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Our fastclick income is down 25% but steady...this is directly associated with a decrease in traffic. I feel the problem is the TV effect of the war.
I'm unable to guess how much is Americans not travelling anywhere or resentment toward Canada's Iraq policy.
I don't think it's the latter. Most Americans don't know anything about Canada's Iraq policy. Of course, it's possible that some of the "boycott France" crowd don't know the difference between France and Québec. :-)
The most likely explanation is the "CNN effect" (or the "Google News effect," for Webophiles). Web users who expect to take spring or summer vacations are just delaying the planning process, IMHO. The "wait until the last minute" trend has been going on for a while now, and the distraction of war coverage on TV or the Web just makes it easier for people to wait. (I'm still getting a reasonable number of affiliate hotel bookings, for example, but the vast majority are from people who are traveling in the next few weeks. People who have to plan now will do so, but for everyone else, there's no great harm in letting the planning and booking process slide by a few weeks.)
I have noticed that many more "vendors" on my site are posting special offers, and they like the weekly newsletter that goes out to the "subscribers" that includes the special offers.
Seems that this was a trend that had started before the war though, but certainly the war has caused the trend to accelerate.
Oh, and I made my first sale/conversion in 3 days. Boy was I happy.
Personally, I haven't even been on this site since the two "events" began. I just came here to get a reprieve and then I'm going back to the news sites.
Believe it or not, it didn't even occur to me until this moment that it was about time for the other dance to perhaps start. I forgot about it completely. It took me a second to remember that the update is called the dance!
The universe is obviously out of alignment.
It's been really interesting. January traffic was about normal as far as hits but requests for purchases were WAY down, at least 60%.
Around the begining of February when the war talk heated up, hits went down about 20-30% BUT It was one of our most profitable periods in about 2 years! Strange...less people were shopping, but the ones who were shopping were buying.
Since last week when the war started, hits are down over 50% from normal for this time of year. We are really hoping that when this is over the people who have been waiting to buy will unlease thier pent up demand and start spending again.
Our customers are very tied to the news. There is a direct correlation to news and purchases. We see it all year round. When the stock market is up, our business is up. When the market is down we generally are too. Same thing with the news. Good news brings sales and bad news brings
the sounds of crickets in the office ;)
Not sure if I agree with you on this basic point, europeforvisitors.
A lot of the U.S. cable news gang have used our policy and statements by Canadian politicians on their shows as something to deride (and to fill time).
However, whether this has an effect on people's travel decisions is another matter and I have no idea.
