Four Things to Do if Your Traffic Numbers Drop

When you're trying to run an online business, you need to be aware of your traffic counts at all times. These are the counts of how many people are visiting your website on any given day. The more people you have visiting your site, the more likely it will be that your profits will also go up. So, it's essential that you not only monitor these numbers, but also become concerned when you see a sudden drop in the traffic counts. Here are the four things you should do when you see your traffic numbers drop.

Check the Site

Before you begin to panic, you will want to try to pull up your own site to see if you can see it. If you can easily pull it up, there maybe nothing technically wrong with it. Check the content next to see if something was placed onto your site unintentionally or if anyone hacked your website and made it completely different from what you meant your site to look like. Take a few minutes to go over all of the main pages of your site and then see if you can get into your site as a customer would. If everything looks okay, you might have other problems you need to work on.

Call the Web Host

If you can't access your site, but you can access other websites, the problem may lie in the services of your web host. If the server is down, you will not be able to access the site, causing your customers to not be able to access it as well. When a web host server goes down often, the traffic counts will begin to drop as the customers become more wary of whether your site will be available. Or, if there is a sudden drop in the numbers, you might simply need to get the server repaired or your information switched over to a backup server so that it can be broadcast to your customers. When your web host is crashing more often than it should, you need to start looking for a new web host.

Look Back Over Changes You've Made

When a sudden drop in your traffic occurs, you might want to stop to think about what changes you've made recently. Did you change your prices? Did you change your images? Any sort of changes might be the reason for your change in traffic count. When your customers are accustomed to certain features on your site or certain menus, it might take them a while to get used to them - or the drop in your counts might be a sign that they simply don't like what you've done at all. To respond to this situation, you might want to change your site to its original format and see what happens to the traffic counts then.

Wait it Out

But sometimes, there is simply no rhyme or reason to the traffic counts dropping - they just do. And if you can, simply wait it out to see what happens over the course of the next week. If your site is up and running and it's still working the way it should, you might simply be experiencing a temporary shift in the market, which will eventually turn around. When you're still getting new site visitors and old customers, you might just need to wait it out until things get back to normal. Perhaps there's a new site that just started and that is drawing attention to itself for the moment. Once customers realize that you are still the better business, they'll be back.