Decline in customers since Xmas - anyone else having this?

[Beagle Bob]

Hi,

After our first and rather busy Christmas, activity on our site has been very quiet. Now, my site does specialise in gift items so I would expect an element of seasonality, but as this is our first year of trading we are keen to understand if this is indicative of the UK market at the moment or is it just our site! Two friends who run very different (non-ecommerce) businesses have said that they are struggling at the moment.

I would be interested to hear from any other internet only companies on how they are trading at the moment.

Just as an aside, we are currently 'trudging' our way through the time consuming activity of SEO tuning, so are really keen just for any insights that other members are having on the general market (rather than the wonderful subject of attracting & keeping customers in the first place :)).

Thanks

Bob

[sirearl]

Afraid you must expect things to go quite after xmas if you are selling gifts.


Earl

[collingwood]

They should be clearing off xmas credit card balance soon!!!

[Mister B]

From my time in the gift industry, (albeit brief,) we used to experience a downturn of around 50%in Jan/Feb. Historically it was always the time when people moved jobs and only really got going again on the run up to Easter.

To be expected I'm afraid.

With regards to internet only, my business is, as is yours, still in its first year and so I cannot offer any comparative figures. All that I can add is that there was a downturn after Christmas but not as large as the majority of other traders have experienced. However, that is more down to my industry than my skills!

Best to use the time to tweak the site etc. etc.

Mister B

[Mister B]

Should probably add that I know quite a few taxi drivers as well and that they found both January and February to be quiter than normal.

Granted they are always quite in these months, but this year more than ever. Lots of uncertainty about the economy etc and I think that most people are just being a little cautious at the moment.

Mister B

[Comspec]

Gifts is always going to have peaks & troughs unfortunately.

My suggestions:
1) Have a look to see if there are other products which would complement your range, even on a dropshipping basis.
2) Read through the Marketing section of this forum, and see what marketing tips you can gleam. No doubt there are some things you could be doing
3) Read through the SEO section of this forum, as there will definitely be lots of tips to help with this.
4) Once you have done these, put your website up for 'review' and ask for comments on it from a Design, SEO, and useability pov.
5) Again, once this is all done, then look at enlisting some of the marketing/SEO guru's on this forum to help take you forward (I am thinking about people like SteveGibson, Tin, etc, but you will see who suits best from your reading of the forums)

HTH
Mark

[An Oasis]

We have noticed that the lower end of the market is very quiet, however, the upper end of the market is completely the opposite.

[quikshop]

Gifts as most retail markets dip after Christmas although you should see a gradual improvement from Easter onwards. Keep in mind however that we are in a very difficult economic period with households having less disposable income.

One way to try and combat this is to push seasonal and special occasions gifts such as Mothers Day, Easter, and more all year round gift types for Birthdays, Weddings, Anniversaries and so on. Its really about targetting niche bits of the overall gifts market.

Another growth area are gifts for pets!! I know, amazing anyone would spend money on pet gifts but its worth millions a year! There are several areas there that you can focus your marketing and SEO on outside of the peak shopping months.

[Holland Risley]

Could it be something to do with the changes to Google Adwords?

[locks on doors]

Perhaps its over saturation , its difficult to compare business to business ,some are said to be recession proof but others are trading in cornflake commodities very competitive markets and lots of people are going through lean times right now ,could you add any bread and butter lines to boost your sales ?

[Matt1959]

I'm in a business that is not typically seasonal but since January, I've had virtually no serious enquiries for what I do from private clients. I don't advertise much as I've never needed to and won't start now for various reasons. The point of my post is that nearly 3 months with few enquiries is unheard for me in years of being in this trade so either someones switched my phone off or there is a serious problem with people spending money right now.:)

[Joanne_UK]

Our website has never been that quiet !! (and we have been trading for 4 years !!):(

[Blush]

I am just starting my second year and even busier than last year.But I am constantly sourcing new products and looking at new ways to market the site. Yes it is quitier than xmas time etc and jan was fairly quiet but picked up steadily form end of jan.

[ollyno1uk]

We were extremely busy with one of our product ranges before Christmas - Expected this to decline in the new year but January and February was completely dead. Minimal sales and fewer vistors. Was quite concerning but thankfully has started to pick up now.

Its hard to know how to gauge things when you are a relatively new as you can only work off the previous months.

[quikshop]

Its hard to know how to gauge things when you are a relatively new as you can only work off the previous months.

With a newish business it is difficult to know whether you are doing well, doing badly, how you compare to your immediate competitors and what else you should be doing to grow your business.

The most successful online retail business we've had involvement with (sadly it was not our own :p) hardly got an order for the first 6 months, 5 years later it generates six-figure revenue for the full time owner.

Its important to understand basic spending patterns such as;

1. Peak spending on nearly every market from mid-November through to the end of the first week of February.
2. Monthly spending peaks in most markets the 7 days either side of payday, the end of the month.
3. Spending increases on seasonal special occasions such as Valentines Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day and also to a lesser extent Bank Holidays.
4. There are market-specific peaks such as products popular during the summer holiday season, niche markets like snow boarding for example has a specific window before and during the skiing season during which spending increases.


Taking point 4 it highlights the importance of researching the market you are selling into. Understanding the buying patterns of your target customers will help you maximise sales multiplied by the visibility factor.

The visibility factor describes how easy it is for potential customers to find your shop, such as;

1. How many shop pages are indexed on the search engines
2. What search engine page your shop appears on for primary keyword and phrase searches
3. How well you use PPC / CPC marketing across search engines
4. The number of well placed reciprocal links with appropriately themed and well ranked websites


There is a lot more to this but I'll throw an article on our website about it in the next week or so.

The point is, even during difficult economic times like these, best practice in knowing your market, targetting your advertising, getting your product mix right and adopting a long term strategy to increase your visibilty will all help you grow your business.

[zoewin]

It depends what sort of thing you're selling, but in the gifts market the Christmas trading period will often account for a huge %age of your total annual sales, so you'd definitely expect Jan/Feb to be a lot quieter.

You asked how others are trading - we're very quiet atm, down on last year, so not great.

[Richie N]

No it's been a good quarter ;)

[Games4Business]

Nice site, great products - first time in ages that I've seen a shop run from lotus domino/notes too :)

Our website has never been that quiet !! (and we have been trading for 4 years !!):(

On another note, slow sales after the Christmas period may also depend on whether or not you have products that compensate others throughout the quieter months.

[Joanne_UK]

Nice site, great products - first time in ages that I've seen a shop run from lotus domino/notes too :)



On another note, slow sales after the Christmas period may also depend on whether or not you have products that compensate others throughout the quieter months.

Thanks ! I guess in normal circumstances, there is not really any reason to use lotus notes/Domino (unless it is a really big company using a lot of workflows, etc...) but as I am a notes/Domino developer (day job) I could use my skills and build my own website. I tried to keep it simple for the design (I'm not a web designer!!). I had fun learning a few things in the process..:)

[Christiane]

I must say the average transaction is lower than usual here too!

[Lily Moon]

January was great for me but since mid-February, it has been very slow. I think there is synchronicity with current economic news...

[Jamest]

Yep, we've been up every month for the last 9 months, March however is looking to be a disaster.

[spiritadventures]

A lot of my sales are gifts and my sales are up - I find it helps to have a Jan Sale after Xmas - it gets people buying again. I then start marketing things for mothers day gifts and Easter presents. Also, March and May are quite busy months for Birthdays, so these are usually quite busy.

[Wuzz]

Hi,

I am internet only business too, and also in my first year. It was a shaky start and Feb seemed quiet. But like you I have been tweaking my site both with new products, things to help clients, naviagtion and yes SEO. This with a decission to lower my profit margins generally accross all products has seen my best month yet in March. Which has really helped lift my spirits and given me renewed enthusiasm to move forward.

I bought a copy of Seach "Engine Optimization - An hour a day" which has helped me with a few pointers. Keep your head up, and I wish you all the best.

Russ

[busynessman]

Use the quiet time to do a lot ofwork on seo marketing etc then it will be even busier this xmas.

Our main website was extremely busy at xmas, but january nearly doubled (with no extra effort in marketing). Like compspec says you get peaks and troughs and as longas you put the work in to make the peaks and troughs better you''ll be fine.

We have found Feb and March fairly slow (still more then triple what we did this time last year) but april is picking up.

It also depends what type of roducts you sell, but seems most follow similar trends.

[djdavejones]

Hi. I was running a similar gift type stop at amstore.co.uk before we decided to close down the e-commerce bit. You will definately see a (often) big increase from early november to Dec 31st and then a sudden fall. Dont get carried away early Nov and think that your business is soring...and start employing more staff etc...

All the best of luck with it though.