One Simple Tool to Know if Your Website Traffic is Down

Due to the seasonality of the hospitality industry, website traffic can be a fickle metric to track. As a property owner/innkeeper you know your business the best. You understand your low and high seasons, so you expect certain traffic patterns.

But how do you know when there is an unusual drop in your website traffic? With so many property details to worry about every day, make it easy on yourself and implement one simple tool to know if your website traffic is down.

Create custom Google alerts

In Google Analytics there is a custom alerts tab that allows you to create your own alerts so you can track important metrics such as your website traffic. Choose how you want to receive your alerts, either through email or text message. That way you don’t have to be tied to your computer in order to watch for significant changes to your business.

Below are a few simple steps to help you set up your custom Google alerts:

1. Click on “Admin” in your Google Analytics account.

2. Click on “Custom Alerts” under the property’s view column.

3. Click “+New Alert” button.
    

4. Setup whatever custom alert you want. 
   1. Below is an example of getting alerts when no one has come to your website indicating it might be down or something negatively has impacted the site’s performance.

Look at the big picture

Before you go off on a wild goose chase, be sure you are looking closely at your data over a long period of time. Take into account seasonality, events, holidays, or any other anomaly you might have missed.

Use Google Analytics time period comparison tool to compare previous weeks, months, years, or similar points of time to account for seasonality. Does this dip in traffic typically occur around this time frame? If not, this issue might require additional attention.

Locate traffic source

It isn’t enough to just understand the drop in numbers when it comes to your website’s traffic; it is just as important to understand where that drop is coming from. There are five main sources of traffic from which you could be experiencing the drop:

• Direct – visitors who type your URL directly in the search bar or access your website using a bookmark.
• Organic – visitors who land on your site after finding it as an organic listing in a search engine.
• Paid – visitors who came to your site via a banner ad or Google Adwords listing.
• Social – visitors who accessed your site through a social channel like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
• Referral – visitors brought to your site through your referral network (those who link to your website on their website).

Knowing what each of these traffic sources is can help guide you to uncovering what might be the root cause of a decline in your website traffic.

For a free Google Analytics template to monitor your website traffic and revenue, feel free to use our dashboard: https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=nhjJmp__Sc2ymF4U4MXYzA. You can easily schedule to receive this report each month out of your Google Analytics account by clicking on “email” from the dashboard.

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