Many entrepreneurs equate website traffic with success. The logic seems straightforward: more visitors should mean more customers and higher sales. But in reality, high traffic does not guarantee high sales – especially when conversion rates are abysmally low. In fact, average website conversion rates hover around just 1–3%, meaning roughly 98 out of 100 visitors take no actionwordstream.comwordstream.com.
This conversion gap indicates that most traffic is merely window shopping. At the same time, the cost to acquire that traffic has been rising sharply, eating into marketing ROI. Paradoxically, some businesses are now seeing less traffic but more sales – a trend that challenges long-held assumptions about digital growth.
In this report, we’ll explore why focusing solely on traffic acquisition can be a costly mistake. We’ll back this up with data – from low global conversion rates to surging customer acquisition costs – and highlight insights from industry leaders (like Rand Fishkin) who observe that declining traffic can coincide with rising revenue. We’ll examine real examples (e.g. HubSpot’s recent experience) and the changing landscape of search, where Google’s AI summaries and “zero-click” results often bypass websites altogether.
The 2% Reality: Traffic Without Conversions
For most websites, only a tiny fraction of visitors ever convert into customers or leads. Numerous studies put average conversion rates in the low single digits. For example, WordStream data shows the average e-commerce conversion rate is about 1.91%. Similarly, industry benchmark reports find median conversion rates around 1–2% in many sectors (e.g. median fashion retail conversion ~1.96%). In other words, over 98% of web visitors typically don’t buy or sign up.
Such low conversion efficiency means that pouring more and more people into the top of the funnel yields diminishing returns. If only 2 in 100 visitors make a purchase, getting 1,000 more visitors might only produce 20 sales – and that’s if they are quality visits. As marketing expert Brendan Hufford observed, chasing big traffic numbers often leads to a false sense of success. He recounted a “nightmare” scenario where vanity metrics took over: his team celebrated spikes in blog hits even though those visits (to articles like “What is an SDR?” and “How to become a life coach”) were largely irrelevant to their product and converted no one.
They became “addicted to numbers that meant nothing,” ultimately optimizing for pageviews instead of paying customers.
This cautionary tale underscores that more traffic can be worse than no traffic at all if it’s untargeted – it wastes resources and attention on people who will never buy, while distorting your KPIs.
In short, a big Google Analytics session count is not a business goal – sales and leads are. If your conversion rate is 1%, doubling traffic might double your problems (server costs, bounce rates, irrelevant inquiries) without meaningfully moving revenue.
Rather than fixate on filling the funnel, smart entrepreneurs assess how well their website persuades visitors. Increasing the conversion rate from 1% to 2% is far more impactful than increasing traffic by another thousand hits. The data makes it clear: traffic for traffic’s sake is a dead end if those visitors aren’t taking action.
Rising Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) Squeeze ROI
Not only do most visitors not convert – getting those visitors is becoming more expensive. Digital marketers have watched the cost of customer acquisition climb year after year, especially in paid channels. Recent benchmarks illustrate this trend starkly. According to 2024 Google Ads industry data, the average cost per click (CPC) rose to about $4.66 – up ~10% from $4.22 the year prior (and higher than ~$4.01 in 2022).
More importantly, the average cost per lead (CPL) has ballooned: by late 2023 it averaged $66.69 across industries, a 25% increase from the year before (Just two years earlier, in 2022, the average CPL was around $44, implying roughly 50% higher lead acquisition costs now than in 2022.
To put these numbers in perspective, below is a summary of recent cost trends for Google search advertising:
Average Google Ads Costs (All Industries)linkedin.com
| Metric | 2022 Average | 2023 Average | 2024 Average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per Click (CPC) | $4.01 | $4.22 | $4.66 |
| Cost per Lead (CPL) | $44.70 | $53.52 | $66.69 |
Table: Steady rise in paid search costs from 2022–2024 (data from LocaliQ/WordStream benchmark report)linkedin.com.
This means marketers are paying more for each visitor and each lead than ever before. If your website’s conversion rate isn’t improving in tandem, your cost to acquire a customer (CAC) is shooting up.
For example, if it cost $50 in ads to get one purchase last year, it might cost $60–$70 now for the same outcome. Indeed, a search ad trends report noted CPLs rose in the majority of industries (+25% on average) even as conversion rates declined in many sectors. The result is a pincer movement on ROI: higher ad spend yielding fewer conversions.
Meanwhile, platforms like Google are reporting record profits, indicating that advertisers are pouring in budgets to compete for clicks. Competition drives up bids, and automation (like Google’s automated bidding) often skews toward higher spends.
A 2024 analysis found Google’s search ad costs had surged 133% year-over-year in some cases, with certain retail sectors experiencing a 40–50% increase in ad prices over five yearsbubbleup.net. These increases far outstrip inflation, reflecting how much costlier it has become to simply maintain the same traffic levels via paid acquisition.
The takeaway for entrepreneurs is sobering: buying traffic is an increasingly expensive game. If you’re dumping more budget into Google or social ads expecting to fuel growth, be aware that the efficiency of that spend is likely diminishing. When clicks cost dollars and most clicks don’t convert, chasing traffic can burn through cash fast. This is why many marketing leaders now emphasize improving conversion and customer value over just driving more visits. As we’ll discuss, investing in understanding your audience and tailoring your offer can yield better ROI than blindly upping ad spend to hit vanity traffic goals.
Traffic Down, Revenue Up: Decoupling Visits from Sales
For decades, we assumed a strong positive correlation between website traffic and sales – more visitors in the funnel meant more buyers out the other end. Recently, however, a “deeply strange trend” has emerged where the two have become unbound. In example after example, businesses are reporting situations where traffic is falling but revenue is rising. This isn’t a fluke; it’s a sign of changing user behavior and marketing effectiveness beyond raw clicks.
Perhaps the most prominent case is HubSpot. The popular B2B software company saw a dramatic drop in its blog traffic in 2023–2024 – losing millions of monthly Google visits. An analysis estimated HubSpot’s organic blog traffic fell on the order of 50–80%, from around 13 million visits at its peak down to a few million in late 2024. Yet, in that same period, HubSpot’s business thrived. HubSpot’s annual revenue grew ~22% year-over-year to reach about $2.5 billion in 2024 with strong gains in customer count and an all-time high stock price.
How is this possible?
It seems that much of the lost traffic was to top-of-funnel blog posts (e.g. generic how-tos and definitional articles) that weren’t directly tied to their core products’ purchase intent. In other words, HubSpot’s SEO team had built massive traffic on broadly popular topics, but those visitors were largely non-buyers. When Google’s algorithm later redirected those informational queries to sites like Canva, Wikipedia, or others HubSpot’s visitor numbers dropped – yet their real customers still found them through other means. The people who genuinely needed HubSpot’s software were now discovering it via brand reputation, word-of-mouth, and targeted content, rather than through random blog hits.
Moving Beyond Traffic: What To Focus on Instead
If not traffic, what should growth-minded businesses concentrate on? Below are key strategies – each a more sustainable driver of revenue than raw traffic numbers:
- Understand Your Audience’s Behavior : Invest in market research and audience insights. Learn who your best customers are, where they spend time, and what truly motivates them. This could mean using tools to analyze audience demographics and interests, conducting surveys/interviews, or engaging in online communities to observe discussions. The goal is to meet your audience on their terms. By understanding their behavior, you can position your marketing where it actually resonates. When you know what your customers care about, you can create content and offers that naturally attract them (often without needing massive ad spend). This customer-centric approach ensures you’re driving quality visits the kind that convert; instead of chasing everyone and hoping someone is interested.
Improve Offer–Audience Fit (Conversion Optimization, rather than throwing more prospects at a mediocre offer, make your offer more compelling to those who are already finding you. This is essentially conversion rate optimization and product-market fit alignment. Analyze why the 98% aren’t converting: Is it the messaging? The pricing? By addressing objections, you can lift your conversion rate (even modest gains from 1% to 2% double your sales with the same traffic). Ensure that your marketing promises align with the experience on your site. Remove friction from the user journey. It’s also about targeting: if you attract a slightly smaller but more qualified audience, your conversion rate will improve.
Offer-audience fit means the right people seeing the right message. When you achieve that, you need not worry about pouring in huge volumes of traffic; the business scales efficiently because a larger share of visitors say “yes.”
Leverage Local Marketing. For businesses with any local or regional component, local marketing can be a high-conversion alternative to broad online traffic. This includes local SEO (optimizing for “near me” searches, Google Maps, etc.), community involvement, and offline-online integration. Ensuring your Google Business profile is robust, encouraging reviews, and appearing in local directories can drive ready-to-buy customers straight to your door (or website). Additionally, sponsoring local events or partnering with local organizations can boost word-of-mouth.
Embrace Event Marketing and Direct Engagement. In-person and virtual events (webinars, workshops, conferences, meetups) can cultivate deeper relationships with prospects than a drive-by website visit. Events have a way of attracting highly interested audiences and immersing them in your brand or product experience. Whether it’s hosting a live webinar or networking at a trade show, events create opportunities for dialogue, trust-building, and immediate feedback that static web traffic cannot match. Even smaller-scale events like roundtable discussions or AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions can yield a rich crop of leads.
Build Your Brand with Content & Storytelling – Instead of churning out SEO-optimized posts for traffic, shift to brand content that tells a story and builds an emotional connection. Strong branding and storytelling increase customer loyalty and willingness to buy. Focus on creating content that conveys your mission, showcases customer success stories, and provides genuine value. This might be thought leadership articles, video series, podcasts, or social media narratives formats that may not always go viral in terms of traffic, but engage the right people and differentiate your brand. Good storytelling also spreads via word-of-mouth. When people feel a connection to your brand, they become ambassadors, mentioning you in conversations (online and offline).
Over time, a strong brand reduces your reliance on paid traffic, as customers come to you proactively because they trust what you stand for.
In practical terms, this means allocate resources to content marketing, PR, and social media presence that reinforce your story, rather than just running another lead-gen campaign. Brand equity might be hard to measure in Google Analytics, but it shows up in the bank balance through higher conversion rates, repeat business, and resilience to competition.
Sources:
Fishkin, R. “Traffic Is Down; Revenue Is… Up?” SparkToro Blog. Jan 27, 2025 sparktoro.com
Reynolds, W. “Why 2020’s SEO KPIs Won’t Work in 2024…” Seer Interactive. Sep 23, 2024seerinteractive
Ad Costs: LocaliQ (via Search Engine Journal) 2024 Google Ads Benchmarks linkedin.com; BubbleUp Marketing, Oct 24, 2024. bubbleup.net.
- Local Search Stat: Think with Google, 2019 report on local search behavior. lionssharedm.com.
Event Marketing ROI: Splash survey via ExplodingTopics, 2023. explodingtopics.com.
Brand Storytelling Stats: CXL 2023 via HuddleCreative. huddlecreative.com.