Has Hurricane Katrina Affected Your Sales?

Anyone else notice a decrease in traffic/sales

[J_Mac]

I have noticed a 17% decrease in traffic and about a 40%-50% decrease in sales for this past week when compared to the last 20 weeks. Anyone else notice lost sales since the hurricane?

I am wandering if I am the only one or if this is going around.

[lovethecoast]

It's going around. People are taking their spending money and putting it to help victoms of Katrina.

They'll be back :)

S

[DryFire]

Donate a percentage of your sales the relief effort and you will both greatly increase your sales from what they have been, as well as be able to help relieve the suffering that people are going through. Plus, you’ll get a nice tax write off.

[macker123]

I was wondering the same thing. Starting wednesday I noticed a 10% decrease in traffic and a 30% decrease in sales.

Wednesday afternoon after a ton of testing and having many "eyes" look over it we re-launched a new more streamlined checkout process that I am 100% positive "should have" increased sales. I have tested and tested and still cannot find anything that would have cost us sales, only helped them.

It is next to impossible trying to figure out which one of these factors affected our sales, but I am strongly leaning towards Katrina.

[jsinger]

Nah, the lull is mostly about the Labor Day weekend (in the U.S.). Traffic and sales ALWAYS drop for a few days before-- and especially on-- any holiday.
---
A few of our competitors in the New Orleans area are shut down, btw.

[philbish]

I noticed about 40% dropoff in sales starting the day before Katrina hit. I imagine it is from people worried about rising gas prices, and uncertainty of the economy.

[J_Mac]

jsinger,
I don't know that Labor Day has much to do with it. For the same week preceeding Labor Day last year my sales were 50% more than they are for the same period this year. I think it is definitely Katrina.

DryFire,
Thanks for the donation advice. I went a step further and placed a link to the Red Cross donation page on my homepage to help relief efforts. Hope this helps them.

[jsinger]

Natural disasters often help business once the dust (or water) settles. Depends on the type of business, of course. That effect has been noted many times. This one may be a bit different especially around the Gulf. It's not like New Orleans is coming back any time soon.

It is an axiom of web commerce that holidays are slow. Virtually no exceptions. Christmas is our lowest traffic day of the year.

I'm more concerned with getting stuff from our suppliers. One is in the area. Some to the north import thru the port of New Orleans from Central America. Materials from Mexico or the West Coast ports often are shipped to warehouses in the East on trucks that pass thru Louisiana/Mississippi.