A real "dear diary" moment happened to me recently, here it is:
Last Thursday the TV ad for Motors.co.uk went live on TV and it surpassed all of my hopes. My prevailing emotion going into the day was anticipation (with a side-dish of fear) of whether the promises we'd made about finally bringing Motors.co.uk to the attention of consumers would be true. The first sizeable screening was 10.45am during Secret Millionaire: Australia (the guy gave about £20k, not exactly Rockefeller). TVs in the office on. Everyone stopped to watch and a cheer went up as it appeared, and it looked good, really good.
As soon as it was over, I stared at my analytics and the traffic spiked up immediately. IMMEDIATELY! It kept going and we soon hit levels we'd never seen before. One advert in a relatively low daytime rating slot. Andy and I looked at each other and said "thank God for that". It worked.
The rest of the working day was continued highs as the peak of Secret Millionaire was quickly forgotten, and we broke record after record of users live on the site. Every time we hit a new high (which seemed like every 30 minutes), applause and cheers filled the office. Someone shouted a "COME ON" more aggressively and passionately than Andy Murray. Others took photos of the analytics screens. It was like being in a movie, if ever one was written about an online car classified site.
I took a moment to appreciate that the joy in the office was the culmination of so many people's hard work and commitment to the business over many years. A moment of great privilege to have a team so together in their passion for this to work. If one person had hugged, it would have sparked an outbreak. We were twitching with excitement.
But, we were being idiots, the British public were just warming up. In the evening, we went to the pub to see our "hero" positions on ITV. We went to the pub. We took sweeps on where we thought the traffic would go to. The traffic continued to heat up with ads on ITV2 and E4 (after Hollyoaks - possibly my proudest moment), but nothing could have prepared us for what happened at 8.30 between Emmerdale and Birds of a Feather.
The traffic leaped quickly, then it leaped again, and again, we all realised that this was going to be special. People were now videoing Google Analytics (in a pub). The barman was cheering with us. It peaked at levels I thought others were foolish to choose in the sweepstake. My "bullish" guess a fraction of the peak.
Sharing this day with everyone who had invested so much into getting the business ready for this was an honour. We've had lots of battles to get here, but they were all worth it for this moment of euphoria.
As is the Motors.co.uk way, we are now hooked on this greater level of traffic and crawling all over the data to improve performance further. Our expectations are now even higher.
But on this one day, what we dreamed of arrived and then kept coming. Officially we'll credit strategic planning, but it felt more like karma. I'll never forget it or stop chasing it.
Steve Baulmer had nothing on me that day:
