Forum Moderators: buckworks
I was wondering if you knew where I could find information about forecasting sales on e-commerce sites. Specifically I’d like to know if there’s any sort of “recipe” people use in estimating the % of hits to a site that translate into sales, and the number of hits a site listed in international search engines might be expected to get per day, month, etc.
i don't know of any formula for forecasting sales levels for new sites, there are too many factors involved. top ranking brings visitors but they won't buy from a poor site that's difficult to navigate. etc etc etc ... it's a bit easier with old sites with a trading history.
if you try searching with search terms that may be relevant to your product, you'll get some clue as to how popular that type of product is. try the overture keyword suggestion tool at [overture.com...] to find out how many searches were performed on those search terms last month. note that this only covers overture (and partners?) and doesn't cover google etc. this is only very basic and there are plenty of other things you could do, but nothing that will really forecast sales levels.
personally i'd just get on and sell the products rather than try to forecast anything, but that's just me. i'll try selling ice to eskimos, cigars to cubans, oil to saudi arabia ........
