Craigslist Referral Traffic Down, Concerning?

[flosho]

Hey guys and gals, I've been having a heck of a time the past few months driving traffic from CL to my website. We have been very successful in the past and I'd like that to continue(obviously) but it looks like we are literally receiving about 1/2 to 3/4 the daily traffic that we used to.

Has anyone else experienced a drop like this? I know CL has undergone a number of recent changes this year and late last year, and I feel like I've changed my methods to maximize results but I'm just not seeing it. It is definitely a bit concerning to me. I do use a very basic/informative image ad that is linked to our site and a separate 'contact us' link with a form to capture inquiries, I've even made custom changes to the image ad so that they display properly on mobile devices.

Any ideas on what to look at? I've done multiple forms of testing to ensure that the ads are live and searchable, no issues with that. My pages per visit, time on site, are up and bounce rate has decreased but overall views/page views are definitely down.

I'm certainly not asking for any magic tricks, simply wanted to summarize my thoughts and see if anyone has some helpful input.

Thanks

 

[kcar]

You only have 26 Cars TOTAL. You can't push out the same cars over and over and over and expect to get the same results.

 

[flosho]

You only have 26 Cars TOTAL. You can't push out the same cars over and over and over and expect to get the same results.

We've always had between 22-30 cars for sale at one time (occassionally up to 35) but we tend to sell the majority of them relatively quickly. I realize my 'scale' of inventory size, etc is much smaller than most, however, we have always done very well and I want to make sure we don't slip up.

 

[kcar]

Maybe it's your prices? CL is where people go to buy cheap cars not expensive ones.. $5-10K you have 9 Cars (Ideal for CL). On the other hand you have 17 cars all over $10K. I get a ton of leads on cars up to $10K in price, very few for $15K max. Also if that's not it..

Your competitors may simply be posting more ads which in return bury yours faster. Making it harder for people to see your ads. I track both.. The actual CL ad #'s and the I track the website visitor #'s. I do this by looking at the hits on the images inside of each ad. That way if your ads are getting less views, you know it's CL (reposition your ad or renew it to the top). Or if you ad is getting a ton of visits but no ones going to your website, you know it's your AD. (Change your ad format)..

The thing with CL is it's really weird, one month I'll get like 400-600 visitors to my website (15 leads), the next month 200-300 (6 leads). It really just depends on who's clicking on your ads and what time they are posted, etc.

 

[Billfred]

Might not just be you. Our Craigslist referral traffic has dropped noticeably (off by about a third month-over-month) without any real change in our inventory's footprint (if anything, we now have more cars out there) or posting strategy (five new-to-CL cars posts a day, renewing as the system permits, off-make and cheaper going ahead of the more expensive cars from brands we sell).

Still, everything goes in cycles.

 

[yagoparamo]

Have you guys tryied changing your ad's message? how they look, etc?

Often times we find that a dealer that post with their name get 100 calls/month and posting the same inventory with different attributes [no pricing, special fi offer, credit app, different name] will get another 60-70 calls.

Our latest trials are going to new cars: Craig’s List new-NEW CAR-templates | PGI Auto – News/Blog