We redesigned our website, make it responsive and page views tanked. What happened?
-
Last year, we redesigned our site and made it responsive. Our page views only grew by only 3% (the previous year they grew by 40%). If we exclude homepage views from our calculations, we get a drastically different picture-- and see over 30% growth for both total and unique pageviews. Any thoughts?
-
The first thing I think of is that you're measuring pageviews instead of sessions. If you put a lot of effort into streamlining the user experience, wouldn't you expect a decrease in pageviews as users are finding what they need faster?
I would check a few different things to gain a more complete picture. First, check your sessions instead of pageviews. If sessions are trending the way you expect them to compared to the previous year, then maybe the redesign impacted user behavior so they're hitting less pages on the site.
Next I'd see if there was any differentiation between mobile, tablet, and desktop pageviews that are skewing the data. Since the site is now responsive I wouldn't be surprised to see a difference in user behavior on mobile devices, and that may be impacting your pageviews.
Lastly, why not segment and compare by traffic source? If you can identify a sharp drop from a particular source you might be able to gain some insight there. An easy method of viewing this is to create a collection of pie charts or bar graphs so anyone can quickly see where the change was.
There are other ways you can slice and dice and segment your data to tell your story, but I would start there.
-
Yes, if we remove the homepage, the other pages are doing quite well (and increase of 30%). What would branded searches/visits show? I don't think we are quite big enough.....
-
One outstanding question for me is if you see fewer pages/visit when someone lands on your homepage than when they land on a deeper page? Is your brand big enough to be able to track branded searches/visits?
-
Hi John, Yes, we redesigned homepage (it used to be a fixed width with a carousel). Now it's a full width hero scrolling page. We have increased our social media sources but those links mostly led to internal pages (we rarely lead people to the homepage). I'd try and dig more into the referral sources.....
-
Hi Anna!
Did you do any other site architecture or design changes to your homepage? Sounds like overall your site is performing better (though not as quickly as the year before) with the changes but your homepage had something changed that would have affected this.
That, or if they are unique visitors then you may have lost some key rankings or a key traffic referral source. Or, quite simply, this isn't connected with the redesign and your marketing was less effective in the past year possibly because your resources internally were going towards the redesign.
Have you dug deeper into different traffic and referral sources to see if this could have led to it?
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
-
What is the Estimated Time for SERP Rankings to Replenish after a Site Redesign?
Hello Fellow Moz'ers, My company's website, www.1099pro.com, is currently OLD and not mobile-friendly! However, we rank #1 for out most important keywords and don't want to lose that ranking. I've recently redesigned our site, currently in testing, to use the same standard desktop pages but to also have responsive, mobile friendly, pages for different view ports. My question is if anyone knows an estimated time frame that search engines (mainly Google) takes to re-crawl the site and restore SERP rankings to their previous levels? The reason is because we are HIGHLY seasonal and if we are not back at our top rankings by early December, at latest (November would be better), then we stand the chance to lose a considerable amount of traffic/revenue. -The Unenlightened One
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Website Redesign - What to do with old 301 URLs?
My current site is on wordpress. We are currently designing a new wordpress site, with the same URLs. Our current approach is to go into the server, delete the current website files and ad the new website files. My current site has old urls which are 301 redirected to current urls. Here is my question. In the current redesign process, do i need to create pages for old the 301 redirected urls so that we do not lose them in the launch of the new site? or is the 301 command currently existing outside of our server so this does not matter? Thank you in advance.
Web Design | | CamiloSC0 -
Website Home page suddenly disappeared after changing Hosting
HI All, My site was ranking very well and was in 1st page of google for most of my keywords. Last week we did some update to the site and moved it to new hosting and from then onwards I dont see my site home page in Google ranking . My Website Name is : royalevents.com.au. We used to be in 1st of Google for keywords like wedding Mandaps, Indian Wedding Mandaps etc, Would be great if some one helps us to figure out whats gone wrong .. I also did Webmaster Fetch as Google but nothing happened. Thanks
Web Design | | Verve-Innovation0 -
How to create this image effect for my home page
How do I make a wide, somewhat fast loading image effect like this home page has: 3dcart.com work on my website bobweikel.com I'm asking for how to create the effect (with small enough image kb to load) and what the image should be of in your opinion. Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Whats happening with Google UK?
Within the last week we have had a handful of our rankings drop dramatically down the SERPS. About 15% but this an estimate and has not been fully investigated yet. Whilst looking into possible scenarios that could be causing this i wanted to check what the SERPS looked like for the terms that we are still holding position on. Typing "extending dining tables" into Google UK today i was amazed at what i found... Ranking in position 1 and 2 is a massive UK furniture store.
Web Design | | Silkstream
But isnt that the same landing page being returned for both positions?? It appears to be a navigation problem within the site category tags causing duplicate content. However they have been rewarded with the top two positons subsequently pushing our website onto page two. I find it so frustrating that we listen to Googles best practices when it comes to pagination issues yet this is how our hard work is rewarded! Anyone else have any thoughts about this? SERPS.jpg0 -
What are the top 3 things you evaluate when contracted to SEO a website?
As a freelancer, what are the top 3 things you evaluate when contracted to SEO a website for a client?
Web Design | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Effects of HTML layout on Arabic websites and SEO
Hi all, I was hoping someone may be able to help. We are putting together an Arabic website and due to reading right to left as opposed to left to right, the site HTML layout is mirrored compared to normal with everything flipped over. What we are wondering is, will this effect SEO and what are the SEO implications of this? Do the search engine bots automaticlaly know to read the content etc differently and understand that everything is purposely mirrored / the HTML is in a different location compared to a site in the UK / US etc? Any help on this would be most appreciated. Cheers!
Web Design | | marcelo-2753980 -
Mobile Site Pages: Word Count Help
Hi there I am doing a mobile website for a client and they asked me what the dieal word count would be per page. They are SEO conciosu but we are not doing SEO on this site. I would just like to know a general rule of thumb. Regards Stef
Web Design | | stefanok0