# 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 & 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.

Approach

Trace the funnel the new navigation created rather than accept the revenue number as a single verdict: how many visitors reached a product listing, how many reached a product page, and what happened to the retention activity running underneath everything else.

Outcome

The new navigation had restructured around content ahead of products — only a third of visitors ever reached a product page — and the basket abandonment email, one of the highest-returning things in the account, had been left to underperform through the exact quarter it mattered most.

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.

## What twelve weeks after the relaunch looked like

\-54%

Revenue, year on year

33%

Visitors reaching a product page

\-17.7%

Traffic decline, for comparison

+27%

Bounce rate, desktop

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)