# Case Study: The Site Relaunch That Cost Half the Revenue While Traffic Barely Moved | Crank Source: https://wearecrank.com/case-studies/beauty-home-fragrance-replatform-2018 Twelve weeks after a replatform, revenue was down 54% year on year while visitors had fallen only 17.7%, a gap that pointed straight at the new site, not the advertising. --- ![Beauty and home fragrance case study: The Site Relaunch That Cost Half the Revenue While Traffic Barely Moved](/images/case-studies/home-fragrance-ecommerce.png?dpl=dpl_2uJjggmfov9ibhArygujfRBb3pax) Beauty & Home Fragrance, 2018 Audit # The Site Relaunch That Cost Half the Revenue While Traffic Barely Moved Twelve weeks after a replatform, revenue was down 54% year on year while visitors had fallen only 17.7%, a gap that pointed straight at the new site, not the advertising. Challenge Twelve weeks after a site relaunch, revenue was down 54 per cent year on year while visitor numbers had fallen only 17.7 per cent, a gap that pointed away from advertising and straight at the new site. Two-thirds of paid traffic was arriving somewhere that led nowhere near a purchase, so every pound of media was buying a visit that could not convert, and the basket abandonment email, among the highest-returning activity in the account, had been left to underperform through the exact quarter it mattered most. Approach Use the gap between the traffic fall and the revenue fall to establish the site, not the advertising, as the cause, and put the navigation and the abandonment email back at the top of the priority list. Outcome The diagnosis moved off media and onto the site, which is where the money was actually being lost, and media budget was not cut in response to a problem it had not caused. 01 ## A relaunch that looked like a media problem Twelve weeks after a replatform, revenue was down 54 per cent year on year and conversion down 48 per cent, while visitor numbers had fallen only 17.7 per cent. Desktop conversion alone fell 51.5 per cent, with bounce rate up 27 per cent. The gap between the traffic decline and the revenue decline was the tell: this wasn't a smaller audience buying at the same rate, it was the same audience converting far worse. 02 ## Where the path to buying went Navigation had been restructured to push content ahead of products. Just 53 per cent of visitors reached a product listing page, and only 33 per cent ever reached a product page at all. Homepage bounce rate rose 29 per cent. The advertising was fine. The destination it was sending people to no longer led anywhere near a purchase for two-thirds of them. 03 ## What was deprioritised alongside everything else The existing basket abandonment email was flagged as a priority rebuild at the same point overall conversion had fallen 48 per cent, one of the highest-returning pieces of activity in the account, left underperforming through the exact quarter the business could least afford it. 04 ## Where the diagnosis landed, and what it protected Once the gap between the traffic fall and the revenue fall pointed at the site rather than the advertising, the navigation rebuild and the basket abandonment email went back to the top of the priority list. Media budget was not cut in response to a decline it had not caused, the standard reflex a blended revenue figure produces, and the one this comparison specifically prevented. 05 ## What this means for you When revenue falls much faster than traffic, the problem is on your site, not in your advertising. Cutting media at that moment makes it worse. ## What twelve weeks after the relaunch looked like, and where the diagnosis landed \-54% Revenue, year on year \-17.7% Traffic decline, for comparison 33% Visitors reaching a product page 0 Media budget cut, once the site was identified as the actual cause Drawn from Crank's account audit conducted in 2018 for this beauty and home fragrance retailer, before the account was taken on. Client not named. ## Want to know what this looks like in your own account? These findings came from asking straightforward questions before any budget moved. We're happy to do the same for yours. [ Talk to Wearecrank](https://wa.me/447457416922?text=Help%20my%20business)[Get in touch](/contact) [← Back to all case studies](/case-studies)