How bad are your sales?

[mdean]

My site is doing so poorly, I had to put a test order through to see if something was broke. 700 uniques today and not a single sale. Pretty much have had 500 per day and only about 1 sale every other day.

This is nuts!

Anybody else experiencing the same?

[derekwong28]

When a sudden catrostrophic drop in sales occur, the first thing I think about is technical e.g. a DOS attack on our payment processor. The second I would look into are our competitors i.e. have they suddenly dropped their prices.

Sales of two of our flagship product lines collapsed this year. One because of a doubling of supplier prices, the second because of a sudden onslaught of copycat models at very low prices. Luckily, we managed to diversify into other products just in time.

So far for the first 9 months this year, our sales have been completely steady at 20 orders a day with almost no month to month variation. This in spite of the Olympics and a very eratic September. However, the nature of our business has changed completely since January, so much that we can no longer identify any best-selling products. Morover, our website is now much faster loading and our images and copy much better.

Our sales are very stable so far this month as well, but it could be due to the fact that we have now got a full-time web designer to go through and improve our site continuously. I suppose having had a rock-solid 9 months is not really great news because it means we haven't been expanding. But at least we averted what could have easily been a complete rout.

[Kristin]

Frank,
I think your problem may be that you have way too much text. That is too much for people to read...gotta remember, most are lazy. It's true. Advertise the fact that it is $25. You have it in text off the right hand side, put it up in the header or something flashier. Hope this helps. : )

[lgn1]

Im getting convinced that prices are not that big of a concern, as long as they are below retail. The low price copycat sites ussally fail. They are not making enough money to advertise, and thus get the volume, and they ussally disappear.

Most people don't have a clue, how to comparison shop, and if they find a site that have what they want at a fair price, they will buy.

Another thing I have learned, is that if you have a seasonal business, their is not much you can do to convince a person to buy, during the off season. The best thing is to spend your time, expanding content on your site, and increasing web traffic, as you will be to busy to do that once your busy season starts up again.

Another thing. Your prices are all over the board. You are selling items from $29.00 to $11,000.

You need to focus your market withing a certain price range, or break our your site into home hobiest, profesional and commercial.

[wingslevel]

Consumer site? Weak October sales?

B-a-s-e-b-a-l-l

[ratebeer]

Baseball! I was wondering what was up! Last week's sales for me were abysmal too. Bone dry. This week everything rolled in. After yesterday I could tell people were holding out. I don't rely on sales as much as advertising so it wasn't a biggee. People were still visiting but it was a bit alarming not to sell anything.

Lots of great advice in this thread too. WW, if you made this forum for Premium Members only, I think I'd buy into it. You're providing a forum for a lot of excellent advice and discussion -- that's value.

[lgn1]

I can't see how events like world series, elections, or olympics, will effect sales by very much.

A major event like 9/11, a start of a new war, yes for a week or so, but then things will return to normal.

Economic downturns should show a gradual down turn in sales. Economic downturns don't happen overnight, they take time.

[pdivi]

The reason stock investors hang on the consumer confidence indicator is because consumers, when not confident in their futures, stop buying. A lot of factors effect consumer confidence (employment, oil prices, political pessimism, etc.), not just major events, so the indicator fluctuates wildly. I just can't believe that ecommerce merchants are not subject to the basic macroeconomic indicators that big retailers follow so closely.

You can make roughly the same argument for other factors like the weather, big sporting events, etc.

It's harder to notice the small bumps attributable to factors beyond your control when you're not doing massive volume like Wal Mart or Home Depot, but the bumps are there nonetheless.

[RedWolf]

And when I was starting to get real worried about my sales, I got more orders in the last 24 hours than I did for the last two weeks, plus several requests for custom orders. It makes no sense, but I'm happy. Now if it will just keep up at this rate for the rest of the month.

[ratebeer]

I think we were hit particularly hard because our audience fits the sports demographic tightly.

[wingslevel]

I was talking to my buddy Yama who runs a great Sushi restaurant - says business has been terrible since the playoffs.

I live in NY and it seems like everybody has been walking around like zombies - staying up 'til all hours, then getting up for work.... course New Yorkers are going to be sleeping better now ;)

[Noximus]

The same here, the sales are decreased dramatically from the second part of september. The traffic is the same.

[eyeinthesky]

Looks like we need to seriously keep track of important sports events especially if we are targetting the men's market.

Any has a list with the dates involved (US & world events)?

It would be helpful to know what's coming and plan ahead, thanks :)

[mdean]

Ok, somebody tell me if the sports events just ended b/c my sales just went back to normal. I also made a small change over the weekend which may have made a difference....hmmmmm.

[sabai]

since the 23rd, I'm back to nornmal too

[bekyed]

Come on guys.

Its sales.

I have been in the game for 16 years - ups, downs, doesn't matter what industry you are in - there are good and bad times, times when we feel like giving up and times when our business is the best thing since sliced bread.

I can always tell when our sales are slow, it happens the same time every year, it is the calm before the storm - the storm being florida - sorry only joking!

Bek.

[mdean]

Yes, but it's good to know if it's something you've changed on your site...world events...or whatever. Some of us are not as well established and a bad month or two could put us under.

[Import Export]

These questions are soo broad. How can you answer? This will depend on your market, competition, industry news, advertising changes, serps changes, and a host of others. For instance, what if 1 of your competitors (one where users usually passed through before they got to you) ran a special promotion or something really unobvious. What if your industry is having bad publicity for some reason and your potential customers are being hit with that before your site now. What if you markets seasonal and you just didn't know it? Maybe your providing something supplimental to another product or service and those were altered in a way that affected your sales? What if you dropped for really targeted serps and picked up an equal amount of new untargeted traffic from similar serps changes? Pretty much, there is no end.

If it's affecting enough people to comment on it I would think it would have to be some sort of global variable. Something like, election information bombardment disrupting standard commerce etc. In this case it might be good to discuss, since X happened how have your sales looked? Maybe I just don't know but I think this inadvertantly helped someone out. Later..

[lgn1]

I think the competition thing is overrated. Its not like retail, where the competition opens across the street and takes half your sales. It more like the competition is opening across town or in another city.

Sure over time, if the number of competitors increase, if will impact sales.

Sure Bozo's Discount Widget warehouse may creep ahead of you in Google for a particular keyword, but they will be nowhere to be found for a differnt keyword or in another search engine.

That's the great thing about the web, their is a good buffer from the competition

[pdivi]

I've always thought competition was more of a risk on the web that in the brick & mortar world. Bozo can download his free version of OS commerce, integrate it with his free PayPal account, sign-up with a drop shipper, and launch Bozo's Discount Widget Warehouse in a week for a total investment of...well...nothing. Then again, the web also allows incumbents to shift their businesses overnight in response to competition, making their position a little more defensible. Hmmm.

[lgn1]

Ussally a dropshipper is a middleman between a distributer, and retailer. If your business has been around for a while and you have a good sales record, you can deal directly with a large distributer at good discounts or directly with the manufactuer (and convince them to drop ship). Bozo's discount widget wareshouse will need to prove itself first, and will ussally go out of business trying. I have been at it for 6 years and have seen plenty come and go. If you sell at a large discount, you have no money for advertising, and thus low volumne.

[Import Export]

This is all to broad talk no matter how you look at it. It's impossible to figure this out because it is different for every scenario. Don't look at the specifics, just take the post for the real meaning.

[sabai]

Sure there's ups and downs in sales, but it's good to know why. Of course we have bad runs and good runs, but it's not like it's 100% random. For example, I can usually guess when it's a holiday weekend in the US from the sales dip even though I'm right across the pond.

[hfwd]

How about weekday to weekend variations?

Before, we saw a huge drop in orders during weekends. Now, it's still lower than weekdays, but not too bad.

[Essex_boy]

Oddly enough Mondays were always teh best days when I sold toys. Suspect they took teh weekend to look about then came back.

[Raymond]

Our conversion is always lower near the middle of the month, and at the end of the month. We have been noticing this behaviour for the last 6 months. Our guess is people have no money during those periods (before paychecks).

[hfwd]

End of the month is usually bad for us too - I think more and more people are living paycheck to paycheck. It's sad.

[derekwong28]

It is the same here with end of month sales.

On the same note, this is why I think there is a slight but real downturn in consumer spending for discretionary purchases

If people are paying more for petrol, heating or other oil related products, it would only mean that they have less to spend for discretionary items i.e. items which are not essential for daily living which the majority of us sell.

[mansterfred]

We are down about 17% for the month.

Sports cannot be the issue as they occur every year.

Election.. Maybe a factor.

Economy slowing.. A factor.

The bigger problem is that the growth of Internet sales has slowed. I think we will start to see a thinning of the real players. Many sites are capital intensive with little sales to show for the work. Even if it is just human capital, it has to have a payoff.

[pdivi]

<<The bigger problem is that the growth of Internet sales has slowed. I think we will start to see a thinning of the real players.>>

Scary.

Has growth actually slowed, or has it only slowed relative to the number of businesses? [That's not a rhetorical question -- I really don't know the answer]. Over the past 12 months or so, I've seen probably 20 or 30 new entrants in one of my niches, and it has definitely cut into profits. Maybe we're feeling the start of the shakeout.

[mansterfred]

The reports are out there. Growth has slowed and come in line with the regular brick stores. Actually had a down quarter in eccomerce 5-6 periods back.