• by October 13, 2000

In the world of Internet metrics, the Priceline Grocery and Gasoline services, which the company closed recently due to financial problems within their supplier WebHouse, were success stories. They were the top 2 services visitors used on the site after the homepage. In August, Priceline Groceries attracted 2.8 million unique visitors while Priceline Gasoline, which only launched in June, had 1.7 million unique visitors. By comparison, none of the other Priceline services was able to attract more than 560,000 unique visitors. Priceline Groceries, with a reach of 3.3%, outperformed such sites as abcnews.com, nytimes.com, mtv.com and sony.com. Priceline Gasoline garnered more unique visitors than oxygen.com, compaq.com and etoys.com.

The metrics produced by the Grocery and Gasoline services in August were not one-time occurrences. These sections have consistently outperformed the other Priceline offerings and rank first and second in the average time spent by visitors on the site, which made Groceries and Gasoline the stickiest offers by Priceline. Grocery visitors spent an average of 18.3 minutes, while Gasoline visitors spent 13.5.

However, Priceline has now disproved that visitors and "stickiness" translate into profitability. WebHouse's inability to demonstrate future profits discouraged the investments needed to keep the services alive and has now called into question the viability of Priceline's other service offerings. Can a site survive in the world of Internet metrics after canceling its two most popular services? Priceline.com, which in August was ranked as the 40th most popular site in the US, is sure to fall when October rankings are released. But Priceline has served as a warning bell to the many popular sites that have yet to turn a profit that investors are demanding to see financial success before investing.

Moral of the story? High traffic does not guarantee success. Pick your sites carefully.