How Much Traffic Does a Sweepstakes or Contest Website Get?

A brief overview of the realities of sweepstakes and contest website traffic. Learn how impact of traffic peaks on the user experience of a contest and how to ensure that you deliver a great experience with quality leads gained from it.

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Do you want to increase contest or sweepstakes website traffic? It depends. Consider the realities about how much traffic a sweepstakes or contest website gets, including the impact of traffic peaks on your contest experience as well as the quality of leads gained from it.

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Will a Visitor Traffic Spike Impact Your Giveaway Customer Experience?

Websites tend to load quickly when the are accessed by an average number of users. However, when you run sweepstakes and contests that may result in traffic peaks that are higher than what your brand website or social media profiles typically receive, it’s important to consider the impact that the visitor traffic spike will have on your sweepstakes website.

If you want to see sweepstakes ROI in the form of leads and sales, you also need to know about the quality of your visitors and participants. Read this article to unlock the secrets to good traffic and quality leads for your sweepstakes or contest.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

  • What is good traffic for a sweepstakes?
  • How much traffic can a social media contest handle?
  • What are sweepers?

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Organic Traffic vs Paid Traffic for Sweepstakes and Contests

In a recent survey conducted by Hubspot Blog of over 400 web traffic analysts, the most common answers to monthly website traffic for larger websites were between 15K to 50K (19.3% of survey respondents) and 50,001-250K (23.2% of survey respondents) visitors per month. With the average sweepstakes or contest lasting roughly 7-14 days, a normal estimate for traffic to the brand website is around, let’s say 100K visitors for the duration of the giveaway promotion.

This is excluding any traffic spikes that will occur once the giveaway promotion goes live. As a result, brands have to consider scaling up their sweepstakes and contest infrastructure in order to support a spike in user sessions from around this baseline.

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Do Sweepstakes and Contest Websites Get Organic Traffic?

Generally, no. Sweepstakes, contests, and raffle websites generally do not rely on by organic traffic. That is because the sweepstakes website and domain are typically registered just before the start of the promotion, or during the conceptualization process. While some companies may reserve their own dedicated sweepstakes and contest domains, the majority do not.

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As a result, they are unable to benefit from organic SEO for ranking their contest websites and must rely on the existing SEO authority of the brand’s website or turn to paid advertising, paid media including sponsored content, social media marketing and influencer marketing.

One way around this is to buy the expired domains of past sweepstakes or create a dedicated page on your website for your annual sweepstakes marketing that remains in place year round. Some brands rank their sweepstakes or contests by creating a coupons or deals section of their brand website and simply adding live giveaway promotions as a banner.

How Many Sweepstakes Participants Is Good?

The answer to this question depends on several important factors. First, is your sweepstakes or contest open to your entire audience or are you marketing it to a select audience segment such as members, existing customers or employees? Another aspect to consider if your brand is targeting consumers direct or will have to work with another brand to deliver your promotion (such as a distributor vs a retailer).

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These Are the Top Factors That Determine Sweepstakes Website Traffic

Take note of all of the factors to determine how many users is a good giveaway traffic volume. You also have to look outside of your sweepstakes or contest platform to figure it out. Not only should you know how many monthly visitors your brand website normally gets along with estimates for any seasonal traffic spikes, but also:

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Sweepstakes Website Traffic Factors You Can Improve

1. How many existing will enter from nurturing campaigns encouraging them to participate?
2. What will you do to promote your sweepstakes or contest to new customers?
3. How well is your current strategy working to attract the right buyer personas?
4. Are there areas of your sales process, sales funnels or UX that should to be optimized first?

Any website traffic strategy is designed to help you increase your social media reach, participant engagement, and the number of quality participants. So you’ll also want to make sure that your social media content is aligned with the best practices for social media contest marketing before your giveaway goes live.

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A sweepstakes or contest company can also help you plan controlled traffic spikes so that you can better monitor the virality of your sweepstakes or contest.

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Determine Baseline Website Users for Your Brand, Baseline Sweepstakes Audience

You have to determine your baseline website traffic performance metrics and sweepstakes audience when it comes to determining how a sweepstakes website will perform during a giveaway. Furthermore, it’s only through baseline web analytics tracking that you’ll be able to make educated guesses as the potential ROI a sweepstakes or contest campaign can bring. Make sure to consider all sources of website traffic including, organic traffic, paid traffic, social media, email, SMS, direct, and other.

What Is Peak Traffic for Contest and Sweepstakes Websites?

According to a study conducted by WebFx, if your sweepstakes content goes viral on a low visitorship website, the peak traffic may be up to 30 higher than the average daily traffic. If your brand website has a high and stable visitorship, then the peak traffic during your sweepstakes or contest could be as high as 5 times your average daily traffic. If past peak traffic data is available, brands should calculate for sweepstakes website traffic on past data plus percentage traffic growth.

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How Many Participants Can I Have on My Giveaway Website Simultaneously?

You can estimate the number of users that your giveaway website will support simply by asking a sweepstakes and contest administrator. If you are hosting a giveaway via a contest platform, then they will be able to tell you exactly how many users your plan can support.

However, if you are planning to host a contest using your own brand website without any sweepstakes widget or contest plugin or platform, then you will have to rely on your analytics data to determine how often your users click on average.

How to Calculate Max # of Simultaneous Giveaway Website Users

If using Google Analytics, this data is available under Audience > Overview. There you will find both the Pages per Session and the Average Session Duration. The calculate the Maximum # of Simultaneous Users with the following formula:

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# of max requests per second * 60 seconds * Click frequency of users in seconds = Maximum # of Simultaneous Users

This figure should provide a fairly accurate estimate regarding the user capacity for your sweepstakes or contest promotion when it’s time to forecast how many participants you anticipate. Make sure to take into account any event-based deviations from the normal traffic patterns as a result of shopping holidays, for example, especially for ecommerce brands.

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Instant Win, Spin to Win and Scratch-off Games Should Be Delivered Seamlessly

If you’re looking scale both performance and giveaway participation, then you should consider a sweepstakes company for assistance with technical planning and resources for your promotion. They can advice you on the best options for hosting your sweepstakes or contest, especially in the case of promotions involving interactive games.

Instant win, spin to win, scratch-off games are only fun for participants if the customer experience is seamless. Furthermore, you also want to make sure that users don’t suffer any technical issues when trying to enter their participant information in entry form.

Should You Check Out the Competitor’s Website Traffic?

Absolutely, check the competitor traffic stats for other brands in your industry. This is especially important if your brand isn’t the top brand or preferred brand of the average consumer. By doing this, you’ll be able to assess the potential reach of your sweepstakes and estimated traffic spike if you do manage to attract your competitors’ audiences to your promotion.

Traffic Needed for 1,000s of Sweepstakes Website Visitors?

The sweepstakes website traffic factors explained above will determine how much traffic you need to attract thousands of participants to your giveaway and increase sales. The general rule is that the more traffic your giveaway website gets, the more website visitors and participants, and more sales generated.

As the number of participants increases, so does the costs of sweepstakes management for your promotion. That is why it’s best to take a different approach and focus on the quality of leads over the quantity of leads.

Always remember that every sweepstakes participant is a potential customer. To incraese the quality of contest participants, you need to carefully define your target audience.

Now you have a better idea of how much traffic a sweepstakes website gets. Remember, this exact figure is unique to your brand and campaign goals. So get started and set some goals to create sweepstakes promotions that go viral and watch your sweepstakes website traffic soar.

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