<p>I wouldn't be overly concerned about bounce rates and such, I'd be more concerned about conversion metrics. The reason is that many things affect bounce rate; if the new site is better designed, people may not <em>need</em> to click on additional pages to find out what they want to know, for instance.</p>

<p>There's nothing inherent with Craft that would result in this type of a falloff. For sure making sure all of the 404 errors get buttoned up would be a good start, and the <a href="https://github.com/nystudio107/retour" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Retour plugin</a> can assist with that. You could also consider installing the <a href="https://github.com/nystudio107/seomatic" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SEOmatic plugin</a> to assist you with modern SEO.</p>

<p>Disclaimer: I'm the author of both of those plugins.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-09-08T04:30:10.777Z
2017-09-08T04:30:10.777Z
andrew.welch
<p>Hi I've been managing my clients Wordpress site for over 7 years now and redesigned it a few times. Recently, I convinced my client to move over to Craft CMS and 4 months ago we went live with a new design. This was my first build in Craft, the development went well having studied some good tutorials. Since then, in the 4 months that the site has been live the visitor sessions in Google Analytics have halved and have stayed at half continuously. They pretty much halved around the day or the week the site went live. </p>

<p>Bounce rate has increased by 10% and the average session duration has increased by 20%, which would suggest that the site is slow to respond? </p>

<p>I have run the site through Google Site Speed and there is some action to take regarding compression etc, minor stuff though.</p>

<p>So my question is:</p>

<p>Does Craft perform more slowly than Wordpress, or probably a better question: does Craft require more server resources than Wordpress?</p>

<p>Server is a dedicated server and has 2gb of RAM for 15 active domains and 256mb of memory is allocated to PHP for this particular domain.</p>

<p>Pictures do seem to render a little more slowly than before especially on a slide show on the home page.</p>

<p>I did have a lot of 404's which I was a bit slow to notice and clear up but have been dealt with in the .htaccess file. </p>

<p>We also moved the website onto SSL for added security so don't know if there is anything that I should look into there.</p>

<p>All meta tags were ported over correctly.</p>

<p>Have I been penalised in some way by Google for the change in website design or structure?</p>

<p>Other than that, I don't know why my site visitors would halve like this.</p>

<p>Any other tips or suggestions would be really helpful thanks.</p>

<server><speed><resources>
Visitor drop off since moving over to Craft CMS
# Visitor drop off since moving over to Craft CMS

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-09-07)

Hi I've been managing my clients Wordpress site for over 7 years now and redesigned it a few times. Recently, I convinced my client to move over to Craft CMS and 4 months ago we went live with a new design. This was my first build in Craft, the development went well having studied some good tutorials. Since then, in the 4 months that the site has been live the visitor sessions in Google Analytics have halved and have stayed at half continuously. They pretty much halved around the day or the week the site went live.

Bounce rate has increased by 10% and the average session duration has increased by 20%, which would suggest that the site is slow to respond?

I have run the site through Google Site Speed and there is some action to take regarding compression etc, minor stuff though.

So my question is:

Does Craft perform more slowly than Wordpress, or probably a better question: does Craft require more server resources than Wordpress?

Server is a dedicated server and has 2gb of RAM for 15 active domains and 256mb of memory is allocated to PHP for this particular domain.

Pictures do seem to render a little more slowly than before especially on a slide show on the home page.

I did have a lot of 404's which I was a bit slow to notice and clear up but have been dealt with in the .htaccess file.

We also moved the website onto SSL for added security so don't know if there is anything that I should look into there.

All meta tags were ported over correctly.

Have I been penalised in some way by Google for the change in website design or structure?

Other than that, I don't know why my site visitors would halve like this.

Any other tips or suggestions would be really helpful thanks.

**Tags:** server, speed, resources

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2017-09-08. Score: 3

I wouldn't be overly concerned about bounce rates and such, I'd be more concerned about conversion metrics. The reason is that many things affect bounce rate; if the new site is better designed, people may not *need* to click on additional pages to find out what they want to know, for instance.

There's nothing inherent with Craft that would result in this type of a falloff. For sure making sure all of the 404 errors get buttoned up would be a good start, and the [Retour plugin](https://github.com/nystudio107/retour) can assist with that. You could also consider installing the [SEOmatic plugin](https://github.com/nystudio107/seomatic) to assist you with modern SEO.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of both of those plugins.


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