Are eCommerce Sales Down?

[Jayser100]

Our last six months have been shocking, Amazon sales in particular are well down (on all the major Amazon sites) but our website and eBay sales aren't great either. As you can imagine, I need to assess whether it's a problem with my own products and strategies, or a general trend in ecommerce.

I would appreciate any views you have on this - how are your sales going?

 

[deniser]

Ours are up quite a lot this year but that is because more and more B&M shops in the sector are closing down (including BHS which was a big competitor) so people are forced onto the internet to look for our product.

 

[wayzgoose]

The last six months well up on last year. Having said that, April was actually quite dismal but the Christmas period was phenomenal.

 

[WHGB Tom]

Probably not so much they are going down but maybe the competition is increasing. Its becoming easier and easier to get online maybe that has some kind of effect.

 

[ddmcmullan]

Generally in an upward direction here

 

[pelparc]

Are you still getting a similar amount of visitors to your site? If not and you appear well of Google search then could it be your product has gone out of fashion and other than the people who all ready own it the desire to own it has diminished. Have you added any new product ranges?

You cant really make sales comparisons from different companies unless they are in the same bracket as yours. But as you asked our sales are quite flat on last year, however the sales are more erratic so one day we could just get one order and the next 50 without any particular reason. In the past sales were effected by news events, holidays etc. but not this year.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Sales feel slow compared to last years for same channels

 

[japancool]

The end of last year was good, but since the start of the year, it hasn't been spectacular. I know that's been the case largely across our specific market sector.

 

[Pat Walsh]

Had a quick look on your website and noticed a few problems that might cause a few missed sales:

1. The large images at the top of the homepage are not setup properly - the first one, the guy with the plane leads to a 404 error / missing page - and the second one, the beach volleyball woman, doesn't link to anything. Also, images 3 and 4 don't lead to anything either.
2. The Google map of stores locations (via 'Our Stores') doesn't work/doesn't load - and shows a Google Maps API warning and error in the console.

That was from a quick look at the site, so probably worth you putting aside some time and giving it a thorough test and then getting the developers to fix what you find.

 

[japancool]

Had a quick look on your website and noticed a few problems that might cause a few missed sales:

1. The large images at the top of the homepage are not setup properly - the first one, the guy with the plane leads to a 404 error / missing page - and the second one, the beach volleyball woman, doesn't link to anything. Also, images 3 and 4 don't lead to anything either.
2. The Google map of stores locations (via 'Our Stores') doesn't work/doesn't load - and shows a Google Maps API warning and error in the console.

That was from a quick look at the site, so probably worth you putting aside some time and giving it a thorough test and then getting the developers to fix what you find.

And how would this result in a drop in his Amazon sales over the last six months?

 

[Pat Walsh]

OP said "but our website and eBay sales aren't great either" so I had a look at the website.

 

[japancool]

OP said "but our website and eBay sales aren't great either" so I had a look at the website.

But why would the things that you mention only have affected his sales in the last few months?

Don't you think that if sales are down across all channels, he needs to identify the underlying cause first, rather than fix a few minor issues that may or may not have any relevance

 

[UrbanRetail]

Down from last year on Amazon/eBay but website is up.

 

[natalieporter]

That's maybe a sign that your strategies are no longer appropriate. Furthermore, the competition is increasing. So look at the whole picture. I think you will probably find your problem.

 

[Jayser100]

Many thanks for your replies and I'll look into the website issues. We only launched that recently and it obviously needs some tidying up

 

[deniser]

There is of course a general downward trend in consumer spending because of the uncertainties of Brexit and also the effects of Brexit induced inflation.

The more non essential the item is, the less people are going to be buying it in hard times.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/07/uk-consumer-spending-hits-5-year-low-ahead-of-brexit-budget.html

 

[Paul Norman]

We sell almost entirely from our showroom and website, and sales at both are running very strongly indeed.

There are of course, other factors - we have expanded significantly with new brands - but overall, I would say that like for like e-commerce is increasing for us.

 

[NewGardenStyle]

Sales are up on this time last year but I worry about the impact of Brexit and general consumer sentiment. If we have a run of bad news and general belt-tightening I could well suffer. We shall see!

 

[antropy]

I'm hearing various reports of a bit of a slow down in various industries from property to marketing. Probably Brexit / General Election uncertainty.

 

[pelparc]

Probably Brexit / General Election uncertainty

Seems like any company that wants an excuse just blame Brexit yet other companies in the same areas post good results. If Brexit had the effect the BBC etc. protray then no one would be buying anything and all companies would be posting appalling results. The quicker you have a good look at your strategies and stop jumping on the blame Brxit bandwagon the better off you will be.

 

[JJWinst]

I think you're right in thinking Brexit has slowed down 'non essential' item's but we're seeing the same interest online to last year. Our website has seen a down turn however and I think this is mainly down to competition pricing..

You sell your own brand right? So no direct competition for the same product.. Have you looked at how competitors are doing? If they've noticeably changed their pricing/product range?

 

[jjscruff]

incredible christmas and good start to 2017 for me but big fall into april
having looked at last years, i can see there was a drop that time of year for us too. dunno why but hopefully pick up again soon

 

[antropy]

Seems like any company that wants an excuse just blame Brexit yet other companies in the same areas post good results.

Yes and no.

I'm not a fan of making excuses, and I believe the old adage, "you can either make excuses or make money".

But also there are market realities that you can't deny, unlike Alan Sugar:

 

[DontAsk]

No. Up, if anything.

 

[pelparc]

But also there are market realities that you can't deny

I was really trying to point out that its very easy to justify bad sales on some event rather than actually looking very deeply as to why sales are not reaching expectations. Obviously events can make a difference however just as Salisburys say they are not doing as well as expected due to the pound and brexit the next day Morrison's claim they are doing better than expected. Never trust anther companies propaganda and just assume its the same for you.

 

[japancool]

Obviously events can make a difference however just as Salisburys say they are not doing as well as expected due to the pound and brexit the next day Morrison's claim they are doing better than expected. Never trust anther companies propaganda and just assume its the same for you.

In their case, it could be to do with the fact that people keep getting their name wrong.

 

[pelparc]

No one told me they changed there name That must be the problem..

 

[Page]

Have you had a look on Amazon recently - rather than sales

You probably had a great natural ranking - but that is worth less in the days of amazon paid for adverts

We then have the Chinese here themselves now - sometimes dispatching from China and sometimes putting goods into FBA
(And maybe outside the tax world)

And now they have started to added big brands to the top of their listings
I have not done it but my guess is that if you search for your products they will be shown at the top

Try singular and plural when you do this

 

[pelparc]

With the development of the Amazon assistant thing (is it Alexa?) can you ask it to get an item, which then Amazon fulfils the order automatically. If this / When this happens how will the average trader sell on Amazon without having to pay a massive premium to get their product chosen. This will be the end of most small business retailers on Amazon. They are going to be bad news for most.

 

[bigbuzzbelfast]

After the ransomware attack sales may (note I said "may") go down across the board as people's confidence gets knocked not knowing if they click this that or the other will it download something nasty to their computer.

 

[Jayser100]

There have been some problems on Amazon I think, mainly due to algorithm changes and not the economy. Just working through those now

 

[David P]

There have been some problems on Amazon I think, mainly due to algorithm changes and not the economy. Just working through those now

Where did you hear that there were algorithm changes? Or did you just clock it on your items?
I would be interested to read if there were any articles on it. Cheers

 

[Jayser100]

They have stuffed up the additional keyword boxes for a start - a 250 byte memory limit imposed. If your keywords exceed this, none of the additional keywords show in search. Sorting that one out on seven Amazon platforms has kept me out of mischief! It's a tricky one to deal with because it is a memory cap rather than a character cap, which means you might find 290 characters work e.g. on one listing, but not on another, where you have to go down to 280. You have to keep trimming off keywords until the listing starts to show. Very time consuming! Sellers who only have a few keywords in those boxes anyway will not have been affected, indeed if anything they probably benefitted from what happened to the rest of us. As always with these changes, there are winners and losers.

Early last year Amazon announced they had extended the additional keyword boxes so that you could add up to 1,000 characters in each of the five lines. At some point late last year they imposed the memory limit but never announced it. So, we all added loads of extra keywords to take advantage of their generous change, and then they secretly pulled the pulled the rug out from under our feet again.

I have actually had that confirmed by a customer services rep via email but from other conversations I've had with seller customer services, most of the staff don't even seem to know about it.

My own sales started to take a mistifying nose-dive around November time last year and through correspondence on the seller forums others seem to corroborate this.

 

[David P]

@Jayser100
What a nightmare that is. It must have taken you ages.
We clocked the change to 1000 characters but beyond some testing we were yet to really jump on it. This suggests it has been a blessing in disguise.
I have just tested it with one of those listings and it appeared to confirm what you said.

I am confused though, how are we supposed to know when it is over that many bytes? There are no warnings on seller central. I haven't seen anything on submitting by a product feed either.
I also don't really understand the logic, surely it is all plain text, surely 250 characters equates to the same amount of memory regardless of the characters used?

 

[Jayser100]

Not all characters take up the same amount of memory. Specialist characters used in foreign languages, e.g. the ü in German uses more memory than a basic u for example. Computer characters are literally mapped / drawn on a block of pixels; the more pixels a character uses, the more memory it takes up. You can reasonably say that the character 'h' takes up more memory that an 'i'.

As for your question, "how do you know if you've gone over the 250 bytes" what I do is this: in the Amazon search box, I type my brand 'Rapid Eyewear' followed by the first few words of the product title. This does of course, always bring up the item I am checking. I then add a random string of the additional keywords - if it's working, it will show as a searchable result, if not it will say zero results. Be slightly careful though because, if it says 0 search results, your item might appear below as a 'next best match'. Don't let this fool you into thinking it is working - the only thing that counts is the line of text at the top of the results that will either say your item was found, or not.

 

[Mister B]

It's a really interesting situation. Our Amazon.co.uk sales plumetted last year and are just about holding their own at the moment.

After looking into this in detail, I discovered that our page views were halved over that period for no real reason. So, the fact that we're just about keeping up with last year, isn't too bad. That being said, the year before, we were 25% down on the year before.

What's possibly more telling is that we're still in the top 10 of the best seller lists even though the overall sales line is struggling. Which leads me to think that either Amazon are having a hard time of it or Amazon have secretly found a way of recategorising competing products. I'm yet to find evidence of that though.

One things for sure though, Amazon isn't the easy ride it used to be.

 

[Jayser100]

There has been a lot of discussion about all this on the Amazon seller forums, with loads of 'conspiracy theories' (some think they are targeting some sellers to get them off the site!); others think Amazon have accidentally messed up their algorithm and are struggling to fix it; others still talk about a 'switch' that turns their sales on and off, as they have seen some weird patters of sales where they get a lot in a morning, and none in an afternoon, or trends that last for a few days.

Personally I think if you read the whole thread on this on that forum, you could end up completely confused because so many people have so many ideas! Something has changed, it must be algorithm related and working out the four corners of it is nigh on impossible. Thus far the only 100% concrete thing I know is this additional keyword change, which let's face it, for those of us who took advantage of the 1,000 characters per field limit, was a pretty tidy problem.

My sales are still down on last year, overall on UK and Germany I am about 15K down which is causing me some cashflow issues (I have a warehouse and staff). I do sell on multiple platforms but the Amazon sites are very important and my income is very bruised right now.

 

[David P]

Yeah I don't hold any truck with the conspiracy theories. You get a lot of similar things over on the ebay discussions forums and it never makes sense to me. What reasons would Amazon or Ebay have for doing them?
Having said that, for what reason would Amazon change the character limit and then hinder people by limiting the bytes? It does have the feeling of an error made somewhere.

Since seeing your post I have had a look at the seller central forums. I agree that there are lots of conflicting views on there.
What are your thoughts on the theories about title and brand not being searched from All Departments? it doesn't really make sense to me.
Also, are you including your title length in the byte limit? Some people seem to think that matters.


In our product categories we have noticed changes to how Amazon display search results. More ASP, promoting 'Top Brands' etc etc, could that also be impacting in your product areas?

 

[David P]

I just had a quick look on an inventory file and it does state this there:
"An alphanumeric string; 1 character minimum in length and 1000 characters maximum in length."

Do you think the problem is that they want to switch to 1000 characters but are struggling to implement it for whatever reason. That would explain why Amazon has acted as it has

 

[jjscruff]

i've always crammed as many keywords in the fields as possible but they are all still functioning for me on all platforms

If amazon have made an algorithm change it will be to push more people towards FBA. They are FBA mad. I get someone email me every few weeks telling me to sign up. Its possible that anyone non FBA could be getting pushed down in the rankings