Direct Traffic Conversion Rate Drop

An unexplained suddent drop in direct traffic conversion !

[gabidi]

Hi,

Ever since the 8th of May direct traffic conversion rates (ecommerce) have taken a serious plummet, down around 50% while other channels (referrals,organic search, etc..) have gone up !

Funnily direct traffic has always had the highest converting channel and the drop happened all of a sudden on May 8th, almost like someone flipped a switch ! From a constant and steady growth to a nose dive.

The volume of direct traffic is going up steadily, no spikes, but conversion rates are painfully down !

I've checked everything on our server, left no stone unturned, i'm totally baffled! I've been running tangents in my mind, from possible script errors when the "ref-feral" var is not set, to malware. It's all clean and i can't find anything.

To the Guru's out there, Any ideas on what would be causing this sudden/sustained drop in direct traffic conversion and leaving others unaffected ?

Share your ideas no matter how outrage they sound, trust me , i'm open to suggestions!

Thanks a mill !
G

[lorax]

How long has your site been up and running?

[gabidi]

It's a 7 year old site, well established in it's niche.

[lorax]

Off-hand, it sounds familiar. Globally, buyers are a bit skittish. Not knowing your industry and sales funnel setup I assume that when you say direct traffic we're talking type-in traffic and that the buyer has met you and/or has print material in hand with your web address on it?

And are we talking conversion rates alone or traffic levels and conversion rates on this direct traffic?

[digitalv]

I'm seeing a pattern here, and if I'm right I'm going to be very happy but a lot of people here aren't going to like it.

Google seems to be taking strides toward moving away from back-links. I've been experimenting with this for a couple years now, with "internal optimization" - that is making content-rich sites with lots of descriptive text and logical internal linking but NO backlinks. I mean, literally ZERO other sites linking in. No doorway pages, no cloaking, nothing... just a "pure" website that stands as an island.

Every time there is a Google update, we see the Search forum here flooded with people stunned about how much traffic they're losing. Yet these experimental pure content sites have been moving up more and more. The latest update was no exception, and it's to the point now where my pure content sites are doing BETTER than my heavily linked sites.

I bring this up because if I'm right, it relates to the issue you're experiencing. If Google is decreasing the value of linking in general, and simultaneously increasing the importance of internal content, your website may be inadvertently marketing to two different audiences. Meaning that if you focused on link building, you were targeting specific keywords that you knew where likely to be searched by people looking to spend money on what you're selling.

HOWEVER - your internal content may be product oriented, but not sales oriented. And if Google is sending visitors based on searches about the products you're selling, because your site content is more ABOUT the products than it is about SELLING them (common with ecommerce sites), you're suddenly getting more traffic but it's not the traffic you want.

An example of this would be to say you sell smartphones on your site. You describe the phones and their features in great detail on your site, and you also have information about the networks they work with, customer reviews, etc. Your site isn't a hard-hitting sales funnel, it's just a typical shopping cart with a lot of information about the products. You relied on an external linking strategy to get people to your site who were ready to buy, with terms like "buy blackberry storm" or "discount iphone".

Now (again, I'm just speculating but this seems to be my experiences based on my own pure-content experiments) those links aren't worth as much, and your site content is worth more. So now you're getting traffic from people who are looking for reviews on these phones, or feature lists, or what carriers they work with - but they AREN'T necessarily people who are going to buy one online, they're just doing their research. But now even though you're just trying to sell some phones, because of all of that content Google considers your site relevant to what they're looking for.

I know this might sound a little far fetched to those ingrained into the "backlink culture", but I've been personally putting a lot of effort into content lately - I'm talking writing 15-20 new pages per month and I have sites using this method that are already in top 1 to top 4 spots, with no back-links, ahead of sites with hundreds of back-links on the same keywords.

[gabidi]

@lorax Direct traffic as defined by Google Analytics, IE people who typed in the URL , no referrals , no ppc, no organic search etc... Traditionally this is "branded" traffic that converts the most.

The volume of traffic it's self has continued it's natural and steady growth, however conversion rates have just plummeted over night to levels below that of "Random" organic search traffic, which just doesn't make sense

@digitalv While i do agree to some extent to what you say in this case i do not believe it applies as i'm strictly talking about Direct traffic that types in the URL into their browser, IE They come to the site with an idea of what it is and isn't.

[lorax]

So your direct traffic is as I thought it was. How do they learn of the URL? Are you reaching them via methods like print, TV, and radio or is the domain one that is guessable/common sense?

[gabidi]

The domain/business name is more of brand name than something related to the service, so while i can see some people stumbling onto the site, i doubt it constitutes a mentionable share.

It's mainly through word of mouth and some repeat customers (45% of direct traffic is returning visitors)