Thread: website hits and visits down by half since change, is it the blog?

Just checked updated traffic report to the website, I was doing an experiment and pointed the url to the blog site at The Morning Bleat ..the old site is still there, at the top of the blog on the right side i have the important pages still posted. I'm slowly fixing holes and broken links and outdated info on the site and hate to have construction signs on it. So thought I'd point it to the blog to see what happened

But for the past 5 days, hits and visits are down by about half . That was during an ebay run and plenty of other activity and frequent blogging..

do you think people just prefer the old site?

I recall you mentioned websites are passe. It will take quite a while before even 50% of the people online will agree, many are challenged understanding how to use a search engine. Your website is quite popular. Most shoppers do not want to read stories, they want to shop! If your goal is to sell the website is a necessity. Your website is lovely and informative so it's enjoyable. I recall you mentioned reducing your work for the next 2 months. If that remains true not having the website functional might be wise. If more hits are important it appears you will not be reducing your work load for a while.

Given that this is a Holiday for both US and UK, that's a reasonable explanation. Ancedotally, I see fewer people blogging, updating Facebook, etc. Trying to figure out a major change during such a period is a major challenge.

It's possible people are confused by the change. One thing I've seen, over and again, is that people dislike sudden changes, esp. with things on the 'Net. That's why I usually tell folks to integrate their blogs, calenders, etc, in to their main site, as well as letting these additions have their own sites. But again, it's hard to tell w/o more solid data, unaffected by a holiday season.

Also: How do you let people know you've updated your blog?

As a daily LJ user with most of my friends list located in the US, I notice that people blog less at this time of year, even though it's winter and they are people who like to spend a lot of time online as it is. They may be on holiday, but they're busy with family commitments, cooking, travelling to visit family in other places, shopping... and your holiday period is a really packed in one from Thanksgiving through to after the New Year. Southern Hemisphere people are also less online from December through January, I believe, because while we don't have all that Thanksgiving stuff we have summer holidays *and* Christmas/New Year, which combine to send people outside. I don't think people would have stopped visiting your site because you have added a blog. A blog is value-added, and does not take anything away from what's already there for people who just want to browse or shop. Unless your new site is taking a longer time to load and putting people off that way, I wouldn't worry too much.

I thought about it being a holiday weekend and all..

definitely want to make it easy and 'familiar' for those who like familiar

hmm no way to let anyone know the blog is updated other than a new entry i guess..I do have a newsletter but only try to use it twice a month. People might kill me if i sent out a newsletter each time i made a blog entry..especially since most of them are useless :)

I like the blog way of doing the site because it's really easy to share new content, feature a dancer, post new pics, etc. On a normal website new info can be buried or someone has to spend a lot of time looking thru each page.

And of course I've been reading that search engines pick up tags on blogs faster than on sites since the info changes or is updated rapidly.

well thanks for the feedback so far..I guess a little over a week isn't much time to tell esp over holidays.

As an experiment I googled Akai silks. At the top was the blog spot so I a shopper would not click on it.

There are link to ebay but they don't seem to work. you click on the link and it takes you to an ebay page that says not found...
hmmmmmmmmm

Then the next big link is to the care html but when I click on that I get a page not found.

Is your website down at this time?

Originally Posted by asim1

Given that this is a Holiday for both US and UK...

I'm afraid Thanksgiving is a purely American Holiday. We've all been hard at work here in the UK.

Originally Posted by beafarhana

I'm afraid Thanksgiving is a purely American Holiday. We've all been hard at work here in the UK.

Sorry! For some reason, I conflated my UK boss's boss being off Friday w/a holiday. I feel like such a idiot!

lol and many of us use the holiday to stick the baby and dog with the husband to do a bit of extra work :)

ahhh so it was a success as far as rapidly appearing up at the top of the search engines. (i'm reading a book on tagging :)

so maybe what i should do is just change around the blog LAYOUT so that it more closely resembles the old site but has the live blog feed too.. time to visit the blog doctor..i'm certain there's a way to do it

i registered another blog at wordpress maybe they have more layout options..right now it's four column maybe it can be tweaked

Originally Posted by asim1

Sorry! For some reason, I conflated my UK boss's boss being off Friday w/a holiday. I feel like such a idiot!

No, not at all! I wish we had something like your Thanksgiving. It's a great holiday. I love the idea of a national holiday where you all think about what you've got to be thankful for, rather than worrying about what extra stuff you should be getting.

dont remind me bea, need to start my christmas shopping uk style soon!

ok so i switched back to the old site and re-published late last night

today has seen a doubling of hits, page views, visitors again. weird. ok people like the old site. i added a link to the blog and will keep the old site up again. ..g.: