Further downturn over the last 1-2 weeks?

[Tonearm]

Anyone else seeing a further downturn over the last 1-2 weeks?

[adamnichols45]

Im in the UK.

Not for me best month last month and todays sales are great.

[jsinger]

The past few days have been very slow online. Our B/M store traffic has been good. Online traffic is fairly normal but conversion rate is way below average.

A lot of the USA is experiencing very nice weather so perhaps people are outdoors more. Temperatures have been near-record warm in many areas.

Without checking my stats, I think I've been seeing a lot of tiny orders coming thru.

[rachel123]

I'll second the tiny orders. Our order volume is up about 15% this year over last, but the total sales up only 3% in comparison. More people, ordering less stuff. But hey, I'll take it. Here's hoping they come back again in a few years when they have more $$ to spend.

[Rugles]

We are continuing to see growth but that is because we are stealing market share from competitors.

The growth is slower than previous years so I am guessing that is because of the recession.

There is a recent report in eMarketer that says that ecommerce sales will contract this year by 0.4%. When the recession is over they expecting massive growth in ecommerce. So the goal is to ride out the recession.

[wrkalot]

We have see a downturn in the last couple of weeks, in orders and traffic. This is traditionally a slow time for us and the recession has helped drive it down even further.

[dickbaker]

I don't do a lot of volume in sales, but I only need an average of four sales a day to hit my short term goals.

I've been getting people to get to the cart page, but there's more abandonments lately. It could be weather or the economy. Don't know.

[apauto]

Sales have been picking up here ever since the end of Feb.

Indeed many of the orders have been small, but the quantity of orders made up for it.

I even took off free shipping, and it hasn't affected orders much, however, much more profit.

[HRoth]

I have noticed lately that when the market goes down, my sales go down, and when it goes up, my sales go up. Previously I saw no connection. I think people who own no stocks are paying attention to the market now and it's affecting their buying.

[HugeNerd]

My sales have been nearly impossible to trend lately. They used to follow a rather predictable pattern:
Increase in sales Sun. - Wed. and then lower volume Thurs. through Sat., but increased traffic. I always attributed this trend to homeowners (my target demographic) as doing their research at the end of the week and on the weekend, and then placing orders at work during the start of the week, knowing they would have the widgets by the end of the week when they be able to start some home improvement projects.

Now, however, I'll be dead in the water on Sunday and Monday of one week and have a HUGE spike on Friday, which is typically my worst day for sales. The following week will see the exact opposite occur. I haven't had the time or wherewithal to try to match the trends up to the news, though! However, I could see stock indecies being a good indicator...yesterday was amazing for sales and the market rallied! Another thing to note: The first two weeks of March have been better than any other two week period so far this year.

The only trend which has still held true is that the beginning of the month, for the past three months, has been stronger than the end of the month. I figure this most likely matches customers' credit card statement periods: Pay the bill for February at the end of the month and then create new charges at the beginning of March, when you'll have the most time between charge and new statement.