Traffic up, visits to online store page up, no sales?

[dickbaker]

Over the last week traffic to my site has increased steadily as it does this time every year. Only a portion of my site is ecommerce, but visits to the online store page have doubled.

One of the product lines I carry requires that the customer click the Add to Cart button to see prices, so the number of cart page views is always high. Nevertheless, cart.asp page views are also up about 75%

Everything is up, but there's almost no sales. Two days with sales in the last five. I've checked to make sure everything works, and it does. I've launched some special sales, promoted the sales elsewhere, but...nothing.

At this time last year I was doing fantastic and, for the first two weeks of this month I was ahead of last year.

I don't get it.

[dpd1]

I've found that you can't really pay too much attention to yearly comparisons. For whatever strange reason... people seem to do things in herds, and they don't always do the same thing each year. Last year November was terrible for me. This year good. Last year August was good. This year terrible. Traffic can't be a bad thing. Maybe they're just waiting to pull the trigger. I wouldn't get too nervous... you still have the biggest shopping time coming up.

[lorax]

I don't think it's a nuts & bolts issue. I think it has more to do with the market space, time of year, and political climate (knowing a bit about your market from our past convos). This economy has bred more tire-kickers that are being a bit more anal about price comparisons.

[scottsonline]

Dick we seem to be seeing the same things. I think it's the economy.

[dickbaker]

Scottsonline, if this were the pattern for the last month or two, I'd say it was the economy. However, as I said, up until last week I was way ahead of last year. The economy didn't tank in a week. Also, I think the economy was worse at this time last year.

I'm now at 66% of last year. For political reasons 2008 was the best year ever. I did double the sales of last year, and three times what I've done so far this month.

I pay myself a year end bonus that I use in the following year to fund house repairs, pay taxes, buy a new(er) car, etc. Unless things change, I won't be able to buy a cup of coffee with that bonus.

[engine]

Savvy shoppers need to know the price to make comparisons. Why not eliminate the need to add to cart - give them the price there and then.

Acquiring the traffic is the most costly side of the business. Don't lose them on the comparisons exercise. Encourage them to place the order with you there and then. Give them a price guarantee. If you find it cheaper elsewhere within the next 7-days you'll refund the difference, plus a bit. Or whatever you want to offer (free gift, etc.). I know, that sounds tough, but, if you can get the order there and then, often folks won't be bothered with a small price difference and having to make the effort to claim it back.

[dickbaker]

Savvy shoppers need to know the price to make comparisons. Why not eliminate the need to add to cart - give them the price there and then.

Acquiring the traffic is the most costly side of the business. Don't lose them on the comparisons exercise. Encourage them to place the order with you there and then. Give them a price guarantee. If you find it cheaper elsewhere within the next 7-days you'll refund the difference, plus a bit. Or whatever you want to offer (free gift, etc.). I know, that sounds tough, but, if you can get the order there and then, often folks won't be bothered with a small price difference and having to make the effort to claim it back.

I'm not allowed to show my prices on a certain manufacturer's product line because the prices are below MAP. Even at that, if I said I'd refund the difference if the customer found a place cheaper, I'd be refunding a lot. There's places that charge so little that my profit on those $250 items would be $3 after all costs.

On everything else I have the price right up front, including shipping and all other costs. I make a big deal about it (although many customers still add items to the cart because they want to see what the total will be).

If it was the issue of having to add the MAP-enforced item to the cart, then I would have seen that for the last ten months. It's something else, but I don't know what.

[tootalldave]

Still waiting for the orders to come in, it use to be that we would get a pick up on the first Monday after Thanksgiving, but i expect them to start today after people quickly get feed up with the swarms of people, long lines and high retail sales tax.

[HRoth]

Could it be that there is something in your cart or on your server that is setting off a browser security warning?

[dickbaker]

Could it be that there is something in your cart or on your server that is setting off a browser security warning?

I subscribe to a site that lets users test their websites live on every browser and platform. I haven't seen any warnings that visitors wouldn't otherwise see on any other site.

Besides, as I said, business was good early this month.

[rjwmotor]

Same here dickbaker...sales strong all month...slowed to a crawl over the last few days