Sales up or down in March?

[extremegolfer]

Im curious to see how sales are doing for people this month. It was really good for us up until last week. No change in site, our rankings our way up, but sales have tapered off.

[mm1220]

People worrying about their taxes (deadline coming up soon for the US) start noticing how much they've been spending and so cut down on non-essential purchases, maybe?

[derekwong28]

Most retail businesses follow a U shape pattern i.e. good at the beginning and the end of the year, but bad in between. This year, many can expect an extremely bad month because of the World cup. During the last World cup, it did seem that our business had collapsed.

[extremegolfer]

Interesting observation about the world cup.

[jake66]

world cup i think depends on your target crowd.

for me: my target crowd is teens or young adults: my sales are nearly 50-75% below average.. very frustrating/scary!

is anyone's hits down too? mine are; most definately!

[spica42]

I replied to the other topic but didn't get any response.

My site's transactions is also down since 2 weeks ago. For me it's very worrying because i use to close 6-8 deals a day. Now, I only close 1-2 for the past 2 weeks.

Traffic hasn't been down. I'm wondering what's wrong. (I'm selling toys)
Use to collect more than $100 per day. Now, only $20-$30. Quite demoralized. Anyone know's if this is normal?

[chodges84]

Mine have definately taken a dive this month. It was definately demorilising last Thursday when I only took 2 orders and then some one cancelled one of them.

Still, I'm relaunching the website mid april, with lots of new products and a nice new database backend, so it's given me plenty of time to get that up and running properly.

[spica42]

The thing is that my traffic has stayed the same but conversions have taken a nose dive!

[ScottG13]

Depends on your niche. B2B? B2C? Etc... We're B2B and things have ticked up each month this year. We're probably on a different cycle. Q4 is always our worst.

[G_Smitty]

March has been awesome for my site. My business is over 6 years old and is setting all time sales and traffic records. I have seen no changes in search engine rankings and should not be affected by the world cup.

[spica42]

What is B2B?

[extremegolfer]

spica, chodges, have you changed anything on your site that may have caused such a significant decline in sales? Do you have new competitors? Do you get orders via pay-per-click ads or natural results?

[spica42]

For me all natural results. No noticable competitors and I did make a few changes AFTER 2 weeks of low sales to try to improve sales again. But no to avil. It has been 2.5 weeks already. Sales down 60%.

[chodges84]

Do you have new competitors? Do you get orders via pay-per-click ads or natural results?

Most of my traffic is from Pay per click.

On the competitor front, there is one new guy who appears to be droppshipping with ridiculously low margins. SInce my main supplier offered dropshipping, I've seen a few new, obviously rushed and unprofessional looking, sites pop up, offer low prices and then disappear.

However this guy has put a lot of effort into the site, and is losing money on many products. He looks very Pro. It's a bit worrying, but I don't know how long they cn keep operating with such tiny margins.

Sales were very good yesterday and when I relaunch the site in a couple of weeks, there is goning to be a huge marketing push, so hopefully things will definately be on the turn around.

[ikkyu]

What is B2B?

Business to Business - as opposed to Business to Consumer.

March has been our biggest month yet, but in our sector here its normal for sales to be high in the first and beginning of the second quarter.

People are getting their tax refunds here in the states so hopefully they'll spend it in April!

[julius77]

So what has happened for you in April?

I was in the process of funding a 'jump' to a dedicated e-com site, from my ebay store revenues. I was on a steady 10% sales to listings ratio-not anymore!

March and April have been dire. Visitor volumes through the floor, sales down 80%.

I was so spooked at seeing '0 bids', that I got on to ebay to ask them if they have any kind of control over 'visibility' of my listings-strangely I had a small spurt of sales within 24hrs, then it dropped away again.

Does anyone know how ebay servers work? I have consistantly seen 'clusters' of sales from the same geographical area within defined time periods, over the 18 months I've been at it.

If all my listings are 'visible' to the whole world at all times, what are the odds on receiving two orders from the same town on the same rotation, let alone several?

[LostOne]

March and April 50% increases over last year same period thanks to this topic..

www.webmasterworld.com/forum22/4641-3-10.htm

[julius77]

>>March and April 50% increases over last year same period thanks to this topic..

Yeah, but is there anyway I can apply this to an ebay store? Such things are out of our control, aren't they?