Direct To Site Traffic Decline
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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!
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How would you perform that on Google Analytics?
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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!
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Enter your site as a direct visitor to your old URL. Then dig into your analytics to see how you are counted.
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