How Coronavirus Affected Website Traffic Globally

The COVID-19 pandemic had an irreversible impact on most companies and industries. While some businesses have experienced growth, others recorded a decline in finances, trade, and website traffic.

Our online behavior changed a lot. We spent most of the time at home, in online activities such as watching movies, learning new skills and things and working remotely. For some sectors like the airline and travel industry, traffic declined, while entertainment and web conferencing services saw huge gains.

We dived deeper into the data from SimilarWeb and made a website’s traffic analysis of the various industries and the world’s largest companies, whose traffic declined due to the pandemic.

Looking at the data from November 2019 to April 2020, the analysis reveals that our behaviors shifted as the virus spread. We turned even more to our devices (phones, tablets, laptops, and PCs) and used them for both work and entertainment.

In the first few weeks of March 2020, consumer and business behavior had a significant impact on web traffic in general, according to SimilarWeb.

Many websites experienced an incredible traffic boost and became more popular. From September 2019 to April 2020, websites like Zoom, Slack, Skype, Hangouts, Microsoft Teams recorded growth.

A significant increase occurred in specific categories, especially during March and April 2020.

Travel bans and restrictions have hit the travel and airline industries the hardest, and traffic on travel websites recorded a significant decline. For this category, we compared data from November 2019 to April 2020.

Analysis showed how fast traffic is declining after the COVID-19 pandemic became a real threat to the entire world. Booking.com, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Expedia, and HostelWorld websites began to fall in early March of 2020, and traffic continues the downward trend.

Although quarantine was coming to an end, the consequences of coronavirus will continue to hit the industry in the coming months. Companies now have to continue to provide detailed and continuous information on the crisis and do anything possible to retain existing and potential customers to their websites.

The whole world has changed its shopping and daily life habits, and many businesses are closed for weeks or even months. Some of them were so affected by the current situation that they don’t exist anymore. It remains to see what changes will happen in the industry and website traffic and how the new “normal” will look in the years to come.

If you are interested to find more about these data, you can download the free ebook How lockdown changed internet habits during the pandemic? and check the full report.

A short intro to what you will get with this report:

Websites uptrend by categories: (Business) communication platforms, Online education platforms, Entertainment

Websites downtrend by categories: Travel & Tourism, Booking websites, Airline industry

If your website traffic has dropped and you want to invest in a proper marketing strategy, we can help you fuel your business challenges and achieve goals. Feel free to contact us!