timwilliams - 2:37 pm on Jun 5, 2012 (gmt 0)

there was no loss in traffic, yet there were very unnatural flat sales periods

I wanted to go back to this for a second. I've been trying to figure this out for a few years now. I drives me mad.

Same traffic, conversion rate plummets.

possible reasons:
1. google doing something funky with the traffic they send.
2. server/backbone issues (slow website will decrease conversion rate)
3. merchant account
4. payment gateway

We have all sites on the same server, so this could be an issue but have not been able to track it down.

we use 2 different merchant accounts. have not been able to track down issues here.

we use one payment gateway for all sites. have seen issues here but nothing that can be consistently pointed to.