Large changes in conversions with consistent traffic
-
Hi Everyone,
I am looking for some help, I have just taken over a campaign for a client and we are seeing huge changes in conversion rates overnight.
The client is selling a health product and is consistently getting around 1-2k visitors per day. We are getting about 6% of the traffic to the buy page consistently.
However, we have found that one day the order process may convert 1/20 of these visitors and another day it could be 1/80.
We are only talking about 5-20 sales per day, but I am really confused why one day it can convert so well and another so poorly. The traffic being sent is the same and all other factors are the same (no split testing).
There seems to be no logic, the day of the week does not seem to impact, it almost seems random.
If anybody has any recommended places to look that would be very helpful as at the moment I am at a loss.
Example:
Sunday 15th Visitors: 1,279
Order Page: 240
Sales: 3
Declines: 3Monday 16th Visitors: 1,407
Order Page: 323
Sales: 17
Declines: 5 -
Hi Andy,
It looks like you need to do some Web Analytics due diligence to identify what caused that spike in conversions. Here is a list of things you can do to help identify the root cause:
- Setup Google Analytics Custom Alerts
GA's custom alerts do a great job of alerting us of unusual spikes / valleys from our traffic. I would suggest setting up custom alerts around your KPIs and business objectives. If you Google about GAs custom alerts, many of the recommended initial alerts are a great place to begin finding some to setup for your website.
- Use GA to find the differences in traffic and conversions
Although your conversions and traffic are relatively low (we may want to gather more data before concluding that there was a statistical difference in the conversion data), we could begin to analyze the traffic through understanding the sources it came from, specific campaigns that converted (make sure to be tagging your links accordingly!), qty of products ordered, maybe a new referral source contributed to the new conversions, ect.
- Do some keyword analysis
Did your new customers come from a specific source on a related topic? Did specific terms send new traffic to your sales page that converted well that day?
In order to find insights into changes, we need to make sure that we're properly tracking and measuring our traffic and acquisition strategies. Many times when there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer, it's because we haven't set ourselves up for success when measuring our campaigns and goals.
-
If anybody has any recommended places to look that would be very helpful as at the moment I am at a loss.
Go look at the SERPs. Did rankings change? Did adwords change? Did google products change? These are just examples. You can probably think of more.
Go look at competitors. Did they change prices? Did they change shipping? Are they sold out? These are just examples. You can probably think of more.
Go ask the client. Is manufacturer running ads? Did manufacturer change MSRP and client didn't? Was celebrity seen on TV using product? Did client change HIS price? Did client change HIS shipping?
There are dozens of other reasons. And then this could just be one of those "mysteries of life".
Most likely, I think that the answer to this question is going to be found by knowing the business rather than lookin' at tools.
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
-
We changed our domain, I used the move tool in Google Search Console and I am having our site redirected and go daddy, and now I spoke with someone who suggest we do a 301 redirect for all pages on our site and I’m not sure that’s the correct move.
We just changed our domain name after 15 years. when I bought the new domain name I called Go Daddy and they instructed me to contact my google G sweet admin account and change all of our emails over which I did and then I went into Shopify who is my host and changed my primary domain there and then I went back to Go Daddy and had my old website forwarded to my new site. since then there has been nothing but problems with Google. my product feed from my merchant center account has been suspended three or four times now, I tried to rename and move all of my Google accounts from my old domain to my new one, but I am not an SEO person... after making the changes I have started google chats with analytics department with the merchant center with Google as they all keep saying that it looks fine but I’m not convinced because the product feed keeps getting disapproved. So I posted an ad for help and the Guy I spoke with suggested I do a 301 redirect for every single page on my old site, But I’m concerned that might confuse things further? I’ve already started the move in Google Search console And in Shopify I added the old domain back into the domains section and am having it redirectEd that way too... I guess I’m just looking to know which way I should proceed, any and all advice is warmly welcome thank you in advance Maureen
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TooFast130 -
UX and/or Conversion Help for Ecommerce
Good Morning, We recently revamped and relaunched our ecommerce website and we believe we have built a great site that is easy to navigate, find what you're looking for, get all details, and purchase. We were hoping to get some of the Moz community to take a look at the site and let us know if you have any suggestions on usability or conversion techniques that we could implement to improve user experience and amount of orders placed. You can view our site here Looking forward to your feedback. Thanks in advance
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Prime850 -
Conversion Rate Benchmarking and Optimization
Hey everyone! I run the marketing for an ecommerce marketplace and we're doing good on the SEO front of things, with 60%+ of our traffic coming in via search and we're ranking for some competitive keywords. I'm really curious about the conversion rate though. Despite intensive googling, I've not been able to find a rough benchmark for conversion rates. Our conversion rate is about 1.2%, increasing as we continue to do more optimization work with regards to the site's usability. While we track other forms of conversions, the 1.2% conversion rate is for bookings through the site, which is our main source of revenue. Does anyone have a reference guide for conversion rates, particularly for ecommerce marketplaces? I'd like to know if we're doing ok or really bad, and also to take reference from other similar sites to improve our conversion. Thanks!!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | NgEF0 -
Google Remarketing Conversions - Possible Issue
Hi All, When it comes to Google Adwords, when considering conversions, Google assigns each conversion back to the click that originally drove that visitor on the day they clicked. so, even if someone converts today, Google would show that conversion as occurring two weeks ago when the visitor originally clicked on a paid search ad and came to my site. fine...whatever. My question now is if we use a remarketing campaign through the Display Network, and someone converts, will that conversion be shown under their new visit or back on their original click where they did not originally convert, causing them to be included in our remarketing audience? Cant seem to find a straight answer anywhere and hoping someone out there has some guidance.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dsinger0 -
New Trend: Large Format Scrolling (eg. parallax)
There is a new website design trend that utilizes large format content that requires lots of vertical scrolling, often with the use of parallax scrolling effects. A good example of this new design trend can be found at:
Conversion Rate Optimization | | gbkevin
moz.com/products I was wondering if there were any insights as to the effectiveness of this new design trend in regards to conversion rate optimization, persuasion, etc. Has anyone seen or heard of measurable improvements switching to this new style and design format that uses bigger visualizations and requires more vertical scrolling? Thanks for any insights!0 -
How to find average organic traffic growth rate for ecommerce startup?
Happy Friday Everyone, I have a quick question: I am in the process of crunching some numbers to try and figure out an organic traffic forecast for a client. One of the crucial metrics I can't seem to figure out is traffic rate of growth over the next year or so. The reason this is complicated for me is that I have only ever done this sort of thing for an established business before, and had plenty of past organic traffic data to work with. What I am looking for is a source that could give me a reasonable idea of what kind of growth rates I might expect for a startup with practically no data; I would be perfectly happy with a national average for online retail startups. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | G2W0 -
Finally getting decent traffic but low conversions
Thanks to SEOMOZ Ive managed to get half decent organic numbers, although the numbers look good on my ecom. site conversion rates are low. Can anyone offer any help as far as converting visitors into buyers? Thank you!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Weeding out irrelevant analytical data to see truer conversion rates
Here is the scenario. We have many brick and mortar store locations as well as an ecommerce website. It's hard to get exact, but my estimates seem to be that approximately 1/3 of the visitors to our website are interested only in obtaining information about the brick and mortar store locations and not interested in ecommerce transactions. Of course this kills the conversion rate. We use google analytics and I'd like to somehow be able to quantify with more accuracy what the "real" conversion rate might be. Is there some method to weed out specific pages/traffic (like brick and mortar landing pages) from being taken into account when conv. rate is calculated? The number that matters for conv. rate of course is "visits" and not unique pageviews, so I'm not sure that really would do anything helpful. Any tips?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dickslee230