orders stopped sudden

[Dirndl]

Hi!

Here is the thing: My site attracts 40-80 customers (120 clicks) a day. I received about one order a day for a while. Last week the orders stopped suddenly.

I tested check out -- no issues there.

Could it be my copy? Image? What do you think?

[edited by: minnapple at 1:12 am (utc) on Mar. 18, 2006]
[edit reason] No Urls Please [/edit]

[derekwong28]

If you are having one order a day, then it is probably within statistical signifance that you could have a string of no order days. Besides checking whether your cart is functioning, I would check your traffic as well. Changes in search engine algorithms could have a drastic efect on traffic.

[Corey Bryant]

What do your logs say? What are the exit pages, etc? Make sure your SSL cert is valid.

-Corey

[crak_bot]

I agree with the first response. If you have not changed anything, going from one order to zero for a few days is not that crazy. I'm sure given enough time you will have 5 orders in one day.

If you went from 2 orders a day to 1 for a week, you probably would not panic. But 1 to 0 makes you panic becuase 0 is nothing.

[Raymond]

March is usually a slow month for me. Also Derek said, going from 1 order a day to 0 is within statistical fluctuation.

[Mantis_Claw]

March may also be a slow month due to spring break in the states. If your target audience are students and/or their parents then you may feel the pinch. I am feeling a slowdown too after an exceptional January and February, but other parts of the world such as Europe and Asia have been picking up the slack. Good luck!

[chodges84]

I'm having a fairly slow march in the UK. Last June through to January was excellent. It got to the point in December when I actually stopped funding my Overture account as I didn't want to let anyone down in the run up to Christmas as my main wholesaler took an early Holiday (~15th December).

February was quite poor and things appeared to pick up last week, but since Friday it has been awful.

[Dirndl]

Thank you so much, everyone! Wonderful feedback. I hope all march sales will pick up again for you (and me).

[ispy]

I saw this happen once for several weeks. We finally found an error on the site having to do with a menu where a pages were being skipped out of order. This was obvious to anyone clicking on the color coded links, but not terribly significant as far as ordering was concerned. When it was fixed orders returned to normal. People were seeing the glitch and not ordering because it looked unprofessional I guess.

[manateemedia]

What is your web site? Things seem slow for me this month...I assume it is due to taxes? who knows?

[LifeinAsia]

1) As other people have asked, what's been happening with overall traffic during this period? If overall traffic is way down, then that will affect sales. If traffic is down, compare your logs and see why the sudden downturn- did you suddely get dropped by Google or something?

2) Also as other people have mentioned, have you examined your logs? Are you still seeing the same patterns of navigation through your site? Are you suddenly getting a lot of 404 errors or some type of errors with your scripts? (Just because something works for you does not mean that other people with different browsers can navigate your site error free.)

3) How long has your site been running and getting orders? If over a year, did you see a similar slowdown 1 year ago? If not, can you be sure it's not just a usual business cycle?

4) What is your site's topic? Perhaps the slowdown has to do with seasonal interest in it. For example, if it has to do with American football, people are less likely to visit or buy during the off season. Are your competitors' sales down?

5) And what about your competitors? Have they lowered their prices so that your prices are no longer competitive? Is there a new kid on the block who is getting all the attention and the sales?

[Dirndl]

My site is run by Yahoo. Anyone experienced with Yahoo run stores? I am selling Engravable Maternity Jewelry and my home page campaign is general and says "as seen in Pregnancy Magazine". Could customers be turned off by that? I would not know why.

As far as I know and have researched, the site works fine. My trail is ok and not unusual. I think you all are right and it is this months and Tax season. Thank you for all your help!

[ispy]

A lot of people get refunds in tax season though.

[minnapple]

Yahoo moved some sites within their server cluster and their dns server yns2 mave have not been updated properly. Causing sites to be unreachable in many areas.

Seen this with several stores since the beginning of the month.

I seem to hit yns2 from my home machine, so if you want to me to test it I can. Url's can be sent in sticky mail.

[spica42]

My site's transactions is also down since 2 weeks ago. For me it's very worrying because i use to close 6-8 deals a day. Now, I only close 1-2 for the past 2 weeks.

Traffic hasn't been down. I'm wondering what's wrong. (I'm selling toys)

[Dirndl]

I called Yahoo and they check my site. They said that everything is ok and I did not have to make any updates after their server move.

I also have the same amount of traffic, but no sales. What can we do?

[john82]

Try to contact them over phone and send mail asking the reason.