Website traffic down? Why?

Why is my website traffic down? Why am I not getting leads?

It’s a common question – “Why is my website traffic down? Where’s all the contact form submissions and phone calls that I’m used to?”

But before you ask these questions, think about who you’re asking and who’s giving you the answer…

An SEO company will tell you your website traffic went down because you’re not doing enough SEO. Google Ads will tell you you’re not spending enough money on ads. A website design company will tell you it’s because your design is outdated or your website is hard to understand. A website maintenance company will tell you it’s because your plugins are outdated or there’s errors and malfunctions on the site. A security company will tell you it’s because your website is not secure or appears untrustworthy.

All of these reasons could be true. Depending on who you ask they’ll likely default to a reason their familiar with or an answer that likely benefits them.

So why did your website traffic go down? What happened to the leads and phone calls? Let’s take a look at some possible reasons and explanations.

 

Website traffic issues and reasons

The truth is that website traffic and inquiries can fluctuate for various reasons that have nothing to do with your website. Other times, the website could be the cause. Let’s explore some common factors.

Off-site technical factors

“Off-site” refers to things “off” your website or external to it. Google algorithms evolve; new competitors rise in rankings; new Google ads appear and ad bid prices change. These are all technical factors that are external and separate from your site. You don’t have much control over off-site factors, but you can figure out ways to adapt, counter, or work around these factors. Once you know what the external factor might be, you can weigh your options and begin working on a strategy.

On-site technical factors

“On-site” technical factors are things within your control. Maybe you’re getting plenty of traffic but you’re not getting leads. Is a contact form broken? Does your website make sense? Is it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for? Or better yet, are you making it easy for visitors to find what you want them to look for?

Maybe traffic is down over the last couple months because your website has been down over the last couple months. Did you let your domain name expire? Are you having a billing issue with your hosting company and their email notifications are going to your Spam folder? Did a WordPress plugin auto-update creating a conflict or fatal error causing your website to crash? What happened, when did it happen, why did it happen, and how can it be fixed?

Our team regularly helps with these kinds of issues ranging from emergency “website down” problems to common day-to-day tasks. We can review our monitoring tools and records looking for technical issues such as intermittent server problems or website downtime. We can check our recent work records looking for any major edits or recent changes to your site’s design, content, or structure that might dissuade user interaction or cause a drop in conversions or visitors.

The bigger question is, are you regularly looking after all these things on your website? Are you keeping up with the basic maintenance and security needs? Does it work on mobile? Do the buttons and links work? If you’re not regularly looking after your website, who is? You don’t have to hire us, but you or someone should be doing this. Proper maintenance and monitoring will help prevent drops in website traffic, but it will also help you make the most of the traffic you have.

 

 

On-site business factors

Then there’s business factors with your website. When you’re concerned about website traffic or a lack of visitor interaction, ask yourself this – when was the last time you visited your website? When did you last try interacting with it, clicking through pages, or filling out contact forms? Does it work? Are you still impressed with it? Is your pricing still competitive? Are your service offerings or products still relevant. What’s your traffic actually seeing when they arrive?

You can often boil it down to this – would you contact your company if you were the customer looking at this website? Be honest. The answer might be tough to swallow, but maybe it’s true.

Another important question would be, “What are you doing to drive traffic?” Are you just relying on the “If you build it, they will come” strategy? Doing a bunch of on-site work is great and a beautiful website is awesome, but if you’re not driving traffic and you don’t know what is driving traffic, it’s hard to say what’s causing the decline in traffic.

On the other hand, maybe you’re running ads, doing SEO, active on social media, paying for billboards, etc. If there’s something you’re doing that’s no longer working, that could also be a reason for website traffic declines. We regularly consult companies and organizations on these issues. They hire us to look after their website, perform regular maintenance, fix errors, make changes, do updates, and work with their marketing vendors.

While all these things help with user experience, proper site function, security, search indexing, and your overall website health, they’re just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to traffic. With that said, having one big piece of the puzzle figured out helps you rule out many “on-site” factors and concerns. So then you start to wonder, “Maybe my traffic issues aren’t related to the website itself?”

Simple external factors

Your website traffic went down, so there’s obviously something wrong with your website – right? At least, that’s what the recent Spam email said – “Sir, we scanned your site and found many a issue. Please contact us soon so we can fix website issues and make you rank on the Google.” What a charitable and concerned stranger – right?

The truth is that declines in traffic are often just a result of declines in “searches” for key phrases that you regularly rank for. While some search phrases are stable in volume throughout the year, some search phrases wildly fluctuate in volume from one month or year to another. Is your website’s traffic largely reliant on a search phrase that fluctuates from time to time? Maybe general interest in your business or industry is seasonal?

 

 

Even if traffic volume remains relatively stable, you could experience a drop in sales, leads, or conversions due to no fault of your own. While we often focus on traffic volume and visitor quantity, it’s really hard to track for visitor quality. Just because you’re getting the same amount of visitors doesn’t mean this month’s visitors are as purchase-ready as last month’s visitors.

An example would be where you get an average search volume of 1,000 visitors to your site each month. Of those 1,000 visitors you get an average of 20 calls per month. But over the last 3 months you’ve only received an  average of 10 calls. Should you worry? Historical and more long term data would be helpful here. If you’re 9 months in and got an average of 20 calls per month in the first quarter, 30 calls per month during the second quarter, but only 10 calls per month in Q3, you might be concerned that you were on average, peaked, but now in a decline. Maybe you currently are, but in the larger 9 months picture, you’re right on average so far.

If the trend continues a sustained and downward trajectory, maybe there’s other factors worth looking at.

 

Other website traffic factors

Other factors can lead to a decrease in website traffic or leads, and they aren’t necessarily of technical or digital issues. Examples include things like seasonality (time of year), your local economy (type of year), the larger economy (shifting consumer behavior), industry changes (demand movements, new technologies, new competitors, change in industry average pricing, supply chain issues, and more). Website traffic may be down due to anyone of these factors or a combination.

Even if a likely factor is found, it can still be challenging to interpret. In other words, even if we know “what” is happening, we’re still often left wondering “why” it’s happening.

 

Understanding “What” vs “Why”

In a scenario where we can confirm “what” happened (e.g. Google Analytics shows drop in traffic), we may not know “why” it happened. If all technical factors have been reviewed and are in good standing, there’s likely not an issue with your website no matter how many Spam emails tell you otherwise.

At this point, we need to put our critical thinking hats on and start hypothesizing about some external factors previously mentioned:

• SEO: Have any recent algorithm changes caused large ranking effects? (e.g. Google’s latest algorithm no longer favors a factor that benefited your website)
• Seasonality: Does demand go down during this time of year? (E.g. Less people looking for homes in the Fall and Winter; less online search volume during certain seasons; etc)
• Economy: Are people in your area tightening their budgets? (E.g. Economy is getting rough – interest and visitors are still there but their budgets are not)
• Industry Changes: Is your industry growing? Shrinking? Staying the same? (E.g. Are consumers still looking for what providers like you do?)
• Competitor Activity: Is a current or new competitor overtaking you? (E.g. Competitor is taking your local market share, search ranking position, Google Ad space, etc)
• Product / Service Pricing: Is your pricing still competitive, too cheap, or too high? (E.g. When was the last time you looked at your pricing, competitors’ pricing, and industry average pricing?)
• New Technologies: Are technologies affecting your business, industry, or market? (E.g. Is A.I. now acting as an alternative to your service or product?)
• Governmental & Cultural Factors: Are laws, politics, trends, or cultural elements affecting your industry/business (E.g. New legislation now limits part of your customer base by age)

The list goes on. A drop in traffic could be caused by anything from competitors out-competing you or new government regulations taking effect to industry changes like pricing and technology shifts. While we can often help you understand the “what” based on the technical factors, the “why” is much harder to answer depending on “what” data you currently track or can provide.

 

What you can do

Our recommendation is to start with the basic. Get website tracking in place if it’s not in place so you can start accumulating data. We can assist with recommendations and installation based on what you’re looking for – Google Analytics for visitor data; HotJar for user behavior; Monitoring for server uptime and website technical issues, etc.

Most website owners start with Google Analytics. This lets website owners track all their website traffic details. See how many visitors you’re getting, where they’re located, and more. Once you have this in place, you can start tracking website traffic and actually confirm if your feeling about traffic going down is true or now.

Once you know what your traffic volume is and become familiar with your average trend lines, you can now make informed decisions on “what” is going on. Knowing the “what” helps you start narrowing down reasons for the “why.”

 

 

Do I need SEO or an online marketing company?

Maybe you need one – but maybe you actually don’t. The answer depends on a number of elements. Let’s take a look.

“Why is my website traffic down? It’s can be especially perplexing if your site is in great shape, ad campaigns are loaded with a generous budget, and SEO is decent. Why aren’t the leads coming in? Where’s all the emails? If this sounds like you, we recommend hiring a marketing company to look at the larger business environment in general.

A good marketing company specializes in understanding “why” your business is where it is and “what” you should do about it based off those findings. And by “marketing company,” we mean an actual marketing company – not an SEO company unless SEO has been determined as your actual issue; and not an “online” marketing company unless online marketing is your actual need.

While online marketing and SEO are one segment of a larger marketing campaign, they’re just that – one piece of what should be a larger puzzle. An effective marketing company will employ SEO or online ads if that’s what’s actually needed to move your needle. Otherwise, they may skip these online efforts completely if they determine it’s not an effective route for your particular business, product or service offering, geographic location, target market, etc. Keep in mind, marketing companies will be more than happy to offer you SEO and online marketing products if it’s something you’re interested in.

With that said, even if online marketing is something you’re interested in and “SEO” is the hot buzzword, that doesn’t mean it’s the appropriate marketing choice for your business. After all, some businesses are booming without any online marketing or even a meaningful online presence. Think of “dry cleaners” – people don’t usually pick them based on their website; people normally pick a dry cleaner based on location in relation to their commute. A dry cleaner is usually chosen by people who see it when driving to and from work. Or if an online component is involved in their search, the search usually begins with a Google Business listing on the maps and ends with a quick look at their reviews. Then there’s HVAC guys who have never had a website and don’t even know if they have a Google Business listing, but they’re busier than they can manage before of referrals and demand outweighing what their industry can supply (especially during summer months in hot places).

To summarize the point, if you go to an SEO company, their recommendation will be SEO services (even if you’re a dry cleaner). The SEO Company may indeed provide actual SEO services and even good results. That may very well lead to more website traffic, but website traffic doesn’t always equal foot traffic. After all, SEO may not be the root cause of your issue even if it actually is an issue or an opportunity.

That’s why we recommend contacting an actual marketing company or some kind of trusted and knowledgeable person. You want someone who can take the whole picture into account when diagnosing your company’s “SWOT” – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

 

 

How we can help

We’re a website maintenance and management company. We’re not a marketing company or a specialized SEO provider at our core. We have guys here who used to work at SEO companies and managed online ad campaigns, but it’s not our core specialty. While there’s companies who specialize in driving traffic, we specialize in the destination. What is your traffic being driven to and what do they see when they get there? Is the website making a good first impression? Is it functional, working, design well, easy to understand, easy to navigate? Is it online at the moment? Would you even know if it wasn’t or how long it was down for? That’s what we do. We make sure you’re in a position to welcome customers in when the traffic arrives.

While we can consult on all these marketing topics or even help with implementing the strategies mentioned above, our focus is your website itself. It’s often your customers’ first impression that decides if you’ll get an in-person chance at a first impression. We specialize in your website’s maintenance, security, design needs, error fixes, troubleshooting, new page creation, integrations, ongoing support, and more.

We act as your webmaster and a fiduciary on what’s best for your website. That’s different than what is best for your business. A legitimate marketing company can help with that. It’s why we manage the website and defer to marketing companies to help you manage your business strategy. If part of your business strategy involves the website, that’s where we come in.

We regularly collaborate with SEO providers, marketing companies, Google Ad managers, and more. We can implement website changes at their direction or at your request. We can review a marketing vendor’s website recommendations on your behalf and advise you if what they’re proposing is effective, worth the cost, helpful, harmful, ineffective, or even just snake oil and a waste of time and money.

 

So what next?

Hopefully this article gives you ideas on what to look for when trying to understand your website’s traffic. It starts with the basics – get some data in place. Start tracking your website traffic, rankings, and search phrases that you rank for. This gives you a baseline and lets you know how your website is performing. You can also refer to historical metrics to see if certain performance measurements are going up, down, or remaining stable.

If you do hire a marketing company and they employ SEO, digital ads, or other online marketing approaches, having data in place lets you see how they’re performing. It lets you hold them accountable beyond whether you “feel” like the phone is ringing more or less; or if you “feel” like contact form submissions are going up or down. Feelings are fine, and there’s nothing better than your gut. But data is helpful, and it will often inform your gut whether your feeling is on the right path or not.

Analytics and rank tracking are the basics. Go beyond your website. There’s more going on in the world than search engines or online hangouts. There’s changing seasons; economic conditions; government regulations; cultural trends; industry changes; new technologies; market conditions – there are all sorts of things that can cause website traffic to go up and down. The big companies take all these factors into account – that’s why they’re big.

All these factors are worth exploring when it comes to your business and your website. If you come across a factor or idea that’s worthy of more in-depth exploration, let us know. We’re happy to explore it further with you.

 

Want us to manage your website?

We’re on-call for website owners that need ongoing edits and updates; security; regular website maintenance; troubleshooting on request; or even just knowledgeable and personal consultation sessions. If you own a website but don’t have anyone to look after it, understand it, keep it in shape, get it back up when it goes down, or make sure it’s up to date, this is what we do. Check out our website maintenance plans or contact us to see if we’re a good fit for you. Feel free to call, email or chat us if you have any questions. 800-730-4443 | [email protected]