How Energy Bill Panic Failed To Fuel Commissions
- 3 Comment
I tend to keep a close eye on site activity and if something unusual happens then it’s quickly investigated. Monday evening for example saw traffic start piling into our offers section. Initially it was thought that perhaps a rogue bot had gone nuts, but a quick look at stats and somehow we’d managed to get to number 1 on google for some gas and electricity bill related terms.
With so many people visiting it made sense to make sure all the links to the main suppliers (E.On, Scottish Power etc) were working and add a few additional comparison site options like Energy Helpine and Money Supermarket. Sadly it was all a bit of a letdown as Scottish Power’s website was offline for most of Monday evening and Energy Helpline was slow and often didn’t load.
All in all it resulted in only a few leads (Scottish Power, Energy Helpine, uSwitch).
So we had the visitors, had the clickthoughs, but it all failed pear shape wise after that.
It’s possible that people were either panicking (I think there was a BBC programme on that evening about energy prices) or just browsing - after all changing supplier isn’t something people do without a decent bit of research. Slow or broken merchant sites didn’t help either - and if the proposition isn’t there (e.g. genuinely cheaper bills) then consumers aren’t going to go changing - so no commission for you matey!
All in all though it goes to show that for affiliate marketing to work smoothly you need all components of the process working at the same time - if the consumer is just browsing or the merchant isn’t working or doesn’t have what the consumer is after then no matter how lucky your google position is it’s not going to fuel your affiliate commissions.
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3 Comments on this post
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Rich said:
I’ve noted before a HUGE increase in traffic on a site (think something like 800%) compared to the day before as a result of something that was on TV, and my site being related. Again, it was the sort of area that isn’t going to get people buying straight away, and as a result I noted similar things to that you mention above, lots of visits but not necessarily useful visits.
It a definite area you can grab traffic by keeping on top of tv programmes etc, but like you say it doesn’t always mean increased traffic = increased sales.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:09 pm -
Lammo said:
I think it’s one of those areas that people will browse a lot, but not commit to - And I’m one of the guilty ones. After a sunny (so must have been a few weeks ago) Sunday afternoon reading the Sunday papers, I’d made my mind up to a) Open one of these fantastic 12% savings accounts they’re harping on about and b) Look for cheaper Gas and Electricity providers, a combination of which would make me around £100 a month better off (or so I thought)
It wasn’t until the Monday afternoon sat researching at the computer that I realised a) There’s so many loopholes in the 12% account that you only make about £30 a year more than my current savings account, and b) There were a couple of companies a little cheaper than my current provider (around £50 a year), but with prices set to rise “up to 40%” the Mail kindly screamed at me, there’s no guarantee that any of these companies would still be cheaper in 6 months time.
Result? My “£100 a month better off” became “less than £7 a month better off”, and I figured I couldn’t be arsed to do the paperwork, so I’ll just work a little harder on the affiliate stuff, and look again in 6 months to see what savings can be made.
Never underestimate the power of apathy…
July 9th, 2008 at 10:54 pm -
Winston said:
The program was “Tonight” on ITV, you can watch it here:
http://www.itv.com/News/tonight/episodes/Beattheenergypricehike/default.htmlCheers.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
