900% drop in traffic in one day - could it be our host?

[Oman]

What was most striking was the traffic source. During our down time, the primary traffic source was direct traffic. Once we shot up again, the traffic source was primarily Google organic referrals. So perhaps what actually maintained our sales was our solid, return customers and our forum. Both were represented by our direct traffic stats.

In GA, if we look at the % of new visitors to the site, our current (good times) stats are averaging 85% with a bounce rate of 55%. In the month of October (down times) we averaged only 71% new visits with a bounce rate of 31%. So it seems that our Google organic results are giving us a lot of window shoppers. Average 'good time' time on the site is 3 minutes, so we're pleased with that.

So was it the site map or Google code? We are a dynamic site using .asp, so we can be hard to index. The site map would have given the Google bots a much easier job of accessing all of our dynamic pages and our .xqasp pages.

Another driver of traffic for us is our forum. The forum remained steady during our down times. I'd have to guess that the forum represented a lot of our direct traffic. I think I might post that as another question at WPW.

Jeff
Myfootshop.com