Guest Posted March 13, 2006 Posted March 13, 2006 i've been seeing a lot of posts lately asking eachother how long it took you to get your sales or how many orders you get a day.. but the biggest underlying factor of how many orders 1 shop gets vs the others is: how much competition do you have for your particular field or target audience? if your shop is over a year or two old.. how much competition do you have today vs when you first launced; has a spike in competitors (if any) damaged your sales?
GraphicsGuy Posted March 13, 2006 Posted March 13, 2006 i've been seeing a lot of posts lately asking eachother how long it took you to get your sales or how many orders you get a day.. but the biggest underlying factor of how many orders 1 shop gets vs the others is: how much competition do you have for your particular field or target audience? if your shop is over a year or two old.. how much competition do you have today vs when you first launced; has a spike in competitors (if any) damaged your sales? This is a very good point for discussion. Our niche is a very rapidly growing one. In the years that we have been in it, I would say the number of store operators has gone up ten fold. But through most of this time our sales grew steadily and strongly. The key in general has always been providing high quality products and service. Most of our customers became repeat customers and it built a strong base. One thing that can be a temporary category killer is when a new player enters the market trying to make a big splash by selling at a break even or loss to get started. Right now, there is such a new player in our niche and it is dramatically impacting the flow of new customers. But this too will pass. Running specials are an important part of stimulting sales, but sooner or later a business has to make money or the point is moot. Rule #1: Without exception, backup your database and files before making any changes to your files or database. Rule #2: Make sure there are no exceptions to Rule #1.
Guest Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 i have to agree on every point. although my sales (deals) never seem to fly off as expected. some get response, but for the most part; very little. recently i've tried a coupon campgain (10% off just for receiving the newsletter) and it seemed to have fallen upon deaf ears. one thing i have noticed: the higher i mark my products, the more demand there seems to be. it seems if i mark my prices at the price i want (lower, to remai competitive), people think that they're of lesser value or something. (i sell clothing like shirts and whatnot) but even then, i get the occasional idiot trying to get a discounted rate because they seen the same product on some other guy's site for cheaper (i don't offer price-matching at present) this past week i have noticed a 50% decrease in sales... anyone else experiencing the same thing? i've checked my search rank.. all seems to be well in that department... then again, my target market is teens/young adults, so i'm going to hold out and say (hope) it's due to spring break. but even my overseas orders have dipped
jon_l Posted March 21, 2006 Posted March 21, 2006 I was the first with a decent ecommerce website in my market. There were a number of established shops with websites, but the ecommerce part was limited or non existant. Funnily enough, the same is still true. As a result of being the first with a decent website I built up quite a good level of business, which continues to grow. This is despite new shops opening up all the time. A lot of the new shops think the way to get business is with lower prices. I thought the same when I first started but have now learnt my lesson. I don't think people are that price conscious - most are happy paying a higher (but acceptable) price knowing they will get good service and that the website is safe and secure. Though this does depend on the market to some degree. I had a competitor start up about 6-9 months after I did. They came in with low prices, too low. I did the sums and their business model just wasn't viable. They are still going, but their prices are higher than mine now! Sales go up and go down, we have blips all the time. I find you just need to keep on doing what you are doing and that the sales will come back again. I've been in retail for some time now and there is no real pattern to sales except for Christmas. Jon.
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