Internet Sales Sept 2012

[feemish]

How is everyones sales standing up at the moment.
We have noticed quite a sharp drop in August and September.
Search engine positions and visitoer numbers are pretty much the same, but sales have dropped.
In town a few shops are closing down.. and I've read that online shops are suffering as well.
How is it for other actinickers?

[chris ashdown]

we had significant drop ourselves, quite knocked my confidence after years of growth

[feemish]

Yes, its been surprising. I'm trying to find out if many more online sellers have had a fall off in sales over the last few months, because it would be nice to know its not just me ! If this is a national trend across the board, then I wont feel too bad. I think that everyone is cash strapped now.. has the downturn finally hitting onlibe sales as well as high street sales?

[Fairyglass]

Retail sales were down significantly in August, and continue to be down in September. I'd hoped to pin the blame on the Olympics, but sadly I can't! Strangely, our wholesale business is flourishing, with several new enquiries daily via the website.
I've not done much work on our sites for several months, as we're away a lot in the summer, so I'm hoping that some fresh content will perk things up a bit.
Fingers crossed for Christmas....

[saucysal]

We are the same

Our sales (all online) have been down June, July, August, September, lower than for about seven years. We had hoped that things would pick up with children back at school, but no.

Sarah

[feemish]

Our sales have been growing for years, but this summer saw a stall and now a drop. While its sad to hear that other peoples sales are also down, its also good to know its not just us. At least we're all in the same boat together. I think that everyone is cash strapped, I dont think its just the Olympics as the media is saying.. I suppose we have to hold fast and stay afloat.

[Paul Bulpit]

Same here...

I'm blaming the VAT hike plus over the last twelve months we've seen 25%-30% increases in products that are imported from China.

I find it noticeable that our suppliers are all trying to sell more to us, which we don't want as we haven't sold the last lot yet. Lots of promotions, pallet deals and so on, they're all trying to get stock off their premises and into ours. And of course our competitors are also after what little business there is to be had.

Plus, now getting bombarded by marketing emails from online firms that I have ordered from in the past - Land's End, Ebuyer, printer inks, office stationery, etc., clearly all trying to drum up sales.

[completerookie]

I sometimes blame the suppliers.
in the past, there was "professional sellers" and joe-public sellers, now, in order to keep the suppliers turnover up, they have resorted to supplying any old tom dick and harry with the same goods that we've spent years getting to know, and T,D&H just seem to be trying to drive the price down in an ever increasing dive.

There are times when we price match, but we've started to say "if you can better our price (and backup) then by all means, buy from them.

having said all that, I have noticed a decline in sales over the last 3-4 months, certainly down on previous years and its just making us think more and TRY to get the right strategy for the future months.

kev

[PatchworkRabbit]

Ironically, August was our best month ever, but September was down and now we've gone 5 days straight without a sale. I was even convinced the website was down!

Time for a spooky halloween sale, methinks...

[mje]

We are primarily a High St retail shop of 20 years + standing with an online presence too.

For the shop "footfall" has been decreasing for a good while now - from an average of 125 transactions per day averaged across six days at it's peak 2008 - down to 84 per day for the year to date.

We get deliveries from our various wholesalers by large lorry and I always have a look in the back....most of the lorries carry 16 - 18 pallets and they used to be a tight fit to the roof, but over the last couple of years they still carry the same number of pallets, but they are generally significantly smaller orders.

I have found also that wholesalers we have simply "sent a FAX to order, or now an email" for 18 years are suddenly calling us for an order......... several of the manufacturers are now pulling out of wholesalers and going "direct" also as everyone struggles to extract a decent margin.

The High Street is in a mess from which it may, or may not recover, we ironically are competing with online re-sellers who often (not always) work from home, use "drop shipping" and of course have none of the daily overheads I do when I turn the sign around to "OPEN"

Slightly off subject but there are manufacturers in the aquatics industry that are now protecting their products from "cheap reselling" out of garden sheds and on third party website using copyright and trade mark law, it costs them allot of money, but by doing this and setting up an approved retailer network and offering very good support, everyone involved is benefiting.

Our own online shop is not a very serious affair, but we can go a few days with out an order then get ten in an evening.......

Overall business is poor for most it would transpire, everyone has less money and everything costs more.

Directions to Beachy Head on Google........................

[MariaV]

Glad it's not just me then. This time of year is normally our upturn towards Xmas. Visitor numbers are down on last year but sales this week feel like they have just fallen off a vertical cliff.

I'm wondering if Google's product ad listings are part of the problem... their sponsored ads and ad listings now take up almost all of the space above the fold line. And now that visitors can see a list of products to choose from I wonder if that's sucking people in. I'm trying to get our own listings ads up but struggling a bit as our products/ads have been disapproved at the moment with no explanation email as to why.

One of our sites is showing 400-500 visits a day, yet we're barely getting a handful of orders.

I guess I should double check how competitive we are. It seems people will switch for the sake of a penny these days, or so it seems.

Makes me wonder if googles new product ad listings will only drive prices even lower, with only one winner. I think the days of organic search may be over for sellers. Either pay to display, or don't bother.

[completerookie]

we use to use google ads, but found the majority of the clicks were from these stupid "mini search sites" and no matter what we did, we couldn't get google to agree they were not real people, so we simply stopped totally using googles ppc
now we only have natural listings, and seem to be quite high on a lot of oour products, we have'nt found any real drop in turnover this month, but just that like everyone else, august was a poor month.
this month, can't keep up with the orders and phone calls.
having said that, wer'e finding more people phoning for info "because their preferred supplier is poor at giving info", its still quite a task to twist them to us "as a company that will look after you" but all you can do is try to persuade them