Massive drop in sales - how do I find out why?

[SushiUK]

Thanks Patrick, that's really useful info. I'll try some of these suggestions

[KevnJr]

I use a spreadsheet to track my top 10 competitors, every time the new DA index is released. By watching our competitors, I can see trends and seasons in our markets and how algorithm changes affect us and them. Most of the time, the majority of us see the same increases and reductions. This is not an immediate answer bc it takes a long time to populate enough data to begin measuring, but after a while, it very valuable when the owner comes knocking.

KJr

[ThomasHarvey]

Had a quick look through your shop, found this page: https://www.glassesonspec.co.uk/cheap-prescription-sunglasses/mens-sunglasses/wayfarer-style-cd1038/

I would look into the styling of your page, it's not utilising the width as well as I would think you could. I would personally make the content below the list "included with every pair" use the full width (image/description)

[SushiUK]

Hey Thomas,

Thanks for your feedback. This is a planned update actually. We have a unique requirement where our products require a lot of options to be provided as you have seen. Unfortunately, due to the way the product page is constructed in the theme we are using, it puts those options prior to the checkout button in an area that should only take up the header.

I am about to update the theme to a major update released last week. Once that is done we are going to have a custom product page template created to put everything back in the right place Currently, because of the options placement, if we activate the tabs section, they appear at the foot of the page!

Complete nightmare!

[ThomasHarvey]

Completely understand the problem!

Another thing I would look at is this: https://i.gyazo.com/f00555df1f7dcc374785d29c8ed4d9cb.png

You can see on that page there are three out of stock products. I would (if you can) push these down the results. As in the top 6 (above the fold) I can see one out of stock. You're missing an opportuntity here to sell that product.

[SushiUK]

Yes, this is an ongoing issue, my client manages their own inventory so they often make changes without me knowing to stock levels/availability.

[Mustansar]

Hi,

I agree with Blue Corona, As there was a algo update few weeks ago, if you check your Google consol you would be able to see. 
in my opinion, you need to cosinder update in order to determin the fall.

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi Bob,

Although people are blaming it some Algo update for the drop, yet I would like to keep my focus on conversion rate drop ( if you framed you question correctly, that there is not much drop in visitors compared to sales).

I tried using your website to find anything that was amiss and the only fault I could find which can directly correlate to sales is that Javascript alerts for order validation,  If this dialogue is suppressed, validation fails and order can't be processed.

https://postimg.org/image/6axhg8yw5/

Please look into it.

Regards,

Vijay

[SushiUK]

Hi Vijay, this is really helpful.

We recently changed the product options framework for the website, and I know the previous options solution had a pop up warning for the completion of the prescriptions fields.

We are now however using a completely different solution for the prescription form, and it's possible that there is some code left over from our previous solution.

I am no longer using the developer who created the previous options framework, so can you tell me if there is a way we can track down where this code is?

For our current options, this is all handled by Gravity Forms in WordPress, so I don't think that will be causing the problem.

Thanks again for your helpful suggestion.

Bob

[SushiUK]

Further to the above, I think I've solved that issue. There was an error on that product you used as your example, it was loading an attribute as a variation that didn't exist.

I've removed it now.