3 builders who never spoke to each other
Read who arrived, not just how many
A spike is a mixed crowd: break it down by country and device, because engagement varies sharply between markets and the readers who stayed may not be the largest group. Assume a large share of signups do not know what you sell, especially where social sign-in, broad ads or an ambiguous ranking term brought them in.
The method
- 01
Assume the readers a viral post sends you are on a phone, and format the page for that first.
- 02
Read a traffic spike by country and not just by volume, because engagement varies sharply between markets and the strongest readers may not be the biggest group.
- 03
Assume a large share of your signups do not know what you sell, and assume it more strongly if you offer social sign-in, run broadly targeted search ads, or rank well for an ambiguous term.
- 04
Expect roughly a third to a half of revenue to come from the United States, and expect your revenue split by country to mirror your traffic split.
What it returned
- 81%
81% of the readers during the spike were on mobile, and Mac users outnumbered Windows users three to one.
- 38%
US visitors were 38% of the total, India had the second best bounce rate and session length, German visitors left after 37 seconds, and Dutch visitors read 1.59 pages per session.
- 2015
Justin's 2015 revenue split was USA 39% (mostly California), UK 9%, Canada 8%, Germany 3%, Australia 3%, closely tracking his traffic percentages; his startup consulting clients showed the same shape with the US at 30-50%.
Pinecone began getting signups from non-English-speaking countries including Belarus once it outranked Pinecone Research, a paid-survey company, for the single word pinecone; a mouse-movement heatmap showed even the main homepage description got little attention.
Sources
- Make stuff and be happy (2015 year in review)Justin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · What were my biggest hits of 2015? · undated
- Signups ShmainupsGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 1. Signups are unreliable · 2022-01-29
- 15 minutes of famePreetam Nath · preetamnath.com · Preetamnath.com blog · 2020-07-07
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
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