Sales Down For 3 Months - Help?

[RazorCut]

TBH.. I didn't really spot the numbers in the OP. My bad.

You didn't miss it Andy. Biophase was answering a question posted by Luke12321. The trouble is the data Luke provided was not statistically significant enough to draw a conclusion over.

The trouble with all the info here is it is too abstract. The only way to know what the issue is is to see the whole picture which we can't so we are just shooting in the dark.

@Growth & Learn If you have struggled to get a handle on the problem and nothing here has so far provided that aha! moment then I suggest you bring someone in you trust who has a good analytical mindset and walk him/her through it piece by piece. A fresh set of eyes and a different perspective can work wonders.

One word or warning through. Tread carefully. As Andy said: "Nothing's so screwed up you can't make it worse."

Your problems may stem from one factor or a combination of several or many. Don't assume it is just one issue. The only piece of advice I would offer would be to only change one thing at a time and allow enough time to elapse to see if that change has a good or bad impact before making further changes. And don't forget to backup before making any change.

 

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[JoeB]

Traffic and sales came mostly from SEO and word of mouth.

This is one of the difficulties with relying on SEO, especially now Google are reluctant to tell you which keyphrases your visitor find you with and some phrases converting much better than others.

All traffic does not convert equally. If someone finds your page selling nautical themed jumpers by searching for 'jumper' it will not convert as well as someone who finds it searching for 'men's blue and white nautical jumper'.

If Google makes a change and you starts sending traffic for different terms to what you used to rank for, it can show a difference in conversion rates, but not be that easy to detect as traffic still looks the same.

Not saying this is the problem, just another way to show you shouldn't rely on SEO, as even with traffic it can still be problematic.

 

[Growth & Learn]

This is one of the difficulties with relying on SEO, especially now Google are reluctant to tell you which keyphrases your visitor find you with and some phrases converting much better than others.

All traffic does not convert equally. If someone finds your page selling nautical themed jumpers by searching for 'jumper' it will not convert as well as someone who finds it searching for 'men's blue and white nautical jumper'.

If Google makes a change and you starts sending traffic for different terms to what you used to rank for, it can show a difference in conversion rates, but not be that easy to detect as traffic still looks the same.

Not saying this is the problem, just another way to show you shouldn't rely on SEO, as even with traffic it can still be problematic.

That's a good point but we have our webmaster tools hooked up to our analytics..we can see in general if our top keywords rankings and impressions have gone up or down.

 

[Growth & Learn]

on a related note just discovered that inspectlet only records 4 sessions per day on their free plan. Will have to look elsewhere. I'm happy to pay for a tool but I need more info than 4 sessions to see if it works and I need results faster.

 

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[blackhat]

on a related note just discovered that inspectlet only records 4 sessions per day on their free plan. Will have to look elsewhere. I'm happy to pay for a tool but I need more info than 4 sessions to see if it works and I need results faster.

Have you tried going through those 4 sessions? Obviously more sessions would help more, but at least in my case, those 4 free sessions were very valuable insights.

 

[Growth & Learn]

Have you tried going through those 4 sessions? Obviously more sessions would help more, but at least in my case, those 4 free sessions were very valuable insights.

Of course I'm even responding to what I saw..still want more data though.

 

[Roli]

Check that you haven't got one of those scumbags from China leeching your traffic, redirecting to their bullshit sites. That what it sounds like to me a sudden 60% drop off across all sales is not natural, you would see it as a decline if it was.

Beef up your security, good luck, I feel your pain.

By the way the 10% drop in traffic could be a 70% drop in traffic which is hidden by referrals; check your Google Analytics carefully. Go to acquisitions and check out that pie chart, have you got a gazillion referrals that bounced immediately? If so there's your problem.

Sorry if you've done all this already and I'm just rehashing.

 

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[Growth & Learn]

Check that you haven't got one of those scumbags from China leeching your traffic, redirecting to their bullshit sites. That what it sounds like to me a sudden 60% drop off across all sales is not natural, you would see it as a decline if it was.

Beef up your security, good luck, I feel your pain.

By the way the 10% drop in traffic could be a 70% drop in traffic which is hidden by referrals; check your Google Analytics carefully. Go to acquisitions and check out that pie chart, have you got a gazillion referrals that bounced immediately? If so there's your problem.

Sorry if you've done all this already and I'm just rehashing.

What do you mean by redirecting to another site?..how would I check if my traffic is redirecting to another site in a phishy way?

 

[Luke12321]

Thanks @biophase and @AndyBlack

I am going to give it a bit longer. It is a very, very narrow niche site. I suspect, after a few more weeks, I will have some more data to dive into and then see if I can find out the cause for what I suspect is a slump in sales. Will try to remember to give an update.

 

[Equilibrium]

I would get a good VPN, or proxy and look at your website. (so you are not being search bubble'd) Start from the landing pages, subscribe with a yopmail email Walk yourself through each wormhole until you find whats causing the black hole. Test your website from multiple device views and Think like the consumer.

 

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[Tyler Ellison]

on a related note just discovered that inspectlet only records 4 sessions per day on their free plan. Will have to look elsewhere. I'm happy to pay for a tool but I need more info than 4 sessions to see if it works and I need results faster.

Bringing this back up, did the tool work for you? (Inspectlet)

Were you able to find the source of the drop in conversions? Was it the funnel/traffic source/landing page etc?

If you want to ensure the longevity of your business, I'd say you should start investing in paid advertising. SEO can disappear overnight but buying media can be stable, predictable, scalable, and much more profitable than betting on free traffic.

If your conversion metrics are good, you should set a goal CPA. So if you make 50% on a sale of $50, $25 profit means that technically you can afford to spend up to $25 per sale and break even. Now, if your ads perform better and you can get sales for under $20 each, all you have to do is spend more and more to get those clients - and to increase your profits all you need to do is add in a back-end offer or upsell and your business can skyrocket.

 

[Growth & Learn]

Just an update for everybody who was following this post. I've done a lot of rebuilding of my funnel over the last few months. New wordpress theme, mobile friendly checkout page, and faster host. I've also redesigned the sales page to look more modern. The copy is still the same but visually it looks much better.

I've also added two '1 click' upsells recently to the sales process.

Conversion has gotten better but it's still a weird period of time for sure. have to say it's been an emotionally challenging 4-5 months. Thanks all for the tips. It got me thinking in new ways.

Y'all are the best. Thanks again.

 

[Roli]

What do you mean by redirecting to another site?..how would I check if my traffic is redirecting to another site in a phishy way?

Google analytics under the acquisitions tab

 

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[Jon L]

One of the things that was mentioned on this thread is a service called "Hotjar." I have a similar problem to yours, so I took a look at Hotjar. I found a VERY helpful 'how to analyze conversion problems on your site' tutorial. I haven't followed the advice yet, but I'm going to get started this afternoon. Here's the link:

https://www.hotjar.com/action-plan

 

[tycoon7]

on a related note just discovered that inspectlet only records 4 sessions per day on their free plan. Will have to look elsewhere. I'm happy to pay for a tool but I need more info than 4 sessions to see if it works and I need results faster.

There is the free tool in Yandex Metrica - Webvisor. Works quite good. No limit.
Yandex is russian version of google. Suprisenly they give such strong functionality for free.

 

[LightHouse]

Clicktale is a similar js based screen capture tool.

OP I've fixed a ton of issues lie this before for clients. Some as simple as the SSL still being SHA1 and some browsers throwing errors. You really have to test every angle on multiple devices.

The other issue is your dataset isn't that large. Going from 3 sales a day to one is a normal fluctuation, going from 100 to 30 is not and more indicative of a major issue or change.

Also presuming you have proper tracking set up, that 10 percent of traffic could have been the traffic bringing buyers. You just need to get into the data and figure it out

 

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[LTL]

Look into conversion optimization. Or increasing ad-spend, re-activating old buyers with deals and offers.

Cross promoting with a business in a non-competitive industry.

Col calling previous buyers or physically mailing them