Sales completely stop, no change in site metrics

My sales have completely stopped for 20 days straight, no major changes.

[customglow]

Hi everyone,

I am a bit nervous looking at my site, it has been getting 1-2 orders a day (very large ticket items, low volume expected) for about a solid month when the site opened again, but then it suddenly stopped. I have not gotten a single order for about 20 days.

I checked my site on multiple browsers and computers and ran through the checkout, I purchased a test product for 0.01 through my gateway (Paypal Pro).

Looked at the analytic comparing the last 20 days vs 20 days when sales were normal. I see that traffic is down about 25% but bounce rate and retention are all the same.

I was wondering if anyone has any insight on what might be going on here. It doesn't seem logical that a 25% drop in general traffic would evaluate to %100 drop in sales.

If anyone cares to see if anything is broken to them. Your help and time is appreciated! Thank you in advance.

[edited by: lorax at 7:22 pm (utc) on Oct 10, 2013]
[edit reason] no links pls [/edit]

[dpd1]

No, it's not logical, but it happens. You haven't sold long enough to develop any sort of real data. I've not had two years match in a row since I started 15 years ago. Entire weeks will go by with barely anything, but same traffic levels. Then a week later, all hell breaks loose. People behave like herds. Sometimes it's a mystery. Keep on getting the word out, people will come around.

[edited by: lorax at 7:22 pm (utc) on Oct 10, 2013]

[votrechien]

I've seen our sales drop off completely for 3 or 4 days (we do a bit higher volume on average so it's alarming when this happens) and am faced with the same alarm. And then eventually for no reason, things will pick back up.

Now with that being said, assuming it's beer pong tables you sell and that your sales dropped off around the middle of September, wouldn't this be completely to be expected? I imagine this is something that would see huge spikes before the school year or semester, and not so much during.

[customglow]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the input.

@votrechien - that is defiantly a possibility. This is my first year so I don't know the annual trends yet.

[HRoth]

I see lots of ups and downs with sales too. My customers don't spend much right before kids go back to school, for instance, which is fairly predictable. But sometimes, for no reason that I can discern, sales just come to a halt, even though everything else remains the same. One of the mysteries of retail.

[dickbaker]

I get weeks or a month or so that are out of line with past years, and can never tell for sure what the cause is.

My sales have also been dead for the last several weeks. My sales are affected to varying degrees by politics, and I believe that's the reason for what's going on now.

I think you need to establish some sort of baseline for two or three years to get a handle on what's "normal".

[John_Panya]

you can also evaluate off-site factors such as new comers with lower prices/better offers. This can dilute your sales. any major keywords drop out from the search result? IMHO

[oliondor]

Is it better now ?

[customglow]

Yes, some sales have return, but not to the frequency it was before. I guess this is just part of the trend that I will need to be aware of next year.

[oliondor]

Do you advertise for your shop ?