The Top Traffic, Conversion, & Lead Trends in Q3: Data & Takeaways from 120,000+ Businesses

Halloween isn't the only scary thing marketers face.

The most intimidating part of Q4 is the pressure to end the year with great results, as well as the yearly planning to start the new year right.

Businesses are dealing with concerns about inflation, uncertain economies, and how a potential recession could impact their bottom line during the fourth quarter.

This data can give you insight into how you're performing against the competition, but it can also help you create actionable strategies that can enable you to transition from one successful year to another.

In this post, we will show you how many businesses are doing well when it comes to traffic, leads, conversion rates, and email engagement. We will highlight which information you should bring with you during Q4 planning.

The insights are based on data from 130,000 HubSpot customers around the world. The performance of individual businesses might differ based on their own markets, customer base, industry, geography, stage and/or other factors.

Q3 Performance Trends from 120,000+ Companies

Q3 may have been susceptible to seasonality in both B2B and B2C industries. It's possible that current themes, such as economic uncertainty, could affect the numbers.

While some metrics and industries are seeing bigger dips, others are still making strides, suggesting that there may not be a major cause for industry-wide concerns.

There is an interactive Infographic that shows you the trends. For a breakdown of how these industries are performing, keep reading.

Web Traffic and Conversions

Most industries are seeing a web traffic decrease.

In the third quarter of the year, web traffic was down compared to the second and third quarters of the previous year.

Financial Activities and Professional & Business Services saw drops of 12% and 6%, respectively, despite only having a 2% decline. Business-facing companies might be struggling more with seasonality and traffic growth in current times, as evidenced by the 8% dip in manufacturing.

Some industries that are more heavily B2C saw drops. The leisure and hotel industry saw a 3% dip in Q2 but saw a 5% boost in traffic.

There was a drop in web traffic in the third quarter. It's a good idea to compare this with the previous quarter, historical data, or industry-wide as this might just be seasonal or an industry-trend related theme.

It doesn't mean you should stop and accept defeat if you believe you are in the midst of low traffic. During times of high traffic or sales, it's a good time to take on site or traffic optimization projects that you didn't want to do during the low season. You might be able to explore things.

• Website user experience testing.
• Website maintenance or migrations.
• Larger SEO projects, like historically updating old pages instead of churning new pages.
• Website redesigns or design-oriented tests.

The good news? Web conversions are bouncing back from previous months

In Q3 2022, the website conversion rate was up 2% compared to Q2 and up 8% compared to Q3 2021.

The most noticeable spikes were in the industry.

• Professional and Business Services (+20% YoY)
• Financial Activities (+15% YoY)
• Education and Health Services (+13% YoY)

While this is likely due in part to traffic dips, as conversions are calculated based on traffic compared to the number of conversions, it shows that prospects are still interested in learning about products that are in these industries and that those who end up on their sites may be better, more serious leads,

The Leisure and Hospitality industry saw a 3% drop in revenue from the previous quarter to the current one. The industry is bouncing back from previous COVID-impacted years with a 7% increase in conversions, suggesting that companies in this space might just be dealing with seasonality and less travel in Q3 as people focus their vacation time on the Q2 summer months or Q4 holiday

The trade, transportation, and utilities industry saw a 5% dip in Q3 due to less demand in the late summer to early fall months, but is still growing 2% annually.

If you can determine where your biggest sources of conversions are coming from on your site, this could be helpful in your long-term strategy. Your pages will be ready for leads and clicks when traffic increases.

It's difficult to keep high conversion rates all year for any company if you see lower rates. Most companies will have high and low points each year.

If you feel that conversions are low for your industry, now is a good time to ask yourself questions.

• When did these dips start?
• Is there a logical reason visitors might be less interested in our site or offers? (such as seasonality, the current economy, current trends, etc.)
• Are our offers, deals, or sales enough to persuade customers?
• Did we make a change to a high-converting page that caused problems?
• Is one of our high-converting offers or pages getting "stale" and in need of a refresh?

If you answer questions like those above, you can determine what the best course of action is, or at least test out strategies that will give you more information about why the conversion dips are happening.

Marketing Email

Over the past year or so, more email marketers and email experience experts have encouraged a less is more approach to combat inbox overload. During the summer months, email marketing benefits from less email sends.

It seems that Q3 wasn't a great time for email marketing.

Despite a 4% and 3% dip in email sends, the average email marketer still dealt with a big drop in opens and open rates.

It might be time for companies to think more about their email scheduling, the value of every email they send, and how they'll get subscribers to keep opening their messages because they have been sending fewer emails.

Inbound Leads

High traffic, conversion, and email engagement are things that can bring inbound leads to marketers. The marketing efforts paid off in the third quarter.

In the third quarter of the year, inbound leads were down 2% compared to the second quarter and up 2% compared to the third quarter of the previous year. Big changes were seen in a few industries.

The Leisure and Hospitality and Professional and Business Services both saw a decrease in leads, but each saw an increase.

Despite a 1% decrease quarter over quarter, the construction industry saw an 8% dip in year over year. In our previous summer report, we saw an increase in construction activity. The industry may be impacted by potential cost-saving initiatives. We need to watch more to see if Q3's dip is a result of economic impact or just fewer people making home or building alterations or improvements than they did during the COVID-19 era.

This dip shouldn't alarm anyone, especially during times of financial uncertainty, when you might expect lead numbers to dip a lot more.

If you see a rise, do your best to understand what's triggering it. It's a good time to start planning holiday lead-gen or marketing campaigns if you're in the travel industry.

Even if I'm not providing the exact same services or pricing I had, how can I be there for my prospects or customers?

This doesn't mean that you can end Q4 on a positive note.

Even if it's more difficult to get deals, you can still focus on other things.

• Larger web traffic initiatives, such as SEO or CRO.
• Retention and Customer Experience improvement tactics.
• Catering your email sends and messaging around your subscribers.
• Continuing to ask yourself, "How can I be there for my customer – even as times change?"

These tactics will set you, your customers, and your audiences up for an excellent and hopeful start to a new year even if you don't see a lot of highROI or year-over-year growth in Q4.

Trends have changed since the summer of 2022.

The story was originally published on October 12.