Forum Moderators: buckworks
One, people are generally "paycheck" rich meaning they spend spend spend on the 15th and 30th of the month, but hold back and pay CC bills other times.
Two, after the holiday rush, when most businesses do their big bucks, anything less seems excruciatingly slow.
Those two combined make for the roller coaster ride known as Q1.
Just work on things that you can control and do all that stuff you didnt have time to do in Q4
But wouldn't the paycheck effect apply all year?
Yes and no. Yes, if you look closely you can sometimes see this trend throughout the year. No because the effect is magnified this time of year. Most people overspend at the holidays and then try to make up for it the next 3 months. The only time of the month they feel they have spending money is right around their paycheck period.
One thing that does seem to make a difference. A lot of my business for the past two months has been from repeat customers vs new customers. On the wholesale side, I expect that to pick up once the sun starts shining again. Right now the Southeast US is carrying my wholesale trade.
Just use this slow time to explore new ways to market your business and to focus on your previous customers.
Personally, I haven't had one sale in the last 2 days and that is very unusual for me.
Funny, last week I had pretty good sales. Some of my larger orders were from repeat customers, though, and that helped alot.
But this weekend is DEAD. I guess it does have something to do with Spring Break. I just hope it picks up soon!
They stop buying like they used too...
They stop "shopping for the latest fashions"...
Exactly. That's the frustrating part. Traffic has stayed consistent. Conversion rate is in the toilet.
I guess the best thing to do in the lean periods to increase your marketing tentacles. Like ItsAllBallBearings above said do all those things you couldn't do in Q4.
The best way to explain this it to look at internet traffic as a funnel.
Lot of people browse the net. Some of them could buy your products. Within this segment most likely a small % knows your site. And these visit you and then comes the visitor-to-sales Conversion Rates.
Hitting at higher up the filter is what I am suggesting for the lean period.
You can find out more places to make your product feed available.
You can start listing or eBay or start Paid Search campaigns if you don't already do it.
You can blog about your products and direct the traffic on the blog to your products.
There could be many such activities that you do to attack higher up the filter.
Cheers,
Sreekanth
I have changed a lot of things lately. This has made me realize that I really need to keep a log of changes I make.
My customers are primarily college students and I would chalk this up to Spring Break, but traffic hasn't decreased.
Everyone I speak to says the same. Online stores, shops, hotels... This is a very lean month for a lot of people.
It's the nature of business to have ups and downs.
Many will fail, few will succeed.
The good thing about the internet, is if you fail, it's very easy to get started again.
So don't worry to much, just work as hard as you can to make it work and have a back up plan in case you fail.
As a bit of brightness, we have been doing business on the internet for over 7 years, based on our past records we expect a surge in sales very soon with a drop off around April 10th (Tax Time) and then an increase in orders at the end of May.
