Why would my E-commerce conversion rate have dropped by half?
-
I run a website selling used books. Our e-commerce conversion rate is on average around 1.40%. Over the last four days this has dropped to just 0.25%! Any ideas why? We haven't made any changes, apart from uploading a new pricing strategy - obviously you'd look at this first but the price of our whole inventory has gone DOWN by £5000 and our average product price has decreased from £3.43 to £3.09!
Everything else has stayed almost exactly the same, hits have decreased slightly, so has referral traffic.
-
first you need to compare search terms to see if your e-commerce conversion rate fell for your top terms.
-
That's exactly what I thought at first. Comparing the 11th/12th July to the 4th/5th July:
Our traffic for our brand name was down 3%. Our search traffic for 'cheap books' was up 8%. In fact our search traffic for our branded terms generally / brand name generally is down and our search traffic for 'cheap books', 'bargain books' and 'second hand books' is up slightly, maybe this, plus less traffic overall and less referrals from Facebook could explain the drop.
-
One suggestion is that, in this wild and crazy time of Panda, your keyword rankings changed. One of our sites experienced a spike in some keywords while dropping in others, which produced some oddball metrics for that site. So, let's say that "blue widgets" is a great converter (we'll say 2%) and gives you 250 hits a day, while all other keywords combined give you another 150 and drag that back to a modest 1.25% overall. Suddenly Panda eats your "blue widgets" keyword but likes you a LOT more for "fuchsia storm widgets", which only converts at 0.25%. So your traffic wobbles in your overall number but your traffic sources have drastically changed and, thus, your conversion rate has suffered. I've seen several of our sites experience this, where a short but good keyphrase dropped but several long tails came up sharply and offset the traffic drop.
Have you looked at how people are finding your site? Did keyword traffic change?
-
Yeah I think you are right Ryan, I'm not convinced that it is anything we have done. The average book price has gone down from £3.43 to £3.09 in our inventory which should only encourage sales! But we will definitely just wait it out - hopefully just a blip.
-
I hate to offer a "wait and see" response but at this point it seems we have too little data to work with for any other reply. There are so many factors that can influence a bump in the short term. Paydays, seasonal changes, news, etc. can all be a factor.
-
Hi Ryan,
Your first point is probably a good one, we're getting around 50-100 less visitors a day. Down from 420-450 to 350-380.
We haven't added any new content.
No changes as far as I'm aware regarding prices.
This time last week we got a good link from a famous authors blog/facebook so we got a lot of hits but our average conversion rate is 1.52% and we are down to almost 0.25% over the last few days. Comparing Jul 1 - Jul 4 conversion rate=1.52%, Jul 8 - Jul 11 conversion rate=0.83%.
Only change I can see between then and now is active inventory, down from 12696 SKU's to 12350 SKU's now. And referral traffic down from 15.24% to 5.59%
-
A few questions / ideas:
-
How many visitors are we talking about? If the sample size is small then it can always be a normal fluctuation.
-
Have you recently written an article or added any new content? It's possible you have a new source of traffic which is bringing in new traffic that does not convert well.
-
Has your traffic numbers for the last 4 days been consistent with what you expect? Has there been any significant increase or decrease?
-
Is it possible any other changes might have happened during the price change? GA tags removed, tax or shipping changed, etc
If none of the above turns up anything interesting, go through your store and buy one of your books. Examine the whole process and see if anything seems odd.
-
-
Checked! No drop in internet explorer vs firefox or chrome, slight drop in Safari but no technical errors in Safari
-
I have had a few problems like this and it has been due to bugs in the cart.
Start checking G Analytics - has there been a drop in sales for one type of user. (ie internet explorer vs chrome)....in my case my add to basket buttons were not performing properly in IE....hopefully you find your answer
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
-
80% Drop in Organic Traffic
Hi I have a small private blog on wine which, on Monday of this last week, took an overnight tumble and lost all its first page rankings for wine terms. The blog used to be housed at blogspot but in October I moved to self hosted wordpress. The original site was: wine90.blogspot.com and this now has a redirect to wine90.com. I paid for a professional to port the site from blogger to wordpress and to set up a 301 redirect. Firstly, is there anything wrong with the move? Could I have lost my rankings for this reason? Secondly, I haven't added a new blog post in nearly 3 months, would this cause such a drop? Thirdly, I have noticed that the hosting (I host with the same man who ported the site from blogger) has been poor and the website has been down a couple of times on the rare occasions I checked it recently. I'm looking for some help, although this is not a money making site, its only a hobby that I add to when I have time, but it is a shame to have written 200 articles and now to face this slap from Google. There are no messages in WMT and I do not actively seek links so nothing dodgy there. Any ideas? When I asked the guy who is hosting it he told me that this week there has been a big SEO update but I haven't heard of it?
On-Page Optimization | | xoffie0 -
Blog Bounce Rate & Placement in Site Navigation
Hello, I'm attempting to perform an SEO review of the blog on www.aplossoftware.com. Aplos Software sells financial software and the blog is intended to bring in new visitors to the site with the goal of eventually converting some of them to customers. Here's my questions: 1. On aplossoftware.com site navigation, the blog (http://www.aplossoftware.com/blog/) is currently linked to in the footer in the lower-right under 'Resources'. Do you suggest we keep the site navigation link to the blog in its current location or move it some place else in the footer or in the header? 2. The bounce rate for the blog is over 81%. What is a reasonable goal for a bounce rate for a blog on a business website? What are some tactics to improve the bounce rate? 3. Do you suggest including a call to action to sign up for a free trial on the blog home page and/or individual posts? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | stageagent0 -
Number of pages crawled in dropping from 4 to 2
The report on our campaign shows that up to 2 pages are being crawled now from 4. However, our site has more pages than this. We recently inserted code to allow crawlers. what can we do to resolve this? please assist.v
On-Page Optimization | | seoworx1230 -
Google Drop
I started using SEOMOZ due to a sudden and huge drop in Google for two main keywords (hair bows and baby headbands). Our site (BloomingBows.com) has held a top three spot for years with these words and then in the last few months has dropped down on the first page and now they are completely off the charts. Is there any insight as to why? Also, we have been very active using the data from here in the last week or so to clean up and improve anything listed, but I am still seeing keywords drop into the 40 - 60 position and our traffic is drying up. Starting to panic and wondering if I am missing something or going about this in the wrong way. ANY insight is appreciated at this point!! Thank you!!
On-Page Optimization | | bloomingB0 -
How do I cure 'overly dynamic' url's on an e-commerce website?
I've just launched an e-commerce website selling hosiery and have received aa report from SEO Moz regarding overly dynamic URL's. How do I resolve this issue - in words of one syllable please, I'm new to SEO! Here are three exapmles of over 120: http://www.yosassy.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=1&page=2 http://www.yosassy.com/index.php?route=product/product&filter_tag=&page=1&product_id=57 http://www.yosassy.com/index.php?route=product/product&filter_tag=&page=1&product_id=64 Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Dropped 12 after following SEOMOZ Tips
I changed up my on page stuff via SEOMOZ tips, and I dropped like a rock in water 12 positions from 29 to 41 over night for homes for sale in casa Grande AZ. What did I majorly do wrong?
On-Page Optimization | | sansonj0 -
Troubleshooting Drop in Rank - could it be one of these?:
At nlpca(dot)com, we've had a drop in rank of like 13 slots for our main term "NLP". Could this be caused by?: Adding keywords to title and meta tags that are not completely relevant to page. For example, "degree programs" on this page http://www.nlpca.com/DCweb/nlp-salt-lake-city-and-bay-area The word "degree" and "programs" do not show up on that page, but "program" does. Our courses are 'certification programs' but maybe 'degree programs' is not close enough. Adding keywords to title that do not show up in page. The same keyword "degree programs" is a good example. Another example is the keyword "learn about NLP" on this page: http://www.nlpca.com/DCweb/learn-about-nlp-techniques Targeting 2 different locations (California and Utah) Having our title 2 characters too big on the home page (we used to) And lastly, Do you think our ranking drop is reversible if it's on-site SEO? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Why is our site dropping in Domain Authority
Hi all, I have a question. I have been working SEO on our site www.betxpert.com for the last 4-6 weeks and I have been looking forward to seeing the new DA and PA numbers. However today, our DA is now 30...where it was 31 or 33 a couple of days ago. How come the decrease? I have only improved the site i should say... Hope someone can shed a little light on the issue... -Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | rasmusbang0