Dwindling visitor figures?

[blown away]

My visitors (and sales) were building nicely towards 200 per day at the end of july, I was getting sales almost every day throughout june and july.
Since the beginning of this month, my stats have dropped like a stone and I've only had one sale since friday - figures over the weekend were abysmal, dropping to 50 uniques on sunday, I know the weather was good but still.
I've noticed that my keywords are not where they were in google (uk) for certain products, they have slipped considerably down the first page but are the same as they were in yahoo, quite high on the first page for a few of them.
My site builder only allows so many words in the meta tag keyword box, so how can I get more visitors? I've more or less drawn a blank with getting new, relevant links to the site.
I feel ready to start paying for some advertising now but I am unsure whether to go the adwords route (which I'm clueless about) or another way. Though which way, I have no idea:|
The site has only been up for 13 weeks and I know it can take a while but with xmas approaching I want to do all I can.

[quikshop]

Sounds like you are suffering from mid-month mid-year summer holidays drag effect ;)

Most online retailers sales drop at this time of year, lots of people on hols and out enjoying the sun instead of sitting in front of their computers.

Regards,
Dave

www.internetretailer.biz (http://www.internetretailer.biz)

[GreatSEO]

Im with Dave on this one

We have also seeing a drop in business because of holidays etc

Hope this helps

Regards

Dave

[blown away]

I thought as much as ebay has gone much the same way.
I was selling lots during the rain of june and july - which is a bit strange in my field of sales, you would think that the good weather would be more suited to kites...
Oh well, it's given me time to update the website with new lines and get over the awful flu I've had since coming back from a relaxing (not) break in London.
Hopefully it's just a temporary lull.

[Top Hat]

Time of year.
Postal strike.

Its the same for all of us

[DragonZ]

let see what happen after the holidat then !

[gocreate]

This is a good time to do some housekeeping on your site.

You could use the googlebot code and properly optimise some of your pages; ensuring each keyword you want to be found under is mentioned sufficient times.

If you want some help, I can take you through the first page or two.

Hope this helps.

Iain:rolleyes:

[Entire Marketing]

It sounds like your site needs some continual optimisation, this is mainly because the search engines continually change "the rules" so you need to stay abreast of them. If you needed we would be able to help with this, as would any SEO company. I would advise against ad words and would provide a direct comparison on the cost of adwords for your target market compared to SEO work.

In terms of business I regret to say that we are as busy as normal and have not been effected by any of the problems you other guys seem to be having, in fact unique visits to our site have been up month on month for the last three months! (I know that this does not help but just thought I would let you know.) One of the reasons that we do not really get effected by slumps is because we do not wait until a slump to house keep and market, we are continually doing both. Despite being busy we are in the process of adding a complex search facility, catologue and ideas generator to our website as well as increasing the content 10 fold (all of this will be live by wednesday of next week.)

If we can be of assistance please give me a call or e-mail me and I will be happy to chat, quote or advise.

Many thanks

Mark
www.entiremarketing.co.uk
01785 246895
mark@entiremarketing.co.uk

[welshnoonoo]

Aside from any seasonal fluctuations, it sounds to me like you may be suffering from "new site high rankings" that have now tailed off. If your site is only 13 weeks old then I would expect it to get high positions before it falls off.

My personal strategy would be build links to the site and start a Google Adwords campaign in the meantime.

[blown away]

I've just had my daily site stats through, visitors are back to the low 100, and I've had a sale, so it was just a glitch hopefully - I really dont want to go down the adwords route.

[boho]

adwords is worth using while it's quiet, gives you time to tweak your campaign, but I think the main culprit is it's August and the main two weeks most folks take off as holiday, the weather is lovely and the postal strikes mean that people know waiting for the postie to bring their goods is unreliable, which unfortunatel means the high street is likely to better than us online retailers I'm afraid.

Mark - I think the reason you haven't been affected is twofold, 1 your in the service industry and so the seasonal fluctuations don't impact in the same way as with retail and secondly you're getting business from the twitchy site owners who aren't sure why it's gone quiet ;)

[Subbynet]

I'm with welshnoonoo

This is the Google Effect - new site gets listed, its position in the rankings is undetermined, so site is boosted slightly until the index is reindexed and visitor numbers go up. Once reindexed your site then sits in its rightful position - which is normally low and as such visitor numbers begin to fall.

Got to say tho it normally lasts a month at most I've noticed!

Its worth remembering things will tail upwards again (slowly but surely) with effort in SEO.

[SteveGibson]

I'm not an SEO, so I don't know about this "google likes you at first, then it doesn't like you so much, then it likes you again" stuff.

However, I can say that, if your your google rankings have dropped and sales have dropped too, it's not "just the quiet season".

If you want your sales to go back to where they were, I'd sugegst you've got 2 choices:

(1) Sit and hope

(2) Do something to increase your traffic. Which, unless you know how to get your rankings back up, will probably mean spending some money.

Hope this helps,

Steve

[Entire Marketing]

adwords is worth using while it's quiet, gives you time to tweak your campaign, but I think the main culprit is it's August and the main two weeks most folks take off as holiday, the weather is lovely and the postal strikes mean that people know waiting for the postie to bring their goods is unreliable, which unfortunatel means the high street is likely to better than us online retailers I'm afraid.

Mark - I think the reason you haven't been affected is twofold, 1 your in the service industry and so the seasonal fluctuations don't impact in the same way as with retail and secondly you're getting business from the twitchy site owners who aren't sure why it's gone quiet ;)

Thans for your feedback. I would agree somewhat as we are stricly B2B except for web/design actvities, however I do have 10 years experinece in retail so am aware of the pitfalls. The key is to market constanly and plan for the quiet periods, well advertised offers etc to iron out the dips in trade. Whilst I recognise every business is diffrent in my own experience (which is the only one that I can comment on) this really helped.

I do sympathise will any business which sufers a dip in trade I am merely trying to share my experience.

Many thanks

Mark

[boho]

Blown Away are you listed on many sites? It's probably worth looking at getting yourself listed on some relevant directory and shopping sites, submit your site to Shop Safe if you meet their criteria. Look at updating content on your homepage - customers do get bored easily, so seeing some fresh products on the homepage is always a good thing.

Fluctuations in google occur every so often when google is 'dancing' and newer sites do tend to take a bit of a battering.

Look at adding additional content to your website that customers will find appealing and which will help in terms of the search engines such as articles, events etc

[boho]

With postal strikes ongoing to 17th August, I think most online retailers unfortunately are going to experience an additional impact this month - customers are understandably wondering if and when things might arrive and if you're selling something time-specific for the customer then it will have an effect.

[boho]

Sorry, thought someone may have posted something before I came back again, just been looking at your site Blown Away and I have got a few bits of feedback on the overall site itself:-

I found the site quite difficult to navigate there is no clear order to the features on the navigation bar, and you have 'our whole shop' and 'shop by category' which both seem to do exactly the same thing, the text based shop by category visually doesn't grab me, and the 'our whole shop' is much better with the actual category images, but the security bit is an unnecessary addition to the page and would be better on a separate 'secure shopping' page or just left as part of your 'payment options' page.

You have no About Us page, I think this is the opportunity to actually build customer trust and tell them something about the people behind the business, why you're there, what makes you tick, why you are a cut above the rest.

Text formatting on the pages is a bit all over the place, which makes difficult reading, the delivery costs for example would look clearer in an easy to read table.

Try and get some testimonials from your customers, you encourage feedback so any of that positive stuff make it visible so that people feel more secure.

[RayB]

I'm with Steve Gibson here:


Many have mentioned the holiday season - postal strike etc
This would clearly be the culprit if all else was equal
However - you have clearly stated that your google rank positions have fallen - which always affects traffic
So all things are not equal - pure logic reallyTherefore the only way to prove/disprove that the holiday season and or postal strike is the culprit is to get the traffic going again.

Even if the market has temporarily shrunk dont just take it on the chin - simply go and grab a higher percentage of the business that IS out there

And for that - the best quick fix in town is Adwords IMO

[Rob Holmes]

I've just had my daily site stats through, visitors are back to the low 100, and I've had a sale, so it was just a glitch hopefully - I really dont want to go down the adwords route.

If you don't mind me saying, I think you're missing a couple of easy tricks on your site.

First is you don't appear to have an email newsletter that people could signup for to receive Kite Surfing news and offers - maybe it's connected in to your shopping cart? If you have got the option then now is the time to use it. If you haven't then now is the time to get it going. You can use this as a mechanism to stimulate your already warm leads. <plug> Use something like www.the-autoresponder.co.uk (http://www.the-autoresponder.co.uk) which deals with all the signups and opt-in stuff that keeps you legal. </plug>

Second is your comment about adwords. A lot of people do get their fingers burned on Adwords, that said, alot of people make alot of money using Adwords. Is it something you're tried and not found profitable?

I manage adgroups with similar products (not in direct competition) and they are successful ;)

Rob

[blown away]

Sorry, thought someone may have posted something before I came back again, just been looking at your site Blown Away and I have got a few bits of feedback on the overall site itself:-

I found the site quite difficult to navigate there is no clear order to the features on the navigation bar, and you have 'our whole shop' and 'shop by category' which both seem to do exactly the same thing, the text based shop by category visually doesn't grab me, and the 'our whole shop' is much better with the actual category images, but the security bit is an unnecessary addition to the page and would be better on a separate 'secure shopping' page or just left as part of your 'payment options' page.

You have no About Us page, I think this is the opportunity to actually build customer trust and tell them something about the people behind the business, why you're there, what makes you tick, why you are a cut above the rest.

Text formatting on the pages is a bit all over the place, which makes difficult reading, the delivery costs for example would look clearer in an easy to read table.

Try and get some testimonials from your customers, you encourage feedback so any of that positive stuff make it visible so that people feel more secure.

Thanks for the input,
I am still tinkering with the site and am getting to grips with tables and cells etc.
I am teaching myself html so hopefully I can make the site look more professional - I am also having a banner designed to give the site the right feel.
I put the text only category page in simply to put more in the menu.
I put the secure shopping bit on the shop page because not everyone reads the payment page and I wanted to give the site a feeling of security, I am listed in a few shopping directories and safe shopping sites, also bt tradespace - which others have raved about but it doesn't seem to be doing much for me.
The problem is that it's so time consuming and I do work part time as well as having an ebay shop to run - which needs constant work.
I am surprised that you think that navigation is difficult - I thought I had it laid out in a logical order?
I do try and update the homepage every few weeks - I have a free gift promotion on at the moment, I will change the featured products at the end of the month.
Cheers, Helen.

[Nigel B]

It's the holiday season. Schools broke up end of July - so a lot of people are away, plus sunny weather, interest rate hikes yada yada. There's always something!