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Amol Ghemud Published: August 14, 2018
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It is likely to happen to every marketer out there – traffic dropping off, when you sign onto Google Analytics and see a surprising, and detectable, decrease in traffic.
Need to analyze the reason for your traffic drop? Read on and recover your web activity on track.
1. Wrong Ad text
The most relevant text, the text you want to have Ad to target,is a very important factor leading to traffic drop off. Don’t sell mangoes showing apples
Ad text is an essential part of leading vistors to your page for conversion. By the same token, you need to strike a healthy balance between ad text relevance and authenticity, engaging writing.
If you rework on your ad copy without hitting the same notes as before, it could mess with your traffic.
2. Highlight what makes you unique
Free shipping? Dazzling variety? Tell people! Showcase the products, services, or offers that make you competitive.
3. Include prices, promotions, and exclusives
People often use Google search to make a decision about something. Give them what they need to decide. If you have a limited-time discount or stock an exclusive product, say so.
4. Empower customers to take action
Are you selling something? Tell people what they can buy. Are you offering a service? Tell people how to contact you. Calls to action like purchase, call today, order, browse, sign up, or get a quote make clear what the next steps are.
5. Include at least one of your keywords
Keywords in your ad text show your ad’s relevance to what people want. For example, if you’ve included digital cameras as a keyword, your ad headline could be “Buy Digital Cameras.”
6. Match your ad to your landing page
Have a look at the page that you’re linking to from your ad (the landing page), and make sure that the promotions or products in your ad are included there. People might leave your website if they don’t find what they expect.
7. Conversion ratios analytics
A site’s conversion rate is defined as the number of successful transactions divided by the number of total unique visitors.
Any webmaster can measure the conversion rate of their website using Google Analytics. This comprises an advanced use of Google Analytics, and is not common to the majority of Google Analytics users.
Having a goal gives context to your actual number, asking your business decision makers forces them to think about where the revenue (or other outcomes) will come from causing them to really analyze their execution strategies and try to plan them ahead of time as much as possible.
You can compare relative volumes of traffic from different sources within the same dimension: for example, the traffic from different search engines, campaigns, or mediums. Overall comparisons let you make some initial determinations about which channels are most effective or offer the best return.
For example, if one campaign is delivering a lot more traffic than another, you can shift resources to make the more successful campaign even more visible. Or if one medium, like email or cpc, is outperforming the others, you can invest more heavily in that medium.
8. On site drop off
Whether it’s a technical issue, a recent website change, a Google algorithm update or poor optimization, there are many possible reasons why traffic to your website has been declining.
There is no set number, but consider common sense when determining if too many visitors are leaving the page. A small percentage is an inevitable, but if a large percentage is dropping off, the content or pages should be rearranged to make important information more prominent and more visible.
9. Targeting audience
Before you start any paid campaign it’s important you put together a set of audience of who you are marketing to. Put together a range of questions to identify your target market :
What type of device will be used?
User’s age range?
What is user’s gender?
Their interests categories?
What is their motivation to buy?
Where are they in their buyer journey?
What is their lifetime value?
When are they active online?
Their geographic location?
What sites will they visit?
Once you have put together a marketing profile you can start to target users effectively by using the range of features your paid platform gives.
10. Determine stages where visitors drop off
Depending on the purpose of your site, you may want to know how many pages users traversed after the initial page. In addition to measuring the level of engagement, you can also see the extent to which traffic diminished as users progressed through your site.
If users aren’t progressing as far as you had hoped, or if traffic is dropping off at a faster rate than you’d like, you can consider redesigning your site navigation or graphic design to allow for easier movement between pages, adding additional calls to action, like teasers for related articles or products, or reworking your site content to better address the interests of your audience.
Think about it this way–people can leave your website in one of two ways. One, they exit from a specific page, which becomes the “exit rate” from that page. When people “drop off,” they are dropping out of a funnel.
They click back, maybe go back to the previous page, etc. But then they go on to other pages on the site. “Drop off,” simply put, is the percentage of people who may not do what you want them to do on the site, but they do remain on your website and exit elsewhere.
User flow
Are there paths through your site that are more popular than others, and if so, are those the paths you want traffic to follow? You may have a path in mind for your users like
Home Page > Services Page > Contact Us > Thank You!
That unexpected path can indicate things like users not finding products they want, or your internal search not returning results that are helpful.
You might also discover something like an unusually high drop-off from a new page you’ve introduced, like a new home page or new product page. Investigate whether the design of the new page might be obscuring the links or controls that lets traffic flow to the pages you want them to see next.
No. of clicks
Clicks represent the actual number of clicks that you paid for and the number of clicks your campaign ad actually received.
It is normal for click and visit numbers to vary, as visitors sometimes click on ads in their first session and then re-visit the site in later sessions from other sources – e.g. directly by typing the address into their browser, resulting in 1 click and several visits, as the referral data from the original visit was retained.
If the situation is reversed, and you have fewer visits than you have clicks, there may well be a tracking issue involved, i.e. Analytics tracking code may not be added to every page on your website.
Page load time
If pages aren’t loading, ain’t nobody converting. Yes, your headline is important. The value prop needs to be clear. A beautiful page is nice to have. Social proof critical to adding credibility.
But if fast loading times aren’t happening, then landing page conversions aren’t either.
Clean up your code
Minimise HTML & CSS
Minimize redirects
Limit WordPress plugins
Upgrade hosting
Compress images
Single page checkout
Single-page checkout is faster and easier so that more customers convert. Single-page checkout forms, particularly those that use JavaScript to march shoppers through the process, also provide better step-by-step visibility. Shoppers know what they must do and where they are in the process.
Doorway pages
Doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination. Here are some examples of doorways:
Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site(s)
Substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browsable hierarchy
Call To Action
Just as important as your headline is your CTA. Ensure you are clear and direct about the desired outcome. What is it that you want your visitors to do? The copy and design of your CTA can make a big difference to your conversions.
If you have a text link CTA, consider using a button to make it stand out more. Creating a sense of urgency in your copy will also go a long way.
Focus on creating insanely compelling landing pages. If not you’re wasting your traffic. Understand your web visitors. Create action-oriented, standalone web pages to move people through every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Conclusion
In the end you have to practice. And test. evaluate And test more. Keep Learning and Keep implementing.
Analyzing the user flow in Google Analytics provides a visual map of how visitors navigate your website, revealing exactly where they lose interest or encounter friction. This data is critical for pinpointing why traffic isn't converting and where users abandon their journey. Instead of guessing, you can see the actual paths people take, which are often different from the ones you designed, such as an intended Home > Services > Contact Us flow being replaced by a more common Home > Services > Search > exit loop.
You should look for specific patterns that signal problems:
High drop-off rates on key pages: If a new product page or redesigned homepage shows an unusually high exit rate, it may indicate that the design is obscuring important links or calls to action.
Unexpected loops: If you observe users repeatedly moving between a search page and search results, it suggests your internal search is not providing helpful results, causing frustration.
Underused conversion paths: Discovering that the path to your checkout or contact form is less popular than other, less valuable paths can show a need to redesign site navigation or make calls to action more prominent.
By diagnosing these specific points of failure, you can make targeted improvements to your site's design and content, ensuring visitors can easily find what they need. A deeper analysis can reveal how to better align your website's structure with user expectations.
Doorway pages are websites or individual pages created specifically to rank for a narrow set of search queries while ultimately funneling all users to the same destination. They harm user experience because they clutter search results with multiple similar pages that offer no unique value, often leading users through an unnecessary intermediate page. This tactic is viewed negatively by search engines because it manipulates rankings without providing relevant, distinct content.
These pages are detrimental because they create a poor journey for the user and can lead to penalties from search engines. To avoid creating them, focus on building a clear, browsable site hierarchy rather than generating pages that are only slight variations of each other. Key practices to avoid include:
Creating multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions that all redirect to a single page.
Generating pages designed only to capture search traffic and immediately push visitors into the main, usable part of your site.
Publishing a large number of substantially similar pages that are not part of a logical, user-friendly navigation structure.
Instead, invest in creating unique, high-value content for each page that serves a distinct purpose for your audience. For more insights on building a strong site structure, you might explore the full guide.
Both compelling ad copy and a smooth on-site experience are critical for conversions, but their priority depends on where your funnel is weakest. Strong ad copy with clear calls to action like 'Sign Up Now' gets users to click, but a poor landing page experience will cause them to leave immediately. Conversely, a perfect website is useless if no one is drawn in by your ads.
A balanced approach is ideal, but for immediate impact, evaluate your metrics. If your ad click-through rate is low, start with ad copy. If your clicks are high but your on-site drop-off is also high, focus on the user experience. Consider these trade-offs:
Ad Copy Optimization: This is often faster to implement and test. Highlighting unique offers like free shipping or a limited-time discount can quickly improve ad relevance and attract qualified clicks.
On-Site Experience: Improvements like optimizing page load time by compressing images and minimizing code have a lasting impact on all traffic sources, not just one campaign. A single-page checkout, for example, directly reduces friction at the most critical stage of the buying process.
Ultimately, your ad is a promise that your landing page must fulfill. Start by ensuring your landing page is technically sound and aligns with your ad's message before scaling your ad spend. Discover how these elements work together by exploring the topic in greater detail.
The distinction between clicks and visits is fundamental to understanding paid campaign performance accurately. A click represents the single action of a user clicking your ad, for which you are charged. A visit (or session) is recorded by Google Analytics when a user arrives on your site, and it encompasses all their activity during that session.
These two metrics will rarely match perfectly, and the discrepancy is revealing. For instance, it is normal to see more visits than clicks. A user might click an ad once but return to your site multiple times later by typing the address directly; because the original referral data is retained, this can result in 1 click and several visits. However, seeing significantly fewer visits than clicks often signals a problem. Common causes for this issue include:
Tracking Code Issues: The Google Analytics tracking code may not be installed on every page of your website, particularly the ad's landing page, meaning the visit is never recorded.
Slow Page Load Time: If the landing page loads too slowly, a user might click the ad but abandon the page before the Analytics code has time to fire and record the visit.
Redirects: Complex or slow redirects can strip referral data, preventing Analytics from correctly attributing the visit to the ad click.
Understanding the source of these discrepancies is the first step toward fixing tracking problems and ensuring you have reliable data to evaluate your campaign's true return on investment.
If a 'Sign Up' button is underperforming, A/B testing provides a structured way to identify what changes will encourage more clicks and improve the conversion rate. Instead of guessing, you can create a variation of the page and test specific elements of the call-to-action (CTA) to see which version performs better with live traffic. This approach moves you from subjective opinion to data-backed decisions.
A well-designed A/B test on a CTA would involve isolating and testing one variable at a time. Here are key elements to test and the metrics to watch:
Button Copy: Test the existing 'Sign Up' text against a more action-oriented or benefit-driven alternative like 'Get a Quote' or 'Start Your Free Trial'.
Design and Placement: Change the button's color to make it stand out more, increase its size, or move it to a more prominent location on the page. Using a button instead of a simple text link can often make a big difference.
Urgency: Introduce copy near the CTA that creates a sense of urgency, such as 'Limited-Time Offer' or 'Only 3 Spots Left'.
The primary metric for determining the winner is the conversion rate on that specific CTA. By comparing the conversion rate of the original page (control) to the variation, you can confidently implement the change that drives more of the desired actions. Understanding these testing principles is a key step to building high-performing landing pages.
A high on-site drop-off rate indicates that visitors are leaving your funnel before converting, which directly impacts revenue. For a small e-commerce business, a focused plan can quickly address the most common causes of this issue. The goal is to identify and remove friction from the user's path to purchase.
Here is a practical, three-step implementation plan:
Step 1: Analyze Visitor Flow and Identify Drop-Off Points. Use a tool like Google Analytics to examine the 'User Flow' report. Identify the specific pages where the largest percentage of users are leaving. Is it the product page, the shopping cart, or the first step of checkout? This tells you where to focus your efforts first.
Step 2: Optimize Page Load Time and Technical Performance. Slow pages are a primary cause of visitor abandonment. Take immediate technical steps such as compressing images, minimizing HTML and CSS code, and reducing the number of WordPress plugins. Fast loading times are critical for keeping users engaged, especially on mobile devices.
Step 3: Rearrange Page Content for Clarity and Action. On the pages with high drop-off rates, make sure the most important information and calls to action are prominent. If users are leaving a product page, perhaps the 'Add to Cart' button is not visible enough or the product details are unclear. Rework your site content to better address the interests of your audience and guide them to the next step.
By starting with these foundational steps, you can begin to systematically improve engagement and reduce drop-off. For deeper strategies on retaining visitors, consider exploring the full analysis.
Starting a paid campaign without a clear audience profile is like shouting into the void; you might be heard, but probably not by the right people. Building a detailed marketing profile is the most important step to ensure your message reaches users who are actually interested in your product or service. This process dramatically improves campaign effectiveness and minimizes wasted spend by focusing your budget only on qualified potential customers.
Before launching, you must put together a set of questions to identify your target market. A strong profile goes beyond basic demographics and considers user behavior and intent. Ask your team:
Demographics and Geographics: What is the user’s age range, gender, and geographic location?
Device and Online Behavior: What type of device will they use? When are they most active online, and what other sites do they visit?
Interests and Motivations: What are their interest categories? What is their core motivation to buy your product?
Buyer Journey and Value: Where are they in their buyer journey (awareness, consideration, decision)? What is their potential lifetime value to the business?
Answering these questions allows you to use the full range of targeting features your paid platform provides, ensuring your ads are shown to a receptive audience. This foundational work is explored further in the complete guide to effective paid marketing.
A compelling landing page is a standalone, action-oriented page designed to achieve a single conversion goal, and it's essential for maximizing the return on your ad spend. Simply sending traffic to your homepage wastes that investment. A truly effective landing page understands its visitors and guides them seamlessly from interest to action.
To create a landing page that converts, follow these critical steps:
Showcase Your Unique Value Proposition: From the moment a visitor arrives, they should know what makes you unique. Use your headline and opening text to highlight competitive advantages like free shipping, a dazzling variety of products, or exclusive offers.
Include Essential Decision-Making Information: Users often search to make a decision. Give them what they need by clearly displaying prices, promotions, and product exclusives. This transparency builds trust and reduces hesitation.
Design a Clear and Urgent Call to Action (CTA): Your CTA is the final step. Make it impossible to miss by using a button that stands out. Use direct, action-oriented copy like 'Purchase', 'Order', or 'Get a Quote', and consider adding urgency with phrases that indicate a limited time or quantity.
Ensure Message Match: The landing page must perfectly align with the ad that brought the visitor there. Promotions and products mentioned in the ad must be included and easy to find on the page.
By focusing on these core elements, you can create a focused experience that moves people efficiently through every stage of the buyer’s journey. Further details on landing page creation can offer more advanced techniques.
As more users browse and buy on mobile devices, a slow and cumbersome website is no longer just an inconvenience; it is a major liability. Businesses must adapt their strategies to prioritize speed and simplicity, as mobile users have less patience for friction. Failing to optimize for this trend means losing customers to competitors who offer a smoother experience.
To stay competitive, your strategy should evolve to treat mobile performance as a top priority. Key adjustments include:
Making Page Load Time a Core KPI: Fast loading times are essential. If pages aren’t loading quickly, conversions aren’t happening. You must regularly clean up your code, minimize HTML & CSS, compress images, and upgrade hosting to ensure your site is as fast as possible.
Adopting Single-Page Checkouts: The traditional multi-page checkout process is a significant point of friction. A single-page checkout is faster and easier, providing shoppers with clear, step-by-step visibility of the entire process on one screen, which is proven to increase conversion rates.
Designing for Mobile-First Navigation: Your site navigation should be intuitive on a small screen. If users cannot easily find products or move between pages, they will drop off. This means simple menus and clear calls to action are non-negotiable.
Over time, the businesses that thrive will be those that obsess over removing every point of friction from the mobile user journey. A deeper dive into these technical optimizations can provide a roadmap for improvement.
The call-to-action is evolving from a simple instruction into a critical piece of interactive micro-copy that must capture attention and communicate value instantly. As users become more discerning, generic CTAs like 'Submit' are losing their effectiveness. The future of the CTA lies in personalization, clarity, and creating a sense of urgency without being deceptive.
Marketers should anticipate and adapt to several key trends to keep their CTAs effective:
Hyper-Personalization: CTAs will increasingly be tailored to the user's stage in the buyer journey. A new visitor might see 'Browse Our Collection', while a returning visitor might see 'Complete Your Purchase'.
Benefit-Oriented Language: Instead of telling users what to do ('Buy Now'), copy will focus on what they will get ('Get Your Free Quote'). This shifts the focus from the company's goal to the customer's benefit.
Visual and Interactive Elements: Static buttons will compete with more dynamic CTAs, such as micro-animations on hover or two-part CTAs that ask a qualifying question before presenting the button.
Voice and Conversational UI: As voice search and chatbots become more common, CTAs will need to adapt to conversational contexts, moving from clickable buttons to verbal or text-based commands.
The fundamental goal remains the same: make clear what the next steps are. However, the methods for achieving that clarity will need to become more sophisticated and user-centric to cut through the noise.
The most common and costly mistake causing high clicks with low conversions is a disconnect between the ad's message and the landing page's content. This problem, known as poor 'message match', creates a confusing and disappointing user experience, causing visitors to abandon the page almost immediately. You are essentially paying for clicks from interested users, only to lose them at the final step because of an unfulfilled promise.
This discrepancy arises when the ad sets an expectation that the landing page fails to meet. For example, an ad might highlight a specific product, an exclusive offer like 'Free shipping', or a keyword like 'Buy Digital Cameras', but the landing page is a generic homepage or category page where that specific information is not immediately visible. To fix this:
Create Dedicated Landing Pages: For each ad group or campaign, build a standalone landing page that is a direct continuation of the ad.
Ensure Headline and Content Alignment: The headline of your landing page should echo the ad's headline. If the ad includes keywords, they must also be prominent on the landing page.
Make Offers Obvious: If your ad mentions a promotion or discount, that offer must be the first thing the user sees on the landing page, without requiring them to search for it.
By ensuring you match your ad to your landing page, you create a seamless and relevant journey that builds trust and guides the user directly toward conversion.
While both relate to users leaving, 'exit rate' and 'drop-off' diagnose two different types of user behavior problems. An exit rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your entire website from a specific page. In contrast, a drop-off occurs when a user leaves a predefined sequence of pages (a funnel), but they may remain on your website and exit elsewhere.
For example, if a user leaves your checkout funnel but then navigates to your blog before leaving, that is a drop-off, not an exit from the site at that point. This distinction is crucial because it tells you whether the problem is with a specific page or with the path you want users to take. To fix a funnel with a high drop-off rate:
Redesign Navigation: If users aren't progressing as hoped, consider simplifying your site navigation or graphic design to make movement between pages more intuitive.
Add Clearer Calls to Action: Guide users to the next step by adding additional CTAs, such as teasers for related products or articles, to keep them moving through the funnel.
Rework Page Content: Analyze the page where the drop-off occurs. The content may not be addressing the user's interests or answering their questions, causing them to look elsewhere.
By understanding where and why users are dropping out of your intended path, you can make targeted changes to keep them engaged. Learn more about analyzing these user journeys by exploring the full article.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
