Holiday Weekend != High Website Traffic?

Once again, I see a holiday weekend's website traffic drop across all my sites.

Please share how you compensate for this such declines. I've come to the positions, fall and winter are right around the corner.

thx,

tom

 

Why would you compensate for a decline?

I think it really depends on your targeted audiance... For example January is a BIG month for vacation sites, and traffic usually gets a little quiter during the mad Christmas shoppping period.. where people's minds are on Christmas and not vacations... then it goes mad in January

 

Traffic drop of 40% for me. Horrible weekend, can't wait for it to be over

 

Fryman - I empathize

Monday is normally my best day; Sunday (and weekends overall) my worst.

This week has, effectively, two Sundays, and no Monday , though this Tuesday should be stronger than a usual Tuesday as people get back to work.

TommyD, wwh
re: Hedging
Depending on your site(s)' traffic pattern and AdWords cost-effectiveness, if you want more stable / diversified traffic you could experiment with:
a) shifting more of your AdWords spend to the weaker periods
b) building a site with a mirror image traffic expectation to your site's current traffic pattern.

For example, one thing I could do is research themes that have their traffic peaking at weekends because that is typically a low point for me.

The question for me: Is the time better spent building a completely un-related "hedge" site; or should I just deal with the traffic pattern on the old site, and build an additional somewhat related new site to reach for higher traffic overall?

The answer is, for me, pretty simple - build another related site. The content will come a lot easier to me than would say a Sports site (assuming these get more traffic at the weekend). But if I can design into it some characteristics (week-end review of the markets, blah blah) that act as a natural hedge to the old theme, so much the better.

 

About shifting your Adwords spending to "weak" times, I think this could be an OK idea. But first you should look at your conversion rate. After all, people may not be coming to your site at that time because they are not interested in that kind of stuff at that time.

For example, say you have a site selling nuclear reactor design consulting (an extreme example, but bear with me.) Probably the most interest in this site is going to come during the week when people who might buy this kind of thing are at work and searching for nuclear reactor designs. The weekend traffic will be terrorists, teenagers and researchers - no one who is likely to buy anything.

So I would think about who your target audience is and check out your conversion rates before you take the step of increasing your Adwords spend on weak traffic days.

Oh, here is another quick idea: Try broadening the international appeal of your site, if you can. Then you will not be so vulnerable to traffic fluctuations from a particular country.

 

I don't understand why this is a problem. Is it daily bandwidth limits or something?

Do you try and minimse your traffic on busy days?

Daily fluctuations in my view, are just that, fluctuations.

Some sites do a lot better at some times of the year / week. I used to run a sports-related site, and had massive traffic Friday to Monday but could probably have taken it offline midweek and nobody would have noticed.


PS - if you think making less money on some days is bad, and are considering measures to deal with it, try playing poker for a living - you can do everything right and still lose money for the day. I guess that why I take a longer term view of traffic / revenue.

 

Of course your traffic drops. Only geeks like us would be on the internet on the 4th


Josh

 

i must be targetting other countries because my traffic has increased, and i thought the usa was eating all my bandwidth

 

I always have less traffic on the weekends, but even less on a holiday weekend. Alot of my traffic comes from people wasting time at work!

 

Even geeks must have some fun. As your attorney I advise you to leave your computer for a few hours and enjoy a bottle rocket or two.

 

I PM-ed some ideas about this topic to tradefor, which I then wrote up as an article here:

http://www.isnare.com/?id=4774&ca=Internet

It's called "Learn Judo And Beat The Summer Traffic Blues". Is it helpful?

 

Cool! So now I've got a free atorney? Sweet


Josh

 

Good stuff, Stephen.

Looking like a long hot and quiet Summer in Phoenix.

This is from GOOG's latest quarterly report - nothing new perhaps; but a reminder that seasonality affects even the largest web-based biz:
"Both seasonal fluctuations in Internet usage and traditional retail seasonality have affected, and are likely to continue to affect, our business. Internet usage generally slows during the spring and summer months, and commercial queries typically increase significantly in the fourth calendar quarter of each year."

Memo to self: must try harder re Southern Hemisphere angles (Australia, Argentina, South Africa, etc.)

 

Thanks, tradefor. I hope the summer is not too long and hot for you.

 

Oh, boy, it sure is nice to see traffic getting back to normal levels. Now if only my damn adsense account would start showing decent earnings...

June was bad enough, but July is looking terrible

 

My traffic is also highest on work days. Mondays to Thurdsays are best during midday - maybe people surfing from work on the lunch hour.

Likewise, traffic died on the holiday weekend to recover on Tuesday.

 

yeah, you have a point!
we get to be sure that we have a targeted visitors that will visit the site though it is holiday or not

cheers

 

Ditto points above - traffic to my christmas lights is basically non-existant right now ... but despite a general decline in traffic (hey, get out, it's a 3-day holiday weekend!) I did see a surge of inbound SE inquries for stuff like BBQ grill recipes this last weekend. BTW, a "surge" for me is a couple of dozen in a day versus single digits.

 

Since I have my own site and signed for Adsense, I understand more about the world economy and world public holidays.

There are months when ppl have more money and would bid like crazy and there are time when money is in low supply. There are months where ppl celebrate like crazy and forgot to swith on their computer, thus affecting few hundred thousands webmaster who are praying nervously that these surfers would come back.

oh my god, i guess i can do better than most foreign ministers nowadays.

-- camels can work without drinking for days, diplomats can drink without working for days --