Customer Base Count? Growth?

[olimits7]

Hi,

I was just wondering what is your current customer base count (ball park figure)?

How long did it take you to reach your current customer base count? What type of growth have you seen on a per month schedule?

I just started out and I'm currently around 30 customers, and I've been live with my website for a couple of months now.

Thank you,

olimits7

[pbradish]

It really depends on the market. One site has been around for about a year and has 10,000+ while the other has been around for much longer and has a much larger customer base.

[willybfriendly]

We deal primarily in wholesale.

Roughly 1800 customers.

80% of sales are to 26% of the customers.

10% of sales are to less than 20 customers.

Guess who gets the most attention, especially in tough economic times? I just got through doing a customer analysis, and we are now going through a repricing exercise with the goal of trading a bit of margin for volume on the top 20% of customers, and trading a bit of volume for margin on the lower 80%.

The old 80/20 rule still holds true, even in E-Commerce. Keep the 20% buying and the business should be sound, even in tough times - and it costs a whole lot less than trying to expand the customer base when everyone is holding onto their wallet.

[anallawalla]

We are a telco.

More than 10 million customers.

It has taken about 100 years to get here. Not sure about the % breakdown, but having a large consumer base means the 80/20 rule probably does not apply. Lots of residential customers.

(Sorry, but you did ask. :))

Oh, when I ran my own sole-trader SEO business, I had about a dozen customers over three years, but one of them gave me almost full-time work, which made it hard to take on short-term customers. So the Pareto principle ratio was more like 96/4.

[olimits7]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies...interesting to hear about this.

Wow, 10 million; maybe one day I'll reach this amount...haha. ;-)

Anallawalla, I'm guessing your company didn't start off as an ecommerce website; but are you know operating mostly online now?

I would be happy with a ecommerce customer base of 10,000+ ; just have to keep on working at it! :-)

Thank you,

olimits7

[anallawalla]

olimits7,

No, we are the former government-owned monopoly telco, and were privatised. If I posted details, it would sound like a sales pitch.

Online ecommerce is conducted on some of the sites but I wouldn't know how many customers it has.