Zero sales, am I doing something wrong?

[bobbyhelmet]

Hello all,

I've been listing here for the last six months but have not managed a single sale as yet. I understand it can take time when starting out on a new platform but what I'm genuinely concerned about is the possibility I have made some kind of elementary error that is costing me sales or damaging my visibility.

I seem to be getting a reasonable amount of views and based on that I would have expected to have made at least a few sales in the run up to Christmas.

Would be very grateful if some of the eCRATER pros could have a quick look at my offerings and store and let me know if everything looks OK.

Many thanks, bobby.

[MoonwishesStore]

Bobby, it looks good to me other than the fact your business name doesn't seem to have anything to do with what you sell. The big question is, whaat have you been doing to promote your store? Here on ecrater, we are responsible for our own promoting and marketing. We supposedly get uploaded to Google Shopping, and I know it is being done on ecraters part, but what google is doing is a whole other story.

Google that we have no contract with, we aren't in business with, seems to think theat they are king of the internet and so make all sorts of 'rules' that sellers are supposed to follow if you want to be visible on google Shopping. Since they started making changes 3-4 years ago and this year especially started acting like a steam roller, I know my ecrater sales are way down. Currently my sales are down a half from my first year selling here and almost a 1/4 down from my best sell year here. It isn't that I have slaked off in promoting, as I have actually ramped that up!

So sales can be a combination of things and currently google is a big gorilla on all our backs. I didn't look at your TOS or anything but you actual listing is very informative, good pictures, good title, etc. Do you have a blog that you can feature your pieces on?

[bobbyhelmet]

Thank you for your time and quick reply.

I agree with you about the name, unfortunately I've used it for a decade now and elsewhere I fear I would loose repeat customers if I changed it.

As far as Google shopping goes my results are OK, not great but OK. My titles and descriptions have been tweaked as best I can for SEO and still be readable. I sell on 4 sites at the minute and while the Google Shipping results for eCRATER are the weakest they are acceptable.

I don't have a blog but have pinned many of my listings on Pinterest, unless the 'veiws' statistics on here are faulty its not really the traffic I'm lacking just that nobody is converting to a purchase. This is why I was worried I had made an elementary error somewhere.

I've looked online but not found an awful lot of data but is eCRATER little known in Europe? I used to sell very well to the States but the tripling of postage costs in the last few years severely damaged that, most of my sales elsewhere are to the UK and Western Europe.

On a side note, I have a few items (large and delicate) that are not really suitable for posting overseas, am I correct in thinking I can't actually set these restrictions other than just charge a huge postal cost that nobody would pay?

[thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat]

I know nothing about your product line but it seems like you are showing examples but not necessarily the exact items you would be shipping. That puts me off. I want to know exactly what I am paying for, not what general shape it would be. I know that means more work but it might WYSIWYG is important where small variations could be a game changer.

I don't know how popular eCRATER UK is abroad. We rarely hear from any non-NA sellers except an occasional Brit or Asian. How visible eCRATER is in Europe? I haven't a clue.

I would think classified ads in interest appropriate publications might help you. Do you have Craigslist in Europe and UK? If so you could put listings with links to your online shops there.

[MoonwishesStore]

Maggie, I think those are the actual items for sale, at least the ones I looked at.

I think one of the problems may be your shipping, at least for the US customer base (by the way I have had customers from all over the world through ecrater) and that is when I checked for how much it would cost me for shipping, I got 8GBP. Now most Americans are not real understanding of currency conversion, etc. So they see that and they don't know what it means and so they pass on by. Which according to exchange I just looked at is $12.57 today. Not bad and actually in line with what it would cost us to ship the same thing to you. I don't know if when checking out they would see the shipping in US prices or not, or not until they have been charged the total.

You might want to use the global editor to put a non-clickable (only since we can't insert html) onto the end of your listing or possibly at the end of your specs list to a currency converter so that they can see what things like postage would run. Just an idea and I don't know how it would work, but there are many intelligent people over here that international travel and currency exchanges just absolutely boggle their minds both here and if they do go abroad. they just don't get it.

Another possibility is if you are using the same title for your goods at each place you sell, google doesn't like giving you extra space for duplicate listings whether four duplicates on ecrater (which isn't allowed) or on four venues.

Actually yours is the first store that we have been asked to help if possible, that visually I haven't been able to immediately see some of the problems. So kudos to you. I wouldn't be thinking, other than you might need more promotion of your store, that it is you and what you are doing. I've been selling very well here since 2008. This month which is usually pretty slow for me, I've only had 2 ecrater orders so far and one was from my SIL so in a sense that didn't count as someone finding my store. She knew I sold patterns and hadn't been able to find what she wanted at the store. Last year I had a dismal final month total but I still had a whole bunch more orders through ecrater than currently. One can only hope this slow down will allow me time to make some Christmas candy!

I do hope things pick up for you since ecrater is a nice place to sell on especially if we can figure out a way out from under googles tyranny.

[SheilaDeesPostcards]

@ Moon, you are looking at his UK store. If you found his items via his US store, the postage is shown in US dollars. http://bobbyhelmet.ecrater.com

@bobbyhelmet, I couldn't find any suggestions for your store. You've done an excellent job. Are you getting sales from etsy and ubid? Before we had to pay to be in Google Shopping, we were told you would be penalized if you had the same items in different stores. It seems that's no longer the case. In Google Shopping, it seems you are your only competitor. Got to love that kind of competition.

[cosmicray]

[bobbyhelmet]

@thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat - all my items are the ones I would be shipping, maybe I should add a bit of text to each listing to make this clear. eCRATER is not big in the UK, but like many I'm looking at alternative outlets as the biggest one becomes harder to manage.

@MoonwishesStore and SheilaDeesPostcards - Sheila is correct, I've set up prices for UK, US and Aus separately so getting on the correct version of the shop for your region should solve this. I spent a long time yesterday updating my shipping matrix for about 50 locations, some of my shipping prices are high but I make nothing on them, sadly posting from the UK is just expensive now. I'm glad you wouldn't be put of by the $12.57 one you looked at.

Thanks for the positive comments and confirming I'm not doing anything obviously wrong that might explain my low sales, its nice to know. Maybe this just isn't the place for my items. I'm selling OK on Etsy at the minute and eBid has done well in the past. I'll see what I do about a bit of promotion and assess if it was worth the effort after the holidays.

@cosmicray - I didn't feature at all on Google Shopping until about 6 months ago when I decided to start improving descriptions and keywords etc. I've dabbled with SEO optimization in the past so have a pretty good grasp of it.

Thanks to all for taking the time to help, enjoy the holidays and I hope you all sell well for the rest of the month

Bobby.

[MoonwishesStore]

Whoops, silly me. I just clicked on his website button like I usualy do to see a seller's store and didn't notice the prices in pounds but only the shipping prices that way.

Still he has a great looking store and the shipping prices are as fair as ours are from this end. It costs $11.48US to send a 6-11 oz package to the UK or AU via endicia postage, so I'm not sure what the price is at the PO. So it is basically the same as his 5 arrowheads packaged well I suppose. One of the big reasons to charge for shipping, so it isn't buried in the price.

[maggiethehousecat]

Sorry Bobby for the misunderstanding. Something I read gave me the impression that one wouldn't necessarily get the exact item in the picture.

I've done better on etsy Nov. and Dec. than here also. In fact if it weren't for etsy I might as well have closed up shop and gone to Hawaii for the season.

I think the reason is that etsy is a destination shopping site like Amazon and eBay. No one is getting business because of Google shopping anymore. eCRATER and ArtFire, other places I sell, are not as well known. People generally discover them when they follow a listing from Google shopping or other search engine.

I like it here because it is sort of like a free storage locker with an occasional sale. It didn't used to be this way but Google has gummed up the works.

I had a recent example of how etsy outshines. Everything in my Maggiethehousecat store is marked down 30%. Everything in my Artfire store is marked down 30%. Etsy is still full price. I just sold a $150 tablecloth on etsy that was also on AF and EC. Third time this season that I sold something pricy that was available elsewhere for 30% less.

[oakteakstore]

You have many interesting things. I think you have a highly specialized market. You might do very well using Pinterest to showcase some of your items.