How often do you have sales?

[flobaby]

Just started having sales on my site(one in August and one this week) and am wondering how often other webstores do the same. Are you on a regular schedule or just when cashflow requires it?

[tolachi]

At first we only had sales once or twice a year when cash flow required it. There were a few dead times of the year and it really helped get through them.

However, over the last 4 months we've been running different items in rotation on the our sale page. We have discovered that changing the items on the page periodically, let's say every 2 weeks, results in keeping people coming back to our site. I don't have any hard evidence, but it has been the general conclusion of the staff based on interacting with customers. We're now going to always keep a few items on that page.

Another advantage is that it gives you a good way to target those modifiers like "cheap", "sale", etc... whether by seo, ppc, etc...

[shigamoto]

I have them after christmas and sometimes during the fall, the only reason that I have them is to clear out old stock. So you could say it's a regular schedule.

[RedWolf]

I have a rotating featured product of the day special. I also ocasionally run 10% off specials in my newsletter. I did a summer (slow time) special for free shipping, that was so well recieved that I have extended it indefinately.

[tolachi]

Free shipping is also a staple with us. People really like it and this I know for sure from our surveys.

[Sunshyn]

We've been running a weekly sale on our site since it began in early 1996. Being able to feature certain items on a sale page works out well enough that, instead of one item, I now put 2-4 items on sale each week.