ESPN.com Traffic Down 30%: Diagnose the Cause and Decide What to Do

You are the product manager for ESPN's website, and web traffic has fallen by 30%. What would you do? ```hint Pin the baseline first Sports traffic rises and falls with league seasons and big events. Decide what period the 30% is measured against, and confirm the data is right, before you split the drop by where visitors come from. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which metric fell 30% (visits, unique visitors or page views), and against what baseline: last week, last month, or the same weeks last year? - Did traffic drop overnight, or slide over several weeks? - Is the fall on desktop, mobile web or both, and did usage of the ESPN app move at the same time? - Is it worldwide, or concentrated in particular countries? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Confirming the drop is real: tracking, metric definitions, bot filtering, and a baseline that respects the sports calendar. - A structured breakdown by traffic source, platform, geography, content area and visitor type that locates where the lost visits went. - Internal causes such as releases, redesigns, search-optimization or paywall changes, separated from external ones such as search and social platform changes, the season, competitors and a shift to the app. - Prioritized actions for each likely finding, who needs to be involved, and how recovery is tracked. - Whether the fall actually hurts the business, judged by ad revenue and ESPN's total reach across web and app. ### Follow-up Questions - You find that the whole drop is in visits from search, starting on a single day. What do you check next? - Web visits are down 30%, but app sessions rose by a similar amount. Do you treat this as a problem? - Leadership wants the traffic back by next quarter. What would you commit to, and what would you refuse to promise?