Sales Figures

Dramatic fall...

[StanTheMan]

Hi all

Has anybody else been getting really terrible sales figures over the last couple of weeks? Is this time of year typical for bad sales levels due to the holidays season and the like?

Nothing particularly drastic has changed with my site and I am pulling my hair out!

Thanks in advance

[Essex_boy]

Yep vistor numbers down by around 40 % sales so far down 65% nothing changed on the site.

Bit odd

[StanTheMan]

Guess you are UK based essex_boy? Do you reckon its something to do with holidays or is traffic all down across all search engines? and not just Google.

[bekyed]

Yes on some of our sites in the uk, things are a little slow but this is the calm before the storm stop pulling your hair out, anyone in sales has ups and downs especially on the internet.
You are not on your own, Im sure next month you will be saying you cant cope with the sales :)

Bek.

[cayenne]

We are B2B and our online sales have ground to a halt the last week. Not sure why - we have changed nothing.

[andy_boyd]

B2C and sales on my 3 month old food related site have dropped off over the last few days after being strong. On another B2C gift site sales have remained strong and are now starting to ramp up as we approach Christmas.

[Essex_boy]

Stan th eMan - Yeah im uk based! Good guess.

Not sure about it being country related appears to be across the globe.

I suppose we are at the end of teh summer and not yet in teh Xmas buying mood. However I didnt notice this last year. Hmmmm

[curlykarl]

Yeah im uk based! Good guess

Smiling...........:)

Karl

[Zigire]

Our sales figures dropped off (halved) between Monday and Wednesday this week.

Yesterday saw a 35% increase in traffic and if it carries on the way it's going today it'll be a 70% increase in comparison to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays average.

Orders yesterday were up by 100% (again.. compared to Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday average)

Strange little blip but hopefully we're back on track!

[CromeYellow]

What a reassuring thread to find. We're UK based and I've been wondering what the heck is happening too. Does seem strange though - we didn't get this last year either.

[bekyed]

Yes but last year we had all the rain and people stayed in and yes - went on the internet, this year the sun kept everyone out in it including me.

Bek.

[grandpa]

September has been a historically bad month for sales (for this company), so this year I tried something new. I just got back to this company in late July, and first thing I did was spiff up the web pages and make some changes to improve our SE visibility. That doesn't sound like the issues that have been mentioned, however.

Then I dusted off the subscriber list from the web site, merged it with the list from our own database, and started e-mailing folks with some really nice incentives. It worked. This month has been the biggest month of the year.

I have to believe that the current socio-political-economic events in the world are cutting into a lot of folk's business. We don't have a brick-and-mortar place, but we do attend regional events and set up for the weekend. Those event just don't generate the cash they once did (pre-2001).

[GarryBoyd]

The drought broke...
After getting used to an order or 2 a day, September went dry. I've tweaked everything, and finally 3 good orders came thru today. Lets hope it keeps up!

[andy_boyd]

Yep, things seem to be picking up here again. Things went really quiet last week with only a couple of sales, now we seem to be back up to at least 1 order per day or more. September always has been a poor month for us anyway, so we were almost expecting it.

I suppose a quiet time like that is quite good for development, you get more time for SEO and better product pages, rather than spending the most of your time boxing stuff up.

GarryBoyd - that's a good second name you have there! :-)

[GarryBoyd]

Yep, looks like this thread is strictly for the boyds. :)

As most of my offline business is wholesale, I was quite enjoying the instant cashflow from the online sales. Makes gtting thru to the 20th a lot easier!

[Andymac]

I agree with most of whats been said here - September quiet, gradually picking up, weather too pleasant for indoor surfing etc. But,,, my traffic has been average (mostly Adwords driven) but my conversion rate is way down (nothing changed on site). I am UK based selling (or used to sell) cufflinks.

Any wise pearls? Thanks