Hi, I just found this forum yesterday after searching for help regarding my recently relaunched website.

 

My previous E-commerce website was run on a customised Candypress system, I was advised by my marketing company / web designer to relaunch the website using Woo commerce, after spending 4 months loading my product range we launched on 1st August and since then we have seen the traffic drop to 1/3rd and turnover drop to 20% of what we used to have. I understood that Woocommerce would be a much slicker platform and assist conversion as well as help drive new traffic and ultimately increase turnover. I am faced with the whole business now being in jeopardy.

 

It is also worth mentioning that my website domain is www.4-id-shop.co.uk, prior to the launch when you visited the website you would get redirected to http://www.4-id-shop.co.uk/scripts/default.asp

 

Can anyone give me some advice;

 

1) is it normal to experience such a decline in traffic after such a change?

2) Is this likely to be a temporary situation or is this how it will remain useless I undertake some drastic marketing measures?

3) why has my conversion rate dropped when we now have a one page cart and more up to date software?

 

Any advice out there would be really appreciated as I am seriously considering resorting back to my old website but this seems like a backwards step.

 

Many thanks,

Debbie

 

Has the design changed at all, or just the system powering it?

Yes the design has changed; here is the link to the old design, some of the links don't have images against them any more so its doesn't look exactly as it did,

 

http://79.170.44.209/4-id-shop.co.uk/scripts/ (Homepage)

 

http://79.170.44.209/4-id-shop.co.uk/Shop/c/casamance-wallpaper-231/ Page to view Casamance Wallpaper brand- note the images are missing from each category heading & product description so you will need to visualise these

 

Same page on new website;

 

http://www.4-id-shop.co.uk/product-category/wallpaper/casamance/

 

Thanks,

Debbie

Welcome to the forums

 

I just tested loading a few pages on your old site (using the old domain) and they are all redirecting to your new site's "Page not found" page. Normally you'd use some "301" permanent redirects so old pages redirect to their new equivilents. This has two benefits:

 

a. It takes visitors to where they want to be, landing on a not found page may be counterproductive and visitors may be leaving your site there

b. 301 redirects notify search engines to reindex your site properly and passing any page value to the new address

 

 

 

1) is it normal to experience such a decline in traffic after such a change?

 

Quite often a redesign can have temporary decline, but if done correctly should at least be about the same or better.

 

 

2) Is this likely to be a temporary situation or is this how it will remain useless I undertake some drastic marketing measures?

 

I'd say you need to get some 301 redirects in place, at least for your most popular pages so you don't lose any traffic.

 

Was any analysis performed on the old site to identify popular tasks, and popular categories/products? For instance your old home page acts as a starting point with prominent direct links to product types and brands, whereas the new site doesn't have these. Your old visitors may have preferred the old approach.

 

 

3) why has my conversion rate dropped when we now have a one page cart and more up to date software?

 

The shopping cart system you use is largely irrelevent, it's more to do with providing your customers with easy to find and relevent information about your products. Yes a "one page" checkout is slightly easier to use but that's really the end part of the process. If customers aren't getting to the checkout in the first place that suggests something is wrong with the product discovery process.

Edited September 15, 201313 yr by BlueDreamer

Welcome to the forums

 

I just tested loading a few pages on your old site (using the old domain) and they are all redirecting to your new site's "Page not found" page. Normally you'd use some "301" permanent redirects so old pages redirect to their new equivilents. This has two benefits:

 

a. It takes visitors to where they want to be, landing on a not found page may be counterproductive and visitors may be leaving your site there

b. 301 redirects notify search engines to reindex your site properly and passing any page value to the new address

 

 

 

Quite often a redesign can have temporary decline, but if done correctly should at least be about the same or better.

 

 

I'd say you need to get some 301 redirects in place, at least for your most popular pages so you don't lose any traffic.

 

Was any analysis performed on the old site to identify popular tasks, and popular categories/products? For instance your old home page acts as a starting point with prominent direct links to product types and brands, whereas the new site doesn't have these. Your old visitors may have preferred the old approach.

 

 

The shopping cart system you use is largely irrelevent, it's more to do with providing your customers with easy to find and relevent information about your products. Yes a "one page" checkout is slightly easier to use but that's really the end part of the process. If customers aren't getting to the checkout in the first place that suggests something is wrong with the product discovery process.

Hi Bluedreamer, thanks for taking the time to check it out. I will speak to my marketing guys about the redirects. There was analysis of the popular categories and I assumed the redirects had been taken care of through the Page not found redirect, but obviously this hasn't worked properly.

 

I can appreciate your comments regarding the old homepage format and this is something I had thought could be an issue but the recommendation from their side of things was to go for a much cleaner approach with less on the page to divert attention. I have bought into the cleaner approach but I am now wondering if this has been a mistake.

 

Another question - what would be the long term damage in going back to my old website? Further traffic loss, confused messages to customers? It would pain me greatly to do this for the time & investment but ultimately the loss in t/o is not sustainable just hoping that things will work out.

 

Thanks, Debbie

YOu need to be redirecting old page urls to the new urls, as your new site uses a seo freindly slug.

 

So if you old site had a product URl as follows http://www.site.co.uk/products/product.asp?id=1234

 

... it would need to 301 redirected to it's new URL E.g. http://www.site.co.uk/sexy-product-slug.html

 

If this is not done, then you will suffer a decent decline in traffic.

 

On a side note, I think the old homepage looks much nicer, excluding the wall of manufacturer logos.

Hi Rallport, thanks for taking the time to have a look and reply I will be looking into the redirects straight away, I guess we didn't pay enough attention to looking after the regular customers who are used to seeing things a certain, familiar way. Do you think I should design up the new homepage, look into the redirects and see how that improves things? As I mentioned to Bluedreamer it has gone so quiet I am tempted to go back to the old website but seems extreme after all the time & investment. Would this be a bad move considering that the new website is on a more up to date system, and could this really mess up my presence on search engines? Thanks again, Debbie

Do you know the impact of the site update had on your serps?

 

Obviously address the redirects first and foremost, but if you have lost any good rankings with the change, then that would be bad for your traffic.

 

Who/what is your biggest traffic source?

Do you know the impact of the site update had on your serps?

 

Obviously address the redirects first and foremost, but if you have lost any good rankings with the change, then that would be bad for your traffic.

 

Who/what is your biggest traffic source?

Hi James, I don't know what Serps are?

Most traffic comes from Google,

So basically I would be in a far worse situation going back to original website?

Thanks, Debbie

Hi Debbie,

 

Sounds like a bit of a pickle. Looking at your new site they have a nice canonical tag with rel next etc which is great to see. The only thing they have forgotten to do is 301 permanent redirect the old path to the new ones. This is your decline in serps (search engine results position).

 

With a 301 in place what normally happens is your new url paths like '/product-category/wallpaper/casamance/' will come up through the serps to where your current position is (was) and then the old path will drop as it's no longer required. After this the search engines will evaluate the new page content and see where in the results it now belongs.

 

At the moment your old search positions (urls) are dropping since they give a 404 code (page not found) and they are not telling the search engines that the page has simply moved to a new location.

 

Might I also suggest you put the breadcrumb trail back. Your old site has one and I cannot see one on the new site. The breadcrumbs give the search engine a good product category hierarchy which will support your nice urls.

Hope this helps.

Apparently the redirects have been sorted now, would love to know if anyone finds anything different to this?

 

I can appreciate your comments regarding the old homepage format and this is something I had thought could be an issue but the recommendation from their side of things was to go for a much cleaner approach with less on the page to divert attention. I have bought into the cleaner approach but I am now wondering if this has been a mistake.

 

 

Using recommendations about a "cleaner" approach is fine but things don't always work as expected. Remember any regular visitors will have seen this major change and may not have got on with it. The phrase "less on the page to divert attention" is worrying - when people visit your site they want to complete a task, eg finding a certain product. By taking away product links this may be counterproductive as you're forcing customers to work harder.

 

What I would do is do some A/B testing on two different versions of your home page:

 

Version A - home page as it is

Version B - home page using your old style

 

Using A/B testing visitors would be served one of the two versions. You'd then use some analytics to discover which version was most effective in terms of click throughs and sales.

Edited September 17, 201313 yr by BlueDreamer