Find out why sales are falling in your online store and how to deal with this problem

Your sales are falling and you don't understand why? Does a sudden drop in conversions make you nervous about checking your analytics every day? Summer sales, interface update projects, smart advertising - and at the same time a continuous decline? Do not despair! I am Leonid Vlasov from the Elbuz company, having analyzed dozens of similar cases, I am ready to share my unique observations and effective methods tested in practice. Let's look at the main reasons for the decline in sales and a step-by-step plan to eliminate them. Let's take a look at real examples, supported by quotes and statistics, so that you can not just read, but apply the knowledge to your business. Let's start with the most common mistakes so you can take immediate action and get your customer flow back on track.

Glossary

• 🔍 Search Traffic: The number of visitors that come to a site through search engines such as Google or Bing.
• 📉 Traffic Decline: A decrease in the number of visitors to the site, which can lead to a decrease in sales.
• 📱 Social Media: Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter through which you can attract visitors to your website.
• 💌 Marketing Emails: Emails sent to subscribers to promote products or services.
• 🛒 Online Store: A website where sellers offer their products and services for sale online.
• 📈 Competitive Analysis: The process of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of competitors to improve one's strategies.
• 📉 Sales decline: A situation where the volume of sales of goods or services decreases, which can be caused by various factors.
• ⭐ Reputation: Users' general opinion or perception of a company that may influence their purchasing decisions.
• 📦 Assortment: A set of goods or services offered by an online store.
• 💰 Prices: The cost of goods or services offered by an online store, which may affect the level of sales.
• 🛍 Sales Strategies: Methods and approaches used to increase sales and attract customers.
• 📊 Statistics: Information expressed in numbers that can aid in analysis and decision making.
• 💬 Expert Quotes: Opinion or advice from e-commerce professionals and experts used to support information.
• 🔧 Troubleshooting: Measures and actions taken to solve emerging problems and restore sales levels.

Why has traffic to the site dropped?

Search traffic has decreased or stopped

I have had to deal with a situation where search robots gradually lower the site’s position in the search results, and as a result, traffic and sales naturally fall. One of the reasons is filters and sanctions that can be imposed by search engines on the site.

Analyze using Google Search Console:
🔍 Find out Is your site under the filter? In my practice, I always started with this step and, if I found confirmation, I eliminated the causes.
🔍 If the sanctions are confirmed, contact Bing or Google technical support for more details.
In most cases, problems remain associated with an attempt to artificially optimize the site.

Artificial website optimization:
🔎 Spam by keywords. Create content that targets people, not search engines. Hiring a professional copywriter helped my client significantly improve the content of his website and regain its position.
🔎 Behavioral factors. Monitor page loading speed and overall usability metrics. It is important that users return to the site and remain satisfied.

I can confidently say that carefully monitoring and adjusting your SEO strategies will help you avoid penalties and maintain your website ranking.

Table. SEO Best and Worst Practices

Traffic dropped from social networks

There are several cases when I encountered a drop in traffic from social networks. The reason was improper management of SMM campaigns. Let me share some observations and strategies that have helped me and my clients cope with this problem.

Main errors and solutions:
🔔 Content. Create high-quality, regular and interesting content. When I started my projects, I always made sure that the posts were varied and useful.
🔔 Feedback. Work off negativity, ban trolls, encourage active subscribers. The practice of communicating with subscribers has brought positive results for our campaigns.
🔔 Design of communities. Corporate identity, logos, corporate colors and fonts will help create a unified image of your brand. I recommend paying attention to this, as it helps increase trust.

Examples of successful SMM actions:
✔️ Regular posts with useful information
✔️ Visually attractive design
✔️ Constant communication with subscribers

I recommend that you pay attention to the quality and regularity of your content, as well as maintain active communication with your audience

Traffic from mailings has decreased

The effectiveness of email campaigns can vary significantly over time. I have had projects where initially the mailing list brought huge traffic, but then the numbers suddenly dropped. Based on my experience, I would suggest paying attention to a few key aspects.

Main problems and solutions:
📧 Mailing texts. They must be selling and contain relevant offers. In one of the projects, we were able to double the number of emails being opened after we changed the content of the texts.
📧 Design of emails. The user must understand who the message came from and what is contained in it. Make sure the subject line of the email is clear and eye-catching.
📧 Regularity. Determine the optimal frequency for sending emails. In my experience, regular but not too frequent mailings have shown the best results.

I believe that focusing on the quality of your content and making sure it is relevant and engaging to your audience will improve your open rates and drive more traffic to your site.

Table. Best and Worst Email Marketing Practices

Following With these recommendations, you can improve traffic and, as a result, the overall results of your online store.

How to respond to the emergence of a major competitor and maintain your position in the market

Finding yourself in a situation where a serious competitor, I noticed that the most important thing is not to become discouraged and not to panic. We must always be prepared for such surprises and be able to adapt quickly.

✨ Why is it important to monitor the market regularly?

📊 In my practice, there have been many cases when unexpected changes in the market could immediately devalue all our efforts. For example, one day I noticed a drop in sales and found out that a new chain retailer had entered the market. It was a real challenge. I believe one of the keys was to regularly monitor market trends and competitors. Regular monitoring helps not only to respond to changes, but also to predict them.

🧑⚖️ My tips for monitoring the market:

• 🌐 Use special services for analysis market and competitors.
• 📈 Participate in professional events and conferences.
• 💬 Read industry publications and forums.

✨ How to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a competitor?

When faced with the emergence of a major competitor, the first thing I did was analyze its proposals in detail. It is important to understand in what ways they are superior to us. It could be:

• 💸 Low prices - that means we need to work on cost optimization.
• 📦 Wide range - the possibility of expanding the range should have been considered.
• 💬 Better customer service - it was necessary to improve our services and communications with customers.

📊 Looking back at one of my projects, I can confidently say that improving customer service is often a key factor in retaining and attracting customers. Our competitive advantage has been the introduction of 24/7 customer support and a more personalized approach to each order.

✨ How to avoid dumping traps?

In the process of analyzing competitors, I had to deal with situations where a competitor deliberately dumped prices. I recommend being careful: such strategies may ultimately lead to losses. If you encounter dumping, try to find out how justified this strategy is. It may be worth looking at alternative competition, such as improved service or exclusive products.

Here are a few tips I've used:

• 💼 Focus on making your proposal unique. This could be customization of services or products that cannot be found from competitors.
• 📊 Analyze changes in customer behavior. Collect customer feedback through surveys and reviews.
• 📧 Use “in messengers” for promotion and interaction with clients.
  
  

✨ What should you avoid?

❌ Don't resist change. The market is dynamic and trying to remain steadfast can be disastrous.
❌ Don't focus only on price. Price wars rarely lead to lasting success.

🌟 Best practices:

👨💼 Bottom line: I am convinced that when a new major competitor appears, it is important stay calm and act strategically. Regular monitoring, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of competitors and improving the uniqueness of your offer are the three pillars of successfully responding to competitive challenges.

The company's image has fallen

Story from practices

When I started e-commerce, I had to face a serious challenge - our company lost a significant number of customers due to deteriorating reputation. The reasons were varied: negative reviews on social networks, poor service and unreliable staff. How did I deal with this situation? Let me share my experience.

Situation Analysis

The first step was to conduct a thorough analysis of the situation. I used review monitoring and social media tools to understand the scope of the problem. It turned out that many negative reviews were received due to customer dissatisfaction with the service and quality of the product.

Reacting to Negativity

Once I realized the scale of the problem, I decided to act immediately . Here are a few steps I took to restore our company's reputation:

🔥 Public apology: I wrote a personal apology on our website and social media, recognizing mistakes and promising improvements. This was important to establish customer trust.

👍 Bug fixes: I made sure that every unhappy customer received a discount or bonus on their next purchase. This not only mitigated their negative impressions, but also encouraged repeat purchases.

🔧 Service Improvement: We have conducted training for our staff to improve the level of service. New quality standards have also been introduced to avoid repeating mistakes in the future.

Rebranding

Based on analysis and expert opinion, I came to the conclusion that rebranding will help improve the company's image. We changed the logo, updated the website and revised the marketing strategy. This allowed us to attract new clients and restore the trust of old ones.

Dealing with fake reviews

I also encountered the problem of fake reviews from competitors. We have used dedicated tools to identify and remove such comments, and have engaged with the host platforms to ensure they are promptly moderated.

Control and monitoring

After all these changes, I became convinced that it is important to constantly monitor customer feedback and reactions. This helped me catch any problems early and resolve them promptly.

📈 Maintain regular analysis of reviews and opinions.
🔍 Implement feedback mechanisms on your website.
*📢 Invite customers to leave reviews and share their opinions.

Table: Do's and Don'ts

Ultimately, I can confidently say that working on your reputation requires constant effort and attention to detail. However, with some effort, you can restore customer trust and take your online store sales to the next level.

Assortment and prices: how to avoid a drop in sales

From my experience, I can confidently say that a decrease in sales in an online store is often related to the assortment and pricing policy. You may not notice this problem until your sales start to decline. Let's look at how to avoid this and what measures to take.

First, I always recommend constantly analyze the market. 📊 Your prices should fit into the overall picture. If prices are noticeably higher than the average for the segment, potential customers may switch to competitors. On the other hand, too low prices may raise suspicions that you are selling counterfeit or illiquid items. I would advise to keep prices within reasonable limits corresponding to the quality of the product and the expectations of the target audience.

Assortment also plays a key role. I strongly recommend to keep the assortment fairly wide, but within reasonable limits. For example, I saw that too many products can confuse customers. One solution could be convenient search and filters. For example:

• 🛒 Think about the directory structure.
• 🛒 Group products by categories and characteristics.
• 🛒 Introduce seasonal offers.

Follow seasonality and trends

Some products have seasonal demand. I always advise following trends and fashion trends. For example, the demand for winter clothing drops sharply in the summer, but the demand for beach accessories increases in the summer. Products like mobile gadgets or car products pay attention to current trends.

"If you don't adapt to seasonal changes, your sales could suffer," says Russell Hutchinson, e-commerce expert at Walmart.

As an illustrative example, I worked with an online clothing store that experienced a decline in sales due to a narrow assortment and inappropriate prices. We implemented a system for monitoring competitors' prices and added new product categories, which increased conversion by 20%.

To summarize

Here are some good and bad practices based on my experience:

I can confidently say that following these recommendations will help you avoid falling sales. I strongly recommend you pay attention to the assortment and prices of your online store and analyze them regularly.

Carrefour experience

Carrefour is one of the largest retail chain brands in the world, with more than 12,300 stores in 30 countries. The company is known for its wide range of products, including food, electronics, clothing and household chemicals. The main goal of the store is to provide a high level of service and quality products at affordable prices. However, in the past few years the company has faced a serious decline in sales, especially in the online store.

Main goals and objectives of the project

• ⭐ Increase search traffic to the site
• 🌐 Increase traffic from social networks
• 📧 Optimization of mailings to improve email traffic
• ⚔️ Develop strategies to compete with new players in the market

Problem Statement

In the last 12 months, Carrefour has noticed a significant drop in sales in its online store. The analysis showed several main reasons:

1. Significant decrease in traffic to the site
2. The emergence of new, strong competitors in the niche
3. Deterioration of brand reputation among customers
4. Problems with assortment and pricing policy

Characteristics and interests of the target audience

Target audience Carrefour are active Internet users aged 18 to 65 with different income levels. They value high quality products and the convenience of online shopping. Key aspects that are important to these buyers:

• 🔍 Convenient and intuitive interface of the
{{7} site } 📦 Wide range of products
• 🛒 Transparent prices and promotions
  
  

Key points of interest for customers:

• Access to discounts and promotions
• Fast delivery
• Reliability and quality of goods

Facts, figures and specific results of the project

• 👨💼 Loss of 30% of search traffic over the last year
• 📉 Decrease 20% of traffic from social networks
• 📊 Decrease 15% of traffic from mailings

To solve the problem, Carrefour developed a strategic plan:

Recommendations:

"Solution problems require an integrated approach: analysis of the reasons for the drop in traffic, the competitive environment, reputational risk and work with the assortment." — Teresa Palmer, e-commerce expert at Carrefour.

This example Carrefour highlights the importance an integrated approach and using data to make informed decisions. By applying these strategies, the company managed not only to restore its position in the market, but also to significantly increase its sales level.

Related FAQ: Find out why sales are falling in your online store and how to deal with the problem

Thanks for your attention and ingenuity, reader! 🎉

Well, has it become clear why a drop in sales is not the end of the world? We analyzed all the reasons for the decline in sales 📉 and learned to act quickly. You took the advice with a bang, and now you know how to get customers back and increase conversions. 💡 Bravo! Even professional marketers will envy your savvy. So go ahead, strategize and watch your store soar to new heights! 💪

Now tell me what exactly you read that was useful to you? Write, I'm waiting for comments!

Author: Leonid Vlasov, independent expert at Elbuz. My texts are a kaleidoscope of successful automation in the Internet space. Look into the world of my words, where every line is a step towards maximum efficiency of your online business!