Forum Moderators: buckworks
I'm seeing much few visitors at the site, and sales have plummeted.
I'm wondering if a) It's just a blip, b) Something has happened to search engine listings which is putting visitors off, c) this is a phenomenon in the UK right now.
I went to a local Garden Centre today which is usually packed out (sundays have to queue to get into car park) and yet the place was really quite today. So I'm wondering if a lot of brits are abroad on holiday or if there is some kind of, shudder at the thought, recession on at the moment.
I'm trying Overture for the first time and OK, I'm no expert on PPC, but my initial £100 deposit is only depleting by a quid or two each day!
Where have all the punters gone?
Here in Toronto Canada, the industry I'm in (clothing and fashion) is a total mess!
Within the last 6 months, 3 well known manufacturers have gone bottom up and everything's pleading for help. I receive calls everyday asking for business so they can feed their children. Every brand name clothing store has signs posting 50%+ off just to get people to look twice, but most people are just window shopping.
So many big names are going out of business making the public auctions a blast to attend. There's so much being liquidated and auctioned off that you can get big ticket items for as low as $20 if you're lucky.
I'll add that July is a slow period in most businesses.
Our gripe isn't just the level of traffic or sales, but diminished margins in our stores and online. That isn't a matter of opinion; saw figures re U.S. department stores that showed a dramatic drop in prices over the past few years.
On the plus side, if a business has good credit, it's easy to buy right.
Although we do sell outdoor and boating equipment :>
Do you still have good search listings? If so it could be the weather. It has been the best July I can remember for ages.
I'd hold tight (xmas run up starts soon) and check your site for leaks (missing pages, errors on checkout etc).
I have seen a slowing of conversion on a site too, but I would expect this at this time of year.
Smiley :)
(50.3%) Google 31% down
(17%) MSN 16% down
(13.2%) Yahoo 18% down
(4.2%) Other search engines 81% up
(4%) AOL 7% down
(4%) Ask Jeeves UK 34% down
The figure in (brackets) is the percentage of all SE's thus Google supplied 50.3% of all referrals. The number of refferals though is 31% down compared to last month.
In every major search engine the referrals are well down compared to last month. So this indicates to me that it's not a position thing as I can't see why the site would drop with all SE's at the same time. Besides, position has been steady on google for quite a while.
'Other search engines' is up due to being included in some of the smaller UK and homebrew search engines and their traffic is starting to kick in I guess.
I'm sure it must have been a general blip in this industry in the UK in July. I have noticed in the last few days that sales have shot up but number of hits / unique visitors / page views / bandwidth are all down 15% on last month.
We run several adult websites, toys, lingerie etc and because of the hot weather things have slowed down in our industry a lot, although junes sales were a record for us
I put this down to the hot days in the UK as well, dont worry about it next month will be superb
July can be a pretty dismal month anyway in any industry except boats and leisure anyway lol!
This is the calm before the storm as they say.
Bek.
