(Over 50% drop in traffic over 4 days)

Surely that’s cause to be alarmed? If there’re 50% fewer visitors, there’re 50% fewer inquiries and he’s making 50% lesser money from his site.

Perhaps not. I zoomed out, and this is what the traffic looked like.

(Traffic over a longer timeframe)

So, it turns out, the dip in traffic is periodic. Traffic drops(and goes back up) every few days. Therefore, it turns out, it isnt anything to worry or panic about. If instead, I’d worried about the traffic drop and doubled my advertising budget, I’d have lost a lot of money.

But then again, even that level of detail might not be telling the entire story. Zoom out even further, look at search trends over the years, and this is what it looks like.

So this is a slightly different story. You dont have to worry about periodic dips in traffic. But the overall traffic is trending downwards, which means you’re in a declining industry. The short term traffic dips arent a cause for worry, but the industry is heading for a long term decline.

As marketers, therefore, it’s important to look at the big picture. That’s important while looking at any sort of information – not just web data. Information by itself is meaningless – trends, context and the big picture are what matter.

Of course, once you do spot a pattern or get an insight, there’s also the small matter of deciding what to do about it.