Massive drop in sales - how do I find out why?
-
I am working with my client managing/maintaining their online store.We have been making big improvements to onsite SEO, improved URL structures (complete with re-directs) etc, we use Yoast Premium to optimise pages for search and Yoast Local.
We have a bounce rate of around 20%, however, suddenly in mid August, our revenues virtually vanished overnight. Moz is reporting a search visibility drop of 51%, while visitor levels remain fairly average, certainly no drops that can be compared with the sudden loss of conversions.
I am at a loss and cannot fathom why our sales have dropped.
Can anyone suggest where I might look?
Many thanks
Bob
-
Further to the above, I think I've solved that issue. There was an error on that product you used as your example, it was loading an attribute as a variation that didn't exist.
I've removed it now.
-
Hi Vijay, this is really helpful.
We recently changed the product options framework for the website, and I know the previous options solution had a pop up warning for the completion of the prescriptions fields.
We are now however using a completely different solution for the prescription form, and it's possible that there is some code left over from our previous solution.
I am no longer using the developer who created the previous options framework, so can you tell me if there is a way we can track down where this code is?
For our current options, this is all handled by Gravity Forms in WordPress, so I don't think that will be causing the problem.
Thanks again for your helpful suggestion.
Bob
-
Hi Bob,
Although people are blaming it some Algo update for the drop, yet I would like to keep my focus on conversion rate drop ( if you framed you question correctly, that there is not much drop in visitors compared to sales).
I tried using your website to find anything that was amiss and the only fault I could find which can directly correlate to sales is that Javascript alerts for order validation, If this dialogue is suppressed, validation fails and order can't be processed.
https://postimg.org/image/6axhg8yw5/
Please look into it.
Regards,
Vijay
-
Hi,
I agree with Blue Corona, As there was a algo update few weeks ago, if you check your Google consol you would be able to see.
in my opinion, you need to cosinder update in order to determin the fall. -
Yes, this is an ongoing issue, my client manages their own inventory so they often make changes without me knowing to stock levels/availability.
-
Completely understand the problem!
Another thing I would look at is this: https://i.gyazo.com/f00555df1f7dcc374785d29c8ed4d9cb.png
You can see on that page there are three out of stock products. I would (if you can) push these down the results. As in the top 6 (above the fold) I can see one out of stock. You're missing an opportuntity here to sell that product.
-
Hey Thomas,
Thanks for your feedback. This is a planned update actually. We have a unique requirement where our products require a lot of options to be provided as you have seen. Unfortunately, due to the way the product page is constructed in the theme we are using, it puts those options prior to the checkout button in an area that should only take up the header.
I am about to update the theme to a major update released last week. Once that is done we are going to have a custom product page template created to put everything back in the right place
Currently, because of the options placement, if we activate the tabs section, they appear at the foot of the page!
Complete nightmare!
-
Had a quick look through your shop, found this page: https://www.glassesonspec.co.uk/cheap-prescription-sunglasses/mens-sunglasses/wayfarer-style-cd1038/
I would look into the styling of your page, it's not utilising the width as well as I would think you could. I would personally make the content below the list "included with every pair" use the full width (image/description)
-
I use a spreadsheet to track my top 10 competitors, every time the new DA index is released. By watching our competitors, I can see trends and seasons in our markets and how algorithm changes affect us and them. Most of the time, the majority of us see the same increases and reductions. This is not an immediate answer bc it takes a long time to populate enough data to begin measuring, but after a while, it very valuable when the owner comes knocking.
KJr
-
Thanks Patrick, that's really useful info. I'll try some of these suggestions
-
Hi there
I would make sure that you properly 301 redirected all old URLs to new URLs. If you are not, Google could be having a hard time understanding you moved your URLs. I would then check your robots.txt and meta tags to make sure you aren't accidentally blocking your site from search engines.
Take a look at your competitor with competitor research. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What are they doing that I am not?
- What changes have they made that I haven't?
- Are they leveraging Schema?
- What kind of content are they developing?
- What links do they have?
After that, I would also make sure your eCommerce tracking is properly tracking, sometime this can get wonky, especially with URLs changing. Please review this, especially Enhanced eCommerce.
Lastly, one of my favorite resources for this comes from InFlow with their Rankings and Traffic Drop Checklist. It's packed with tips and places to look.
Start there and see what happens! Let me know if you need more help! Good luck!
P -
Hi Vijay,
No significant changes were made in the period that we feel would have the impact that we have seen.
The website/checkout experience tests fine, we are still receiving a trickle of orders, but not the volume we were enjoying before.
Please see my response to the above reply, it appears we are not the only player in our sector who has seen a drop, several competitors have seen a similar drop in search visibility too.
The website is www.glassesonspec.co.uk.
If there is any other specific information you think would be useful, then do please let me know.
Many thanks
-
hi Bob,
You have not provided enough information or website URL for anyone to answer accurately, anything we reply here would be mere speculation.
Please provide more details about the website and when exactly was done prior to sales drop.
That's the reason, we have culturally created an environment within our organization to LOG everything we do on our client sites.
Regards,
Vijay
-
Hi,
Thanks for your quick response, interestingly, our main competitor saw a 15% search visibility rise, and a few other competitors like us saw a large fall. Does this lend weight to your theory that perhaps it's external factors and the biggest competitor raising their game?
-
Hmm, that is very odd and I'm sure extremely frustrating.
I would use Google Search Console to look at the pages seeing the biggest decrease and see if your ranked position has drastically changed. I would assume either you were hit with an algorithm update or competitors have really upped their efforts which would have impacted your rankings.
Sorry I don't have a more definitive answer, but I hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
URLs dropping from index (Crawled, currently not indexed)
I've noticed that some of our URLs have recently dropped completely out of Google's index. When carrying out a URL inspection in GSC, it comes up with 'Crawled, currently not indexed'. Strangely, I've also noticed that under referring page it says 'None detected', which is definitely not the case. I wonder if it could be something to do with the following? https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ranking-index-drop-30192.html - It seems to be a bug affecting quite a few people. Here are a few examples of the URLs that have gone missing: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/sexual-harassment-awareness-training https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/conflict-resolution-training https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/prevent-duty-training Any help here would be massively appreciated!
Technical SEO | | iHasco0 -
My site ranking has dropped in recent 2 weeks ?
I have a quick question to ask you guys,
Technical SEO | | Mustansar
I have my site (www.webuycarstoday.co.uk) It used to rank very well for all my target keywords. But recently all keywords dropped massively. I can't seems to find a good reason of this drop. We have not change anything which may have caused such drop.
Any suggestion or advice to get into the problem. I would appreciate your kind responses.0 -
Organic search traffic has dropped by 35% since 18 September, we don't know why.
Organic traffic to our website has dropped 35% since 18 September 2017 to date. From 1 January to 18 September 2017 organic traffic was up by just under 1% over all (Google up by 1.32%). Paid search traffic over the same time has remained steady. There is nothing we can think of that we've done that has caused the drop. We had an issue with Google page speed test failing when running a test but we resolved this issue on 20 November and in that time we've seen an even greater drop (44% in the last week). The drop is seen across the 3 main search engines, not just Google, which points toward something we've done, but as mentioned, we can't think of any significant change we made in September that would have such negative effects. There is little difference across devices. Is anyone aware of a significant event in September in the search engine world that may have influenced our organic traffic? Any help gratefully received.
Technical SEO | | imaterus0 -
Gradual Drop in GWT Indexed Pages for large website
Hey all, I am working on SEO for a massive sports website. The information provided will be limited but I will give you as much context as possible. I just started digging into it and have found several on-page SEO issues of which I will fix when I get to the meat of it but this seems like something else could be going on. I have attached an image below. It doesn't seem like it's a GWT bug as reported at one point either as it's been gradually dropping over the past year. Also, there is about a 20% drop in traffic in Google Analytics over this time as well. This website has hundreds of thousands of pages of player profiles, sports team information and more all marked up with JSON-LD. Some of the on-page stuff that needs to be fixed are the h1 and h2, title tags and meta description. Also, some of the descriptions are pulled from wikipedia and linked to a "view more" area. Anchor text has "sign up" language as well. Not looking for a magic bullet but to be pointed in the right direction. Where should I start checking off to ensure I cover my bases besides the on page stuff above? There aren't any serious errors and I don't see any manual penalties. There are 4,300 404's but I have seen plenty of sites with that many 404's all of which still got traffic. It doesn't look like a sitemap was submitted to GWT and when I try submitting sitemap.xml, I get a 504 error (network unreachable). Thanks for reading. I am just getting started on this project but would like to spend as much time sharpening the axe before getting to work. lJWk8Rh
Technical SEO | | ArashG0 -
Http://newsite.intercallsystems.com/vista-series/sales@intercallsystems.com
I keep getting crawl errors for urls that have email addresses on the end. I have no idea what these are. Here is an example: the-audio-visual-system/sales@intercallsystems.com Where would these be coming from, how are they created? How can i fix them? When I try to do a 301 redirect it doesn't work. Thanks for your help,
Technical SEO | | renalynd27
Rena0 -
Massive drop off in Google crawl stats
Hi Could i get a second opinion on the following please. ON a client site we seem to have had a massive drop off in google crawling in the past few weeks, this is linked with a drop in search impressions and a slight reduction in penalty. There are no warning messages in WMT to say the site is in trouble, and it shouldn't be, however cannot get to the bottom of what is going on. In Feb the Kilobytes downloaded per day was between 2200 and about 3800, all good there. However in the past couple of weeks it has peaked at 62 and most days are not even over 3! Something odd has taken place. For the same period, the Pages crawled per day has gone from 50 - 100 down to under 3. At the same time the site speed hasn't changed - it is slow and has always been slow (have advised the client to change this but you know how it is....) Unfortunately I am unable to give the site url out so i understand that may impact on any advice people could offer. Ive attached some screen shots from WMT below. Many thanks for any assistance. stats.png
Technical SEO | | daedriccarl0 -
Find all 404 links in my site that are indexed
Hi All, Find all 404 links in my site that are indexed. We deleted a lot of URl's from site but now i dont have the track of all we deleted. Any site/Tool can scan the index and give me the exact URL's so I can use https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals?hl=en&rlf=all Regards Martin
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Why Would PageRank Drop From 4 to NA?
Yesterday my homepage had a PageRank of 4 according to the Google toolbar (which I know isn't accurate, but bare with me) and the majority of my other pages were PR2. Today every page on my site is PR N/A, or PR -1. I also used a couple of free page rank checkers to make sure it wasn't just my browser. The only link I have ever purchased is on botw.org. I submitted my site to 6 free directories about two weeks ago, but only to the highly recommended ones, and with different anchor text at each. I have no messages in my Google Webmaster Tools account, nor do I have any significant crawl errors. My SERPs and resulting traffic have not (yet) been affected. Any ideas what's going on? I did start a Google AdWords campaign about 10 days ago that ran for 3 days and then got suspended due to the nature of my website. Could that be it?
Technical SEO | | PatrickGriffith0