purchase aside from using the site, and there is little or no other
aspect to this business except the site and referrals. But referrals
anyway would just go to the site.

> I do notice a potential time lag between traffic spikes and sales
> spikes. Your sales trough in Jan follows a traffic trough in Dec
> (likely due to the holidays), but then March traffic and April sales
> is evidence that this might not be a trend.

I see what you mean, but I also don't think it makes a trend.

> I know you intended this to be simple, but there are still a lot of
> questions to nail down before you can really say whether you can gain
> any insight into what is going on. I don't think you can pass this off
> as simple noise, because you have pretty large swings in the new
> customers sales data.

I don't see any insights to be gleaned. Except to cross the fingers more...

F