The following appeared in a report issued by a Marketing Director: Over the past two years, our website has converted a consistent 3% of its visitors into sales, with very little fluctuation. Clearly, then, our goal for the upcoming year should be to raise the number of visitors to our site by any means necessary. If we can double our number of visitors by casting a wider net on pay-per-click advertising and by creating site content that is more search-engine friendly, we'll double our sales.
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The author argues that if he increases the number of visitors to his website the sales will increase proportionately. However, the authors argument is flawed because of unjustified assumptions and faulty reasoning.
The author assumes that with the increase in visitors the sales will also increase proportionately. However, there can be a case where the number of visitors has increased but the sales have not picked up in the same proportion. Thus, a doubling of the visitors would not double the sales as the author argues. The visitors may increase from 100 to 200 but the customers might increase from 3 to 5.
The second flaw in the argument is that the author argues that increasing the number of visitors is the only way to increase the sales. However, if we can increase our percentage of visitors that materialise into sales we can still achieve an increase in sales with the same customer base. For eg, Currently, we have 100 visitors and 3 materialise into sales. If we increase this 3% to say 10% we have actually tripled our sales keeping the same customer base.
Another assumption made by the author is that all the products provided by the author to its customer are of supreme quality and they require no upgradation. However, if the products are not of good quality the website can increase its sales just by providing some superior quality products to the visitors and no further increase in visitors will be required. For instance, if better quality customers are provided on the website more of the visitors will materialise into sales and increase the hit ratio without an increase in the number of visitors.
Thus, the authors assumption is flawed as he fails to elaborate other methods to increase sales like good quality products, higher hit ratio, etc. He also assumes a direct relationship between viewership and sales which is nowhere justified in the argument. Therefore the authors argument is flawed becasue of faulty reasoning and unjustified assumptions.