Cyber Monday Customer Behavior - And An Offer For You

I know, it's coming ... CYBER MONDAY.

You already know this, but it needs to be said.

1. You earn profit when customers pay full price for merchandise they have to have.
2. Trade journalists get paid when people click on sensational articles, causing "traffic" to increase, attracting advertisers.

Which article title is more likely to generate clicks and page views?

1. J. Crew generates a five percent increase in sales in late November by selling stuff at full price.
2. J. Crew's 30% off plus free shipping promotion generates a whopping 224% increase in Cyber Monday website traffic, according to Quantcast.

The very behavior that is most profitable for a trade journal is likely to not be profitable for the company the trade journalist writes about.

Here's the problem, folks.

• Cyber Monday promotions, often, do not result in incremental purchases. The promotions cause customers to shift full-price purchases out of other timeframes (say early November), into Cyber Monday.
• Almost no analytical tools (especially Google Analytics and the Web Analytics family of software) produce standard reports that clearly illustrate how sales shift out of one timeframe, into another.

As a result, all of the standard software tools hide destructive behavior, and illustrate non-profitable behavior as being highly beneficial to the business.

Want to learn if you have a Cyber Monday problem? Want to learn if your customers are simply shifting behavior out of profitable timeframes into the promotion-laden Cyber Monday window? Good! Let's try something.

• The first five businesses to respond to this request (contact me - kevinh@minethatdata.com) get an opportunity to have a one-time, $6,000 Cyber Monday analysis conducted.  Click here to see the file layouts necessary to have this analysis conducted. I will show you if Cyber Monday behavior is profitable for your business, if it brings in new customers, or if your existing customers are just shifting behavior out of profitable timeframes into Cyber Monday.

I'll run this special analysis for the first five responders - get your answers now, so that you are ready to deal with this year's Cyber Monday madness.