One of the most common tasks in website analysis is to analyze and explain abnormal changes in traffic. The traffic of the website has increased today. Why? The website traffic dropped the day after tomorrow, why? How did these changes come about? What impact will it have on the website? These are questions waiting for us to answer.
Usually when encountering this kind of situation, we will first conduct quantitative analysis and find out through segmentation the specific part of the traffic that has experienced abnormal changes. Then conduct qualitative analysis to find out the specific reasons for the abnormal changes in this part of the traffic. The first step is relatively simple. Through the segmentation function of Google Analytics, you can find the reason step by step. The second step of the work is a little more difficult. Because the data itself can only tell us what happened, but not why, we need to find the real reasons ourselves.
Frankly speaking, not every analysis can find the real cause (qualitative) of abnormal traffic changes. And many times, even after we find the reason, we find that the reason is actually so simple and so obvious. And we have been ignoring it. This article summarizes the 7 most common reasons for abnormal changes in website traffic. Before making complex segments and assumptions, taking a look at these 7 reasons may save you a lot of unnecessary work. If these 7 reasons have been eliminated, start your big project again.
Reason 1: The beginning and end of holidays
The first reason for abnormal changes in traffic is simply the different holidays throughout the year. Usually at the beginning and end of each holiday, website traffic will have an obvious downward and upward trend. This change is easy to verify. Observe the date and duration of the traffic change. If you have historical data, you can compare it with the same period last year. Traffic changes during holidays are relatively regular and will affect all traffic sources of the website at the same time. But it usually doesn't have a big impact on the quality of the traffic.
Suggestion: Create a large table to record the time of all holidays in a year, and then record the traffic changes in different holidays. This may not be of much use when you first create it, but it will become very valuable after you have a complete record of your traffic for a year.
Reason 2: The off-season and peak season of the industry
Websites in different industries are affected by holidays and start at different times. For example, most website traffic changes during the Spring Festival begin on the national holiday, but for tourism and websites selling air tickets and train tickets, this time may be much earlier. Because the Spring Festival is the peak sales season for this type of website. Therefore, the low and peak sales seasons of the year will also have an impact on changes in website traffic. The traffic changes in the off-peak and peak seasons of the industry are also relatively regular, which usually affects all traffic sources of the website.
Suggestion: Communicate with business personnel familiar with the website or industry to understand the peak and off-season sales periods in this industry, and integrate these time periods with the previously created holiday schedule.
Reason 3: Beginning and ending of marketing activities
If the first two are the impact of natural causes on website traffic, then the latter is the impact of human operations on website traffic. One of the main reasons here is the website's marketing activities. Every website needs to be promoted to attract traffic. When a round of marketing promotion activities begin, the traffic will increase significantly. And when this round of market activities ends, there will be a clear return of traffic. Marketing campaigns often impact traffic on a specific channel and may reduce the quality of that channel's traffic.
Suggestion: First, make sure that your website analysis tool can record the source channels of all traffic, and distinguish between paid and non-paid traffic. Then ask the marketing staff for a detailed promotion plan and timetable. When traffic changes occur during the planned promotion time, first check the traffic changes according to the channels in the table. In addition, this promotion plan table also needs to be integrated into the previous table.
Reason 4: Impact of hot events
The fourth reason is the impact of hot events on website traffic. Hot events are divided into two categories, one is active and the other is passive. Active hot events are usually part of a marketing campaign and have clear goals and guidance. Passive hot events are spontaneous or created by others. This type of event usually affects three channels: SEO traffic, direct traffic and referral traffic. Usually, you can find out whether a hot event caused the traffic change based on the traffic source, search keywords, and the time when the traffic changed.
Suggestion: Active hot events should be included in the marketing plan, while passive hot events can only be recorded in the table after discovery. Of course, you can also subscribe to some keywords related to the website and industry through Google Alerts to detect changes in public opinion as early as possible.
Reason 5: The impact of policies on the industry
Many industries will be affected by policies, and websites in these industries are no exception. Just like the impact of the recent National Eight Regulations on real estate websites. Traffic affected by the policy covers all traffic channels of the website.
Suggestion: When the policy changes is not in our plan and schedule, it is very necessary to record it at the corresponding time point when the change occurs.
Reason 6: Before and after website and page adjustments
Website revision, adding or removing channels, adjusting URL rules, page optimization, content adjustment, etc. Modifications to the website structure, content and pages may have an impact on traffic. The impact of this part is mainly reflected in the SEO channel. Each adjustment and modification of the website may affect the ranking of the website by search engines, which in turn affects the traffic received by the website.
Recommendation: Determine the plan and start time of website adjustment with the website's content and product department, and determine the scope of the impact and the expected recovery time with the SEO department. Such modifications are then recorded in our table.
Reason 7: Status of the website server
The seventh reason that affects website traffic is the working status of the website server. This does not simply refer to the downtime of the server, but also includes the working status of other network equipment in the computer room, such as switches, routers, computer room power supplies, and other human resources. irresistible factors. These factors may cause the website server to work in an unstable state. This will have an impact on website traffic. Usually changes in traffic generated by the server will affect all channel traffic and will occur at the same point in time.
Suggestion: If you find that the traffic of all channels of the website has dropped at the same point in time, it is recommended that you ask the website's technical staff whether they have made adjustments to the website. If not, you need to check the server logs at this point in time. .
Reason 8: Adjustment of website analysis tools
The last factor that affects website traffic is the website analysis tool itself. Here we take Google Analytics as an example. Any code adjustments and filter settings will affect the traffic data recorded by the analysis tool. At the same time, when there is a problem with the working status of the analysis tool, it will also affect the data in the report. For Google Analytics, you can check the daily running status of the tool here.
Recommendations: 1. Record each adjustment to the website analysis tool. 2 Don’t pay too much attention to real-time data.
Author of the article: Wang Yanping
Article source: Blue Whale Website Analysis Blog Please indicate the source link and author when reprinting