The Yahoo poll on how often ecomm sites are updated

Why do so few ecommerce sites update?

[Wlauzon]

Yahoo stores is running a poll on how often people update their sites. Here are the current results:

Every day.
2.8% 13 votes
Once a week.
7.2% 33 votes
Once a month.
5.4% 25 votes
We rarely update our site.
84.6% 389 votes

Now, I could be wrong - but it seems like about 84.6% also whine about poor traffic and sales...

[sun818]

It may not be necessary to update the site if you create your own products or carry an exclusive set of products from a manufacturer. A Yahoo! Store would be a pain to use if you have frequently revolving product with no automation tool to manage inventory.

[Wlauzon]

Maybe we are in the wrong line of goods, but I cannot imagine any store that carries more than a few dozen items not having product changes fairly often.

But, then I guess that is why some of our competitors are still showing products that were discontinued by the manufacturer over a year ago.

[sun818]

That might just be laziness on the seller's part. I had considered removing out of stock products from the web store, but I found the potential for upsell is there. I know based on tracking incoming referral URL, customers will land on an out of stock page, but they will browse the store and purchase a similar product.

[akmac]

Whew. I'm not the only one... =)

[hfwd]

Why fix something that's not broke? I hate messing with my shopping cart, since a teeny tiny mistake in code can crash it...

[Wlauzon]

As far as upsell goes, we found out that we had more problems leaving old items up. But, different industry, different products.

One thing I do know for sure though is that we get a LOT of "bounced" business from outdated websites. Almost every week I see comments or get email about how they like us because they don't have to wade through non-available products.

[lgn1]

Our distributer releases a new catalog once a year, so except for discontinued products, we update our site about once a year, for our established websites.

We spend the rest of the year on developing new websites.

[Wlauzon]

Your products may not change that often. Ours can change weekly, or even daily if we pick up a new line of products.

We buy from about 30+ vendors, so there is always a couple changing prices, or product, or something.

[jsinger]

We find a new mistake on our site nearly every day. :)

[TallTroll]

A lot of ecomm store owners don't realise that they can update their site, or are tied into expensive maintenance contarcts, where they pay for updates.

A lot of stores are just online extensions of a "real" business, and are regarded as far less important by their owners

[Wlauzon]

A lot of ecomm store owners don't realise that they can update their site, or are tied into expensive maintenance contarcts, where they pay for updates.

Lucky for us, that is what a lot of our competitors are into. I think a lot of them go out and hire someone to do a makeover, but no clue as to how to update it, and they are not willing to pay for an upkeep contract.

So As I cruise around checking, their sites look worse and worse every month, and our sales keep going up. When you go to a site and it says that some item is on sale, and it was discontinued by the manufacturer two years ago, they have a problem.

[jsinger]

Heck, 90% of sites show old copyright dates. I'd never buy from a site that said "copyright 2001." For one thing, you might go thru the whole excruciating cart process only to find the company is long out of business.

[EstoreSeeker]

I think most of the changes you have to make in your product availability largely depend upon which kind of products/service you are offering. It is true that customers see a product/item, then like it and later on get bad impression when they find out that its out of stock (given in a corner)…! On the other hand..customers do get to see the full range of the products. And its not so always that manufacturer isn’t making those products anymore…reason may be unavailability at that point of time. Sometimes it also shows to an extent, the demand or liking for that product/item. And in my opinion, it is necessary to get rid of the excess (useless/time-consuming) information but sometimes it is also wastage of time and effort if you give more than needed stress on just one aspect of the business. There are always some other concerns which are as significant as this. But then, everybody has his or her own opinion.

~ “A satisfied-customer is the most effective promotion media” ~

[lovethecoast]

Our sites are updated consistantly (at least once a day, 95%+ pages change). All content is of course database driven, but we still go the extra mile and manually handle front page advertisements, etc that will be of use to visitors.