I redesign my youtube channel to make it more attractive - the number of daily subscribers drops rather than going up.
I advertise a new product on the site.
Visitors avoid it.
I just let it sit there without promoting it, more people buy it.
In these 8 years of experience online, I could give you dozens of examples where the audience's response is the EXACT opposite to what it "should" be.
I think this has to do with a simple human trait: usually, people don't like to be sold to.
When you enter a shop and everyone leaves you alone, you stay there and take your time.
A sales person shows up and asks you a simple question and you might run.
Why is that?
Because your space gets invaded and you feel that sales person's agenda.
It is power projected on you and this feel like pressure.
So, when you arrive on a website, with all sorts of flashing sales calls, you tend to leave because you can't relax.
In some cases and environments, that's not the way it works.
Especially in the filed of marketing and business, people expect and even enjoy that type of energy.
On my site, giving visitors all the space to relax and enjoy the content seems to usually work much better than blowing my sales horn.