Sudden drop in sales after over 10 years of steady revenue

[cupcake]

I have sold my own products on my e-commerce site for over 10 years. My site was performing with about average sales compared to previous years, until February 1, 2021. After February 1st my sales basically stopped. I had only 2 sales in February and I have had only 1 sale in March. No one has been able to determine why my sales or conversions have suddenly stopped. My traffic has not decreased. But the traffic is not converting. My web-host can't find anything wrong.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance for your time.

[lammert]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld cupcake!

Do you have logs about the activity of users and where they get stuck? It could be a problem with your shopping cart, coupling with the payment provider or something else. Without knowing where potential buyers view problems it is difficult to find a solution.

[cupcake]

Hi, I have Google analytics and Search Console. My shopping cart is working and I have made test credit card purchases.

[not2easy]

The access logs for your site can show you things that are not logged in GA or GSC. It is a good place to look when diagnosing possible problems. See if you can check the server error logs as well. If your host offers an interface such as ControlPanel or Plesk it is a place to look. If you use SFTP to manage your files you can find the logs there also.

Since recent browser changes might be a part of the equation, be sure that your shopping cart, security and privacy requirements are all in order and up to date.

[cupcake]

Thanks, not2easy. I can ask my web host for the access logs and server logs. There is no interface.

I have used FTP in the past. My knowledge of it is very basic but I can see if I can locate logs.

[engine]

Welcome, cupcake,
Two things spring to mind.
1. how much of the traffic is from bots and hiding the true visitors?
2. You could also consider employing Microsoft Clarity, which is a helpful tool even if you don't have specific traffic issues. "Clarity is a tool to help webmasters and marketers understand user behaviour with session playback, heatmaps, insights to discover site problems. " [webmasterworld.com...]

[cupcake]

Hi Engine, I do not know how much traffic is from bots. I can ask my web host to help me ascertain that. I will check into Clarity.

[engine]

Yes, your logs, as previously mentioned, will help you identify what traffic you're actually getting.

Keep us updated how you get on.

[cupcake]

Well, I asked my web host for the logs and their response that it's all in XML and mainly shows when certain things are running such as imports, admin login, order data,etc

What should my response be?

[not2easy]

Is your domain hosted on Apache server (*nix) or Microsoft's IIS server? Suggestions would be different for one vs. the other. Generally when you switched to https for your domain you should start using a more secure form of FTP for file transfers.

[lammert]

Also important to know which logs to search for: Is your site based on some centralized shopping environment like Shopify, built on an eCommerce specific CMS like Magento or WooCommerce, or fully hand-built in a language like PHP or ASP?

The availability of XML files suggest that your shop is running in some centralized shopping environment, but I may be wrong.

[cupcake]

Hi, it is CoreCommerce

[RhinoFish]

It can be so many things that COULD cause this to happen.
You need an expert that you trust to dive in and start isolating the problem.
Do you have any friends that could help you?

[cupcake]

About a year and half ago I hired someone to write my meta data, product text and also help with SEO. He doesn't know what's wrong. I am beginning to wonder if I should just delete the meta descriptions he wrote and let Google pull from my website in search results. The altering of the meta data and some product text has been the only change to my site in the last year and half. Perhaps I should go back to the way it was...

[lammert]

According to your opening post: "My traffic has not decreased. But the traffic is not converting" That is not a problem with your meta descriptions. It must be something on the site itself, or the season (Christmas trees don't sell well in spring time for example).

[cupcake]

Nope, nothing wrong with the site.

I'm not sure how anyone would know how much of traffic is from bots for comparing one month or year to the next.

[engine]

Cupcake, we have a whole section on webmasterworld about bots [webmasterworld.com...]
Bots can be identified, categorised, and blocked.