Very strange behaviour in website traffic

[JasenA]

I am running an ecommerce site in Finland and we are ecperiencing a very strange traffic loss. Background to this is:
due to site maintenance our online store was down two days in April. Since that we have lost tons of traffic but what is most strange is that this traffic loss happens only in weekends. The traffic has dropped to 1/5-6 of what it was prior to site maintenance. The same applies when compared to the time year before. We have no idea what could cause this kind of non-logical traffic loss. We still have the same rankings in our important keywords so it can not be that and it wouldn't make sense if we lost the rankings for the weekends only.

Has anyone experienced this kind of problem before? Any ideas where to look or where to start with? Any help is appreciated since this is causing financial losses for us.

[tangor]

Welcome to Webmasterworld!

but what is most strange is that this traffic loss happens only in weekends.

Did it happen again this last week end? Has this traffic drop been consistent EVERY week end? Are you experiencing traffic loss (year on year) on your site on other days?

[JasenA]

Hi, thank you for your answer. Hard to to say about the last weekend because we had a national holiday in Finland and web traffic decreases almost in all sites at least 50-60 %. But this traffic loss has happened every weekend since the maintenance pause in April. The 14th - 15th weekend was better though. I have a screenshot of Analytics during this period and it would illustrate perfectly what I am talking about. I just couldn't find a way to post an image here.

I wouldn't say that there has been any signifigant traffic losses before this. I was first suspecting problems in server, but why would it happen only in weekends? Also, there several other online stores using the same hardware, why aren't they affected? This is a total mystery.

[Joe1990]

Hey, been racking my brain and the only thing I could think of is buyer behavior. Perhaps you have a product which is time sensitive i.e usually bought on weekdays. I don't think it would be anything technical with your site. Perhaps boost weekend traffic with a PPC campaign.

[not2easy]

Coincidentally, an article just in today may (or may not) have some clues that you could look into: [webmasterworld.com...]
It seems that some small businesses have been seeing similar problems and found the source to be inaccurate information about their sites that was shown in the serps. Sometimes saying they were closed for the weekends and some saying the business had completely closed its doors.

I'm not saying this is the reason in your case, but I would do some searching to see what shoppers are seeing.

[JasenA]

Thank you for your answers. Joe1990, this ecommerce site has been running for years and compared to data from previous years, we haven't seen this kind of traffic profile. Also the the product selection has not been changed.

Not2easy, very interesting article. This kind of reason would'n affect us though, since we are a pure ecommerce business and open 7/24. Google Places (or Maps) hasn't been in a significant role as a traffic source.

Over the last couple of weekends the traffic has been almost on the normal level on the weekends too, so we are hoping that this case is solved now. Because the reason for this wasn't found I would appreciate if you could post it here if someone sees a case like this and a solution to it.