Was worried that sales down over 70% in September 2018

bakersbarrel · Posts: 5

Then I went back to look at 2017 sales and noticed the exact same 60%+ drop in sales. All other months are in the mid+ hundreds with September showing less than $100 in sales for 2017.

None of my other web stores have a seasonal drop of more than 15%.

I wonder what it is about the ecrater demographic that sales drop so much in September.

D

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

Uh, am I reading your post incorrectly? Today is only the 10th of September. How do you know that your sales are down 70% this month with 20 more days to go?

bakersbarrel · Posts: 5

I'm not not crying about the drop. My ebay sales drop at back to school perhaps 20% and have for 15 year no matter what I am selling. But the greater drop on ecrater 2 years in a row made me curious if maybe ecrater buyers have more kids and thus less disposable income than my retired buyers on ebay or Amazon do?

RE: Sales estimates. Estimates for month are easy once you get 1/3 way in. 1/3 of the way through the month it's very easy to estimate a months sale by multiply x 3.

I won't reveal exact numbers so I'll call August-2017 sales '100%' - September of 2017 was only 39% of August.

Still calling August of 2018 Sales '100%' and doing a simple estimate based on the 1/3 rule.

September is on course to be just 29% of August. Even with giant margin of error that's a huge drop repeated on a yearly basis.

D

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

bakersbarrel · Posts: 5

Update - With little change in items for sales since September sales are down over 80% on EC. Even with upping the advertising budget to test the 12.9% expense level nothing has changed.

I suspect Google changed something in the algorithm that demotes cigar and pipe items.

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

I just looked at your store again and apparently, you didn't feel that any of the suggestions I made before were worthwhile. I can say that my eCRATER sales didn't mimic yours. My September - November sales 2018 were more than 2017 for each of those months. My November sales for 2018 I have already passed up November 2017 sales for 30 days, in the first 16 days of this month!

I have no clue what Google does or thinks about tobacco, etc. but they are changing lots of things and the only thing that we can do about it, is trying to find ways around the obstacles that they put up. That is why I do my own promotions of my goods. I started doing that when I sold on eBay, so it isn't new for me. Are you on Pinterest? That should help you somewhat to find those that appreciate what you sell.

pickychicky · Posts: 1552

I have to agree that your About page is seriously under-utilized. While many will argue that most shoppers don't read the About page, there are those who do and, more importantly, search bots most definitely look there for matches to search criteria. The more matches you have throughout your shop, the higher your search ranking for each listing will be.

As for your Terms and Contact pages, they come off as a brush off -- as if you don't have time for your customers' concerns. Selling online, it is extremely important that you build buyer trust -- moreso than selling via a B&M shop because you don't have that face-to-face interaction and they can't see your friendly smile. As they are currently written, none of your text pages serve that purpose. I'm not saying you have to write a book, but you do need to show shoppers that they are important to you and that you are a human being with a likable personality (the virtual smile, so to speak).

Of course, I'm not saying that they aren't already important to you. I'm just saying that your text pages don't reflect that. Other than your listings, your text pages are all you have to build buyer trust and convince them to shop with you. So flash that friendly virtual smile. Smile

Good luck! =)

ETA: Woo! This thread got me to doing a quick check of my own text pages and I discovered one update I forgot to take care of after shutting down my standalone shop. I had a contact form that I linked to that no longer exists, so I need to replace it with my email address! Linking to a dead page certainly doesn't lend to buyer trust! Yikes!