Sales since war?

[kjs50]

Wondering how other retailers are holding up in sales. We sell wedding related merchandise and have experienced dramatically lower sales. Can't attribute it to anything specific so wondering if the war is having an impact.

How are others doing?

[sun818]

Yeah, sales are pathetic right now. I know I've been watching more TV myself.

[vibgyor79]

Niche product. No perceptible slowdown in sales since the start of the war. Sales are actually better this month.

[Crazy_Fool]

i did some brief analysis this morning and was going to start a thread about this ..... but then i noticed something else .....

a quick look at 40 e-commerce sites i look after (all uk based) shows total sales for these 40 sites are 13% below normal. the drop happened on sunday 16th / monday 17th, not the day the war started (weds? thurs?)

before monday 17th, the sun was shining but we had cold winds .... from about monday 17th, the winds had eased off ... it's been getting warmer and warmer ..... i guess people are going out and catching some rays while they can .... sunshine in the uk is very unpredictable ....

this was only brief analysis so not looked at sales levels on each site etc and not looked at every e-commerce site i look after ......

my own (main) site has been almost dead since thursday ....

[jsinger]

Traffic on our commerce site is off just a bit, but sales are much weaker for the past few weeks. Our conversion percentage from affiliates is down.

Heard on TV last night that many servers are reporting attacks from Moslem sources. Phone-in customers aren't saying that they're having problems buying from us online, though. That doesn't seem to be the problem.

---
I notice that keyword bids related to our products have risen dramatically on Overture lately. My guess is our competitors are trying to maintain sales levels amid the downturn.

By contrast, sales in January were wonderful and keyword bids dropped, perhaps because many of our competitors had more business than they could handle.

[andy_boyd]

We have experienced a downturn in sales over the last month, they then have gotten better over the last few days. Overall traffic has gone down, but we are still receiving orders. I thought that as soon as this war started our sales would be decimated, but it seems to be steady enough. On the other hand, another of my sites has hit a brick wall, just totally dead. And sales were growing right up to the war started, then they just vanished. We are totally geared up for the American market, if that helps your analysis any. Later.

[gsx]

My line of business seems to be unaffected by anything. At Christmas, it dies off on the 25th,26th and Jan 1st, but other than that sales are constant.

Since the war started, sales decreased quite a bit, but are quickly pulling their way back up to near where they were. The shock of war has worn off, people are going back to their normal lives (at least in the UK, in general).

[eljefe3]

Sales on Monday were great, and the weekend was also better than most weekends.

[gibbon]

us too eljefe3, not bad here at all!

[bobmark]

I have experienced about a 25% drop in traffic - consistent with that reported by several wemasters on another thread - to my Canadian travel site. Sales have actually stayed about constant from February but we had expected an increase due to seasonal factors.
The drop in both traffic and reservations is primarily from the U.S. (the traffic to the degree I can estimate without doing an IP by IP trace, the reservations, measurable).
I'm not sure to what degree this is:
1) Americans not travelling anywhere right now including Canada
2) Americans angry at Canada's stand on Iraq
Presumably a combination of both.

[TomWaits]

We dropped big last Thur, Fri & Sat, recovered somewhat on Sunday, and came back and more on Mon. Today looks good too. So for us it was a 3 day drop.

[jsinger]

Just saw on the (U.S.) national news that retail sales dropped something like 10% during the first few days of the war on a year-to-year basis. This was on one of those bottom of the TV streamers during war coverage. No details given yet.

[wingslevel]

Overall my last week is down 25% from normal.

The last couple of days are a little better, though....

[cfx211]

We are following the seasonal pattern of the previous couple of years, and our rate of growth over last year has remained the same as before the conflict.

[gibbon]

from what i have read it is certain sectors that are really feeling the pinch from war.

Travel firms especially are being hit quite hard, indeed there was a high profile story in the uk this week!

It is the usual case in war, some sectors win (construction, defence contractors), others like travel lose. Overall net effect is often negligible.