Seasonal traffic patterns

it's pretty slow right now

[pmac]

As a long time brick and mortar furniture retailer, this was the best time of year for us. People tend to move during the spring and summer months, and as a result tend to buy furniture for the new shack. Having ditched the bricks in favour of clicks, I have noticed that my traffic has been steadily declining over the past couple of weeks putting a dent in the old revenue stream. My guess is that people tend to lay off the pc use as the weather improves. Am I right? Do you kind folk find your traffic has seasonal ups and downs? I would love to hear your "don't worry pmac, it will get better stories".

P.S I hope this is the right forum for this.

[lfloor]

Don't worry pmac. How do you think the ice cream guy feels in January? But isn't he always back there in the summer?

Unless, oh, yeah, maybe he has another job. Get my drift

[rcjordan]

Yes, we've had threads commenting on the seasonal nature of traffic, but -like everything else in this business- it depends on the site demographics. Brett has a site that slows during the summer, I have one that peaks in late July.

When you're trying to guage the trends, other factors influencing your site are changing so much that it's almost impossible to establish a benchmark. The number of people online is growing, but the number of competitive pages are also likely to be growing. And your standings in the SERPS is always in a state of flux, whether it's new algos, new partnership arrangements, or just new competitors.

But, having watched my site's pulse for a number of years, I can tell you that I have noticed a slow down of traffic during the first days of pretty weather. This seems to have gotten more pronounced in recent years. I attribute this to the web being used more for entertainment.

[FreeBee]

We’ve grappled with seasonal influences on traffic for a long time and suspect that despite all of the other variables (site and user demographics, competitor activity, marketing intensity etc.) there’s been a general trend towards greater swings. Traditionally (5 years worth of web trends) we’ve seen increases in January, February and March and biggest dips in May and November. The last season was pronounced. We don’t have a simple explanation for this.

One of the most interesting trends we’ve seen on buyer decision-making (we do specialist long haul travel targeting Europe and North America for trips to southern hemisphere) is that traffic dips during the northern summer but conversion rates generally climb. For us there may be truth in the supposition that when the weather’s good at home, people who’ve been dwelling on a vacation decision will often get prompted into actually making the decision. (Roll on beautiful weather in the north!!)

[Brett_Tabke]

All depends on the site. I have one that does 1+m a month fall into spring. Today we will be lucky to break 10k views. Then there is another one that is bullet proof 365. Doesn't seem to matter the time of year. All topics and demographics.

[Bentler]

Our usage peaks in May, drops in summer and in December. It appears that about a quarter of our customers are students, which helps with what we decide to offer up.

[Eric_Jarvis]

I've only got a couple of years stats to work with...but we seem to get a large geographical factor as well...for instance the whole of South America seems to be offline from late December to Early January...meantime Northern Europe seems to be quite busy

but that may be due to the nature of our site

[msgraph]

>>>for instance the whole of South America seems to be offline from late December to Early January.

That's because vacations are taken very very seriously during that time. Everyone flocks to the beaches or mountains so a city of more than 3 million people, for example, turns into a virtual ghost town.

[rcjordan]

>geographical factor

That reminded me of another thread we had on traffic patterns:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[rcjordan]

>I have one that peaks in late July.

Aaaaarrrgggh! It's that time of year again, and -sure enough- I'm on the down-tick. It's like some primal force... there's nothing you can do except watch. I'm bummed! By Christmas I'll be totally despondent.

[WebRookie]

I know. Seems like nothing you do changes those patterns, strange. Even when we have higher traffic and all sorts of exciting things happening, we always have a few slow months in the summer and then slow in December. Same thing year after year. Weird.

[FreeBee]

Incredible...political upheaval, economic chaos, near civil riots in our one main area (a travel destination) and despite all the bad press, debate and concerns the traffic trend doesn’t budge. June holds steady, July, August, September, October sees a steady drop in traffic volume every year but a comfortable increase in actual conversions during the northern summer. It’s happening again, the pattern follows a path like it was set in concrete...

[rcjordan]

> It’s happening again, the pattern follows a path like it was set in concrete...

>Aaaaarrrgggh! It's that time of year again, and -sure enough- I'm on the down-tick. It's like some primal force... there's nothing you can do except watch. I'm bummed! By Christmas I'll be totally despondent.

OK, this is now the third -perhaps fourth- year of having the web traffic pattern repeat itself to the day. This year, I even told clients (and was quoted in one of their reports) that THE day we'd start the climb would be December 26th. Bingo! It's as if someone flipped a switch.