Nuts.com: Direct Navigation Traffic up 105% & Google Orgainc Traffic Up 32% Since Acquisition Of Domain

The head of Marketing at Nuts.com just published some facts and figures to combat the negative stories here company received after spending “six figures” to acquire the domain name  nuts.com earlier this year and re-brand nutsonline.com to Nuts.com

We told you back in March of this year that nutsonline.com a family run business had acquired nuts.com.

The acquisition was attacked by mainstream media outlets as being an example of “overspending” and pointed to a loss of traffic right after the re-branding as a cautionary tale to all other companies.

Anne Swift the head of marketing wrote in a blog post less than 2 weeks ago on xconomy.com, called out the naysayers and offered up some very interesting numbers to show that not only wasn’t the company nuts when it acquired and re-branded to Nuts.com but that it was a great acquisition for the company as  visitors and traffic are WAY up.

“Google organic traffic grow by 32 percent year-over-year.”

“More telling of the transition’s success is our direct traffic, which represents the number of people finding us by directly typing our domain into their browser’s address bar.”

“Our direct traffic is up 105 percent over last year and, by April, our direct traffic and revenue exceeded that of December, which is amazing for a seasonal business like ours. This meant that our assumption about the new domain name and brand being more memorable was correct! And the re-branding attracted the right kind of visitor, too, as our revenues from direct traffic increased by more than 65 percent.”

Anne Swift Write on xconomy.com:

“”The New York Times certainly thought we were nuts, as did Forbes and Al Ries in AdAge, all of whom agreed that our six-figure acquisition of the nuts.com domain and our re-branding from NutsOnline to Nuts.com was an example of overspending.

Was it?

“We purchased the domain name last fall and, after the holiday rush, we pulled the switch on the re-branding in the second week of January.

Nuts.com’s new boxes. Photo courtesy of Pentagram.

The New York Times article was correct in that traffic from Google searches dipped immediately after the transition.”

“Other articles picked up on the story and proclaimed that our purchase of the domain name was a failure, even though organic traffic told only a small part of the story. ”

“We had expected some bumps in the road and, by May, our traffic had recovered and was back to where it had been right before the holiday rush. As of the end of July, we saw our Google organic traffic grow by 32 percent year-over-year.”

“More telling of the transition’s success is our direct traffic, which represents the number of people finding us by directly typing our domain into their browser’s address bar. Our direct traffic is up 105 percent over last year and, by April, our direct traffic and revenue exceeded that of December, which is amazing for a seasonal business like ours. This meant that our assumption about the new domain name and brand being more memorable was correct! And the re-branding attracted the right kind of visitor, too, as our revenues from direct traffic increased by more than 65 percent.”

You can read the rest of the story here