How Are Your Ecommerce Sales Holding Up?

Let's take the patient's temperature

[wifi on the fly]

Anyone else seeing slow sales in ecommerce over the last week or so?

[stevenmusumeche]

I'm here in the USA and sales are up nearly 850% over last year. Granted, we have grown our business a lot in the last year, but it looks like this holiday season will be a good one. Conversion is right around the same as it was last year, but traffic is way up. We do a lot (200K+) of PPC advertising.

[bekyed]

Do you want to some salt to rub into our wounds as well USA
Our business here is terrible.

Bek.

[jsinger]

stevenmusumeche

How dare you report strong sales and make some people in England feel bad. We don't want to hear from highly successful people here.

[icedout]

stevenmusumeche
How dare you report strong sales and make some people in England feel bad. We don't want to hear from highly successful people here.

Thank you for saying what I wanted to say. The original post requested people to report on their sales, I was not aware that you were only allowed to comment if your sales were weak.

Alex

[akmac]

My sales to the UK (From the US) are up a bit. I'm also noticing drastically increased traffic from google.co.uk. Related? Possibly.

The product is one that is not generally available in the UK and has always sold better to our friends across the pond than it has to our US folks. but, the increase is certainly unusual.

Are you (UK) guys noticing decreased google traffic? Either google.com OR google.co.uk?

(not trying to start flame war-I don''t want to see geo-centric commerce bias either)

[HRoth]

I am in the US. So far this day seems pretty ordinary in terms of sales. Only weird things are that this morning a customer said she got a "server not found" when trying to send her cc to authorizenet, and I am not getting the authorization emails from authorizenet. I emailed them, but of course, that is just like throwing your question down a well.

[jecasc]

Sales are a little weird for me in the last few weeks. Usually sales used to be quite steady with a constant stream of orders going in. However in the last few weeks it's like a roller coaster.

Extremly quiet for several days without any apparent reason. Then going up again. Then down and after a few days up again.

In between it was so quit that I was spending half of my working day checking if something was broke in the shopping system, or ads down or something.

It's getting on my nerves...

[minnapple]

One cart that a few of my customers use, all but crashed at 10:00 cst today, because of load issues. It took them a few hours to get it back to normal.

Sales have been average, but traffic has been high.
Hoping some of the users that experienced check out problems will come back and convert to buyers.

You would think all these providers would build in extra capacity during this season instead of testing their capacity live.

Penny wise dollar foolish. I should be able to make a few site mods, charge 4x more for the same service to my clients, and we will all be ahead, considering the loss of sales.

Another project. : )

[wifi on the fly]

Today (Cyber Monday) has been our best day yet. Not what I was expecting for the famed Cyber Monday but definately a huge increase. So far looking good.

Bek - nobody is rubbing anyones nose in anything. Being able to see global economic changes is good for everyone. The UK traffic and sales will go up and maybe there is a lull.

Time will tell if the US sales hold up. Good luck to all corners of the globe.

[icedout]

I gotta say, we had a great morning, and then it really died down, all of a sudden another spike in sales came in around 4 to 5 pm pacific time..

It seems to really be going in spikes intead of a consistent stream, but I guess it's the overall sales that matter.

Got my fingers crossed that this will be a good season for us :)

[blaze]

I'm here in the USA and sales are up nearly 850% over last year. Granted, we have grown our business a lot in the last year, but it looks like this holiday season will be a good one. Conversion is right around the same as it was last year, but traffic is way up. We do a lot (200K+) of PPC advertising.

Good to hear that ecommerce is doing well. Gives us all something to shoot for.

[oldpro]

BOOM...we got bombed with orders today after a slow weekend. There might be something to this "Cyber Monday" theory.

[Steelbank]

We saw a dramatic increase in sales, while traffic stayed the same.

Anyone else see the same or has traffic increased?

[dpak]

Cyber Monday has not taken off for us.We are in to Indian garments and our customer base is in US & UK.
Waiting for something to happen today after terrible last two weeks.

[Web Footed Newbie]

Darn, someone already snatched up cybermonday.com as a domain name!
Cyber Monday was our best day ever on the net in over 9 years, with a 40% increase over last year! Our business is seasonal. Our PPC spend is up by 22% over last year, as many competitors have cranked up their spend as well. Looks to be a great holiday season! Good luck everyone!
Ho Ho Ho,
WFN

[Miop]

I was going to suggest that we vote for a public holiday at this time of year in the UK, but every time we have a public holiday, our sales seem to die! (everybody spending money on take-away food and days out?!)

[RailMan]

i'm still in the uk and still seeing sales rising - yesterday was very big - today looks like being as big, if not bigger

[sja65]

I've been selling online since 1996, and if sales hold true to form, the best day for orders should be either December 14 or 19. It is usually the Monday of the last full week before Christmas, but it may fall back to the middle of the week before so customers can allow more lead time.

[Kevin French]

Sorry to join this thread so late, but I wanted to wait for the weekend to pass before I contributed.

My company has been in business for 21 years (9 on the web) and this weekend (Fri - Mon) was the best in the coimpany's history. Not just as a whole, but each day was a record and the succeeding day broke the previous day's record....it was absolutely amazing. As a matter of fact, our Cyber Monday results were just included in today's IR newsletter.

[blaze]

Good to hear Kevin.. start the whisper campaign for christmas bonuses, now!

[uksports]

In the UK, yesterday saw a new record for traffic on the site but not sales regretably - the UK press seems to think that we will have a record December as shoppers have held back waiting for the shops to cut prices, but it has to happen soon!

[mayor]

-Yawn-

[ddesign]

Well I think I can top almost all of you :(

We haven't made ONE web site sale in 2 years, ever since our site went up.

I get compliments on the web site all the time. It has very good traffic, and recently I posted a contest and so far have received 1,200 entries! Not one sale, though I have received many compliments on the site and our products. Over a 100 people have bookmarked the site.

It gets tough to pay for a site, overhead and supplies when it isn't making any money. I wish I knew why.

[nipear]

With 7 years of ecom under my belt, cyber monday has ALWAYS been the start to the christmas rush. Of course if you don't sell stuff that isn't gift material it's not the same.

This year has started out very, very well for my current company. And like the previous poster Dec. 19th or 20th or even 21st will likly be our biggest day. But that is mostly due to our 3 day shipping. And of course it all depends on your marketing. It's amazing what a 100,000 emails on the 20th to your past customers will do for sales....

[icedout]

hey ddesign,
how do you track how many people bookmark your site? Thanks!

Alex

[ddesign]

Hi icedout,

It's a feature included in the hosting package that I offer.

If you are interested in more info on reselling or on my hosting ppackages for yourself, just message me. No big deal if you aren't :) Just thought I'd offer.

Take care!

[ddesign]

i.e., one of the many features included in my web site traffic stats package.

[jsinger]

We haven't made ONE web site sale in 2 years, ever since our site went up.

Tell us more about your site. What do you sell? Your situation is fascinating to me.

I can't imagine any item that wouldn't get a rew orders from Nigeria. LOL

[ddesign]

What don't I sell?! :] It's a home furnishing, decor, accents, gifts and collectibles site so there's virtually something for everybody.

[badass101]

Maybe that's your problem - people like to visit for a focused product purchase, and seeing all sorts of stuff may put them off.

'Jack of all trades, master of none'