How to benefit from a decrease in traffic

Just written an article about benefitting from a decrease in traffic on my blog. Without trying to plug the blog, I thought I'd just share the entire article in the hope that somebody may benefit. Yeah it's pretty simple, but from my experience a lot of people seem to overlook these principles.

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Ever banged your head tirelessly on a wall in a darkened corner until you saw tiny rainbow coloured elves after you experienced a sharp decline in traffic on one of your online properties? Well maybe you’re not as bad as me, but it’s natural for a webmaster to experience displeasure and even a feeling of failure after a fall in visitors – heck it’s exactly what drives a lot of people to abandon shop. However for the record, every single website on the internet that receives genuine visitors, will at one point or another experience this kind of slump, whether it be in response to online or offline factors.

A true entrepreneur can turn a disadvantage into an advantage, and while I’m no Donald Trump – I can definitely say to you without an ounce of doubt in my mind, that a lack of traffic can be transformed into a positive thing. For starters you’re handed a golden opportunity to re-evaluate your entire operation, and effectively locate and correct the root of the problem. Depending on your personality traits, experiencing a backlash from your visitors may be enough to ignite a savage fire of ambition and motivation, which when handled correctly can be absolutely paramount in getting you over the line and beyond.

Evaluating your website correctly is extremely essential in ensuring its continued survival, and while sometimes blunt honesty can hurt, it’s often just what the doctor ordered. There’s an entire series of checks you can perform in order to rectify the issue that’s sucking the traffic away from you.

1. Re-evaluate your colour scheme, layout and overall website accessibility.
When going over your design, it’s best to keep an open mind. Ask yourself if your visitors are getting lost in your layout, or whether the colour scheme may be driving them into the open arms of your competitors. Ask a friend or two to give their opinions.

2. Ensure your website is compatible with the major browsers.
Make sure you check to see whether your website is compatible with the major browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. A lack of cross capatibility among browsers can be a major driving force behind a slump in your traffic.

3. Ensure all links and forms are correctly functioning
A lot of the time, broken links are enough to scare visitors away. They undermine your credibility as an expert in your field, and portray your website as amateurish. Make sure you click on every link and submit every form to ensure they’re working correctly.

4. Test your loading time.
With a ton of web hosts springing up over night, it’s sometimes difficult to determine which one is suitable for you. Employ a third party website uptime monitor and pay attention to the speed of your website.

5. Re-evaluate the relevance and quality of your content.
As much of a cliche as it might be, it goes without saying these days – content is king, and a lack of quality or relevance is without doubt enough to completely destroy your website.

6. Determine your sources of traffic.
A lot of the time you can pinpoint where you’re lacking by locating the source of your traffic. Compare your statistics to statistics captured when your website was receiving an optimal amount of visitors, and visit the websites brining in a reduced number of traffic in a bid to understand and further solve the situation.

7. Check if all images are loading correctly.
Browse your website in the hunt for broken images. A lot of the time, like broken links, broken images also reduce your credibility with your target audience, and can therefore be very damaging.

8. Re-evaluate your niche.
Is your niche dying out? Sometimes you need to be honest with yourself, and bail out before your target audience is diminished. Alternatively, one can attempt to revive the market but introducing an innovative and highly desired service, product or feature into their website.

9. Wonder over to the competition.
Have they introduced something into their site that may be thwarting your attempts are increasing your traffic flow. If so, it’s time to apply some camouflage paint and get down to good old business.

Remember to seek the advice of some friends, and even visitors as gathering a series of opinions is unquestionably paramount in ensuring you hit back twice as hard. Consistency is key is the online world, and those who continue to get up after every fall, and capitalize on every success will emerge as the winners.

 

The title of this thread is misleading and totally different from content...

 

Don't really see how it is.

The title of the thread is 'How to benefit from a decrease in traffic' and the overall theme of the article is centered around the evaulation of your website. A lot of webmasters don't typically evaluate their properties to the extent that they should unless they've under pressure.

Through the careful evaluation suggested by the article - one would probably pickup discrencies in their website that they otherwise wouldn't - which would ultimately serve as a benefit to them.

 

nice sharing
Keep it up

 

Why would you want a decrease in traffic, you seem to have lost the point.

 

well...one does keep innovating and improving with a web property always to woo more people...or just to keep people interested...i should say...this should be done at all times actually...!!!

 

Its a nice share but has nothing to do with the title. A better title would be

9 reasons why your website may be losing traffic

 

I agree with this actually.

Thanks for all the comments so far!

 

Yeah title was not appropriate with the contents of the article. At first reading the title I thought the contents of article is about "How decrease in traffic would convert into targeted traffic".

 

Nice article on website evaluation. Actually decrease in traffic from social networking might be a good sign, as long as traffic from search engines pick up.

 

Absolutely anything can be made into a good thing. It all depends about attitude.

 

Very well put together points....

 

The title may be quite different from the content, but the content still provide value for sites suffering from sufficient traffic.

 

Thank for sharing, in my last test ads position give a lot of effect.

 

few factor missing that promote your blog and site in relevant websites.

 

nice....keep it up...

 

The suggestions shared by you are excellent and this has really made me understandable for what i was looking out for.

Thanks !!!

 

Thanks very much for the comments!

 

Better to take excerpt from you blog and plug it so you don't create duplicate content that will compete with your site.

Very nice tips by the way. Regular site evaluation is something we should all do regardless of a traffic drop or not.