Here’s a metric most people don’t think of: hour by hour traffic breakdown.

Google Analytics shows hour by hour traffic breakdown to your site.   It also shows (with some degree of accuracy) where your users are coming from.  By combining those datapoints, you can get a good sense for when your users are most likely (and least likely) to visit your site.

To understand why this matters, think about the way you visit websites.

In the morning, when you’ve just a few minutes before you leave for work; in your cubicle at work; at home right after work when you’re blowing off steam; after dinner in front of the TV; sitting in your office next to all your personal files…

Your attitude is very different.  The amount of devoted attention you pay is very different.   How likely are you to be distracted?   Is there a fixed amount of time you’re going to spend online? Are your speakers on mute?   Are you in physical proximity to additional information you might need?

These factors directly influence the likelihood that you will succeed in completing a web task.   When you’re distracted, any little ambiguity can throw you.   When you’ve got ten minutes to surf the web, and a registration signup process has taken five minutes so far and you’re not sure how much longer it’s going to take, you’re likely to give up.

As a product manager, you don’t have a lot of control over when your users come to use your application.  But you can increase their odds of succeeding in any of these time windows with a few strategies:

• Test under stressed circumstances (”hallway usability” testing - literally interrupt your coworkers to get quick feedback)
• Set expectations clearly on how long processes will take
• Follow up via email (preferably sent to be received during the leisurely postprandial, post kids-in-bed browsing session)

The hourly traffic breakdown also gives you another important datapoint: when to schedule downtime!   This afternoon I noticed that OpenTable was down at around 2:30pm - “odd,” I thought.  Then I wondered if that were deliberate - 2:30pm Pacific time is after lunchtime but early for making dinner plans; elsewhere in the U.S. it’s a bit last-minute for making dinner plans for the same night.

Category: Best practices, Psychology   Comment: Add A Comment
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