Direct To Site Traffic Decline

[JMSCC]

Hi Everyone,

My company's site went from Http to Https and responsive design last year. After 6 months passed, we noticed a 40% decline from direct visits but revenue saw an increase. Could the 301 redirects from Http to Https cause the drop in direct traffic?

Thanks!

[EGOL]

Enter your site as a direct visitor to your old URL.  Then dig into your analytics to see how you are counted.

[CleverPhD]

You did not lose the traffic - it is just being classified as something else. I am going to predict that you saw an increase in Organic traffic. Right?

http://searchengineland.com/60-direct-traffic-actually-seo-195415

Above is a classic article of how Groupon deindexed page to look at this and they found for their traffic 60% of direct traffic was organic. Your % will vary but you get the idea.

Your specific issue is due to the change in http to https - as mentioned in the Groupon article https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-15.1.3 specifies that when moving from http to https referral data is supposed to be stripped out.

You did not lose traffic but maintained it or gained it. If I could borrow $20 from EGOL I would bet that your revenue increase is possibly due to the fact that your site is now 100% https and people trust it more, which can impact purchase intent.

Cheers!

[JMSCC]

How would you perform that on Google Analytics?