Sales drop the last two weeks.

Is it only my site or is it general?

[MikeMike]

Usually my sales are pretty good after the holliday season and and it don't really fade out before May.
This year however, have been totally different than the previous 4 years. My sales have been very slow in 2003. I made some improvements on my website after Christmas, so now I am not sure if I have done something that keep my visitors from buying or if the e-sale has gone down in general. I still have the same amount of visitors as I had during the holliday season.

[jamsy]

I do SEO for over 15 ecommerce sites and have noticed the same on ALL.

Personally I think people overspent at XMAS and are waiting their next pay day just to pay that back.

Heres to feb ;)

[Shakil]

Mike,

Its all over in every business from what I can gather.

My analysis is that Xmas Credit Card statements have just landed, and shopping/spending is low down on peoples priority list.

We should be back to normal in 2-3 weeks.

Shak

(Glad its just not me)

[nipear]

Usually my sales are pretty good after the holliday season

Same here and this Jan. has been slow across ALL of our ecommece sites (6). In the past our Jan. sales have been just a little behind the Nov/Dec pace. Since Chirstmas our sales have slowed a lot more than we expected. But we did get a $30,000 order the other day which will make up for the slow month.

On a brighter note our page views and visitors are up across the board on our Information sites...

[Birdman]

Actually, the new year has been very good to the site I work on most. Traffic is great and sales have doubled(estimation).

I guess it all depends what market or sector you're in. Pending war coould also be a factor.

[DrCool]

The couple weeks right after Christmas were very strong for one of my sites but this week the sales have dropped way off. I am getting more requests for information but not as many people are buying.

[gibbon]

ditto for our ecom sites.

we are getting the hits but not the conversion, although this has improved over the last week or so but still way off budget for jan.

i dont like it when it is like this :(

fingers crossed for feb.

[lgn]

The first week of Janurary was dismal, the second below average, and things are getting back to normal now.

Could it be the weather. In the North-East, this winter has really sucked, compared to the last. But you think that if people are forced indoors, they would spend more time on the web, and thus buying.

I have also done some major website changes, that may have skewed the results.

[onlineleben]

Orders are quite stable on my affiliate site, but I see that people return stuff to the afiliate merchant. Usual return rate is 1%, but these 2 weeks of january i have seen 6%.

[nutsandbolts]

But we did get a $30,000 order the other day which will make up for the slow month.

Blimey Nipear, if you can tell me what you sell it will help...erm, my..erm... understanding of the situation! ;)

I have exactly £10.50p left in the bank...

[mansterfred]

We are running up about 40% month to date. But we had expected it to be much stronger as this is our second January online. Site traffic is very high, but we can not seem to convert the orders. We had a strong x-mas online and wholesale. Our brick and mortar retailers had dismal holiday sales, so our wholesale reorders this month are terrible.
I would say in general the economy and war jitters are turning off buying decisions.

Note: I would like to see more threads like this. It is nice to know what is going on in a real time environment. Perhaps a thread could be started at the beginning of each month, kinda like the google dance thread, but not as boring.:)

[gibbon]

Yes, more threads like this would be most useful.

Help allay some of the paranioa ecommerce can induce ;)

[Startrekk]

We have done testing, checking the competition, thinking of every possible explanation why has been so quiet over the last 10 days or so - this is much lower than last year. So, maybe it’s just the way things are worldwide - what a relief!

These bumps in sales do of course have to do with season etc. but there seems to be some kind of unexplainable global "consciousness" among consumers worldwide (spooky!) that affect all sales. To be able to predict this or at least be able to track this would be very useful.

Oh yes, we have the same amount of customers daily as over the last weeks, but they don't buy!

[edited by: Startrekk at 8:57 pm (utc) on Jan. 20, 2003]

[Shakil]

Well the weekend wasnt too bad, looks like a small increase compared to last weekend.

Who knows, things could be looking better.

Shak

[DrCool]

I also had a good weekend. It was about the same as last weekend. If they are all like that I will be happy.

[gibbon]

Not a bad day today.

Good point by a colleague. She suggested that people get paid toward the 20th of the month.

That is a reason we may have seen an uplift today - a higher bank balance in the country!

[jp29997]

Don't forget it's tax time for businesses in the US. If a lot of your spending comes from B2B or entrepreneurs, they might have been busy the last couple of weeks.

[nipear]

Just a follow up.

Sales have been better the last 4 days.

We are running up about 40% month to date. But we had expected it to be much stronger...

Are we a spoiled group or what? :) How many brick store owners would dance a jig and buy the bar a round if their sales were up just 40%? We're up around 50% on stores that were around last year. I expected 75% but things looked good over the weekend, and today is strong so who knows....

On similiar topic. I predict Amazon is going to have a bad 1st quarter.