Ecommerce becoming depressing?
- Thread starter deniser
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In terms of mixing B&M and online - click and collect is becoming increasingly popular for people as large firms slowly integrate their systems
It is easy to think that the whole world is the same but delivery in the USA (for example) is a very different proposition from the UK
The distances there are huge and so delivery from store is far more common than here and then what is going with it is delivery from store and in short time scales and even within an hour
Now this may sound like some consumer satisfaction excess but as the systems go into place it becomes easy to handle
Dispatch from store - a separate delivery firm collects parcels from multiple locations and then delivers on a time scale with it all planned out and controlled by software etc
It is easy to think that the whole world is the same but delivery in the USA (for example) is a very different proposition from the UK
The distances there are huge and so delivery from store is far more common than here and then what is going with it is delivery from store and in short time scales and even within an hour
Now this may sound like some consumer satisfaction excess but as the systems go into place it becomes easy to handle
Dispatch from store - a separate delivery firm collects parcels from multiple locations and then delivers on a time scale with it all planned out and controlled by software etc
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I don't see why it is the job of these companies to turn people away any more than it is mine to put people off buying my own products because to be honest they probably don't really need them they just want them
If people are going into business then it is there choice and they have to accept the risks and do the research etc
It is not for the people commissioned to decide if they are talking to the next Alan Sugar or just another numpty
Their job is to do the job honestly and fairly
We can argue if they are asked whether it is a good idea how they should respond but I generally sales works by encouraging people to buy what you are selling not the opposite
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You've obviously never been in the position of having an average 10 orders a day - along comes a major Google change and the orders drop to about 2 a month. I also spoke to a fellow trader who had an average of 50 orders a day, 95% of which disappeared almost overnight. This was a year last February.
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You can't be serious. That is like saying any animal that relies on air to breath is dead. Without Google NO business can thrive online today. Any business that IS making it without Google is most definitely under trading.
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Like it or not Google have the power to make or break your business.
In my experience any merchant who has lost to a Google update did so because they didn't follow the rules. Google make no secret about what to do and what to avoid. Merchants constantly try methods outside of those recommended by Google because it works, short term. If you break the rules you may suffer the consequences of the next Google update. Do it the "Google Friendly" way and you wont.
Show me a site that lost out through NO fault of their own and I will show you how to get back on top. Ignorance is no excuse.
I love Google and so do my clients.
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- Original Poster
- #55
We lost a lot of traffic (about half) overnight in July 2012. We never did anything that Google said it didn't like. But it did at that time implement an algo change which preferred big companies. How exactly I don't know.
The rankings in our sector were dominated by small niche sites like ours and from one day to the next, the small sites were pushed out and replaced with big companies who sell the product as a miniscule part of their total offering. As an example, say you had some small companies specialising and selling hundreds of different types of umbrellas. The next day those sites disappear to the 2nd and 3rd pages of Google and big companies who might sell a dozen or so umbrellas types take the first page listing. To this day the first eight results in my sector still are:
Debenhams
NEXT
John Lewis
House of Fraser
ASDA
Monsoon
Boden
Amazon
despite the niche companies trying to fight back.
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Humour me for a moment. I deal mainly with small to medium size companies and zero corporate accounts. I can show you 1000's of pages where these businesses rank higher than all of the sites you mention. This is not isolated to one market but across many different markets.
Furniture
Sports and Leisure
Electronics
Outdoor Leisure
Lighting
etc
Please can you disclose your domain and allow me to comment based on what I find as a starting point.
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It sounds like you're still using the same business model and techniques you were using when you first set up. Things change fast online, adapt or die.
There's a lot more competition but there are also a lot more customers, buying habits have changed. I think that if you know what you're doing then its easier than ever. Our business is growing at an alarming rate.
There's a lot more competition but there are also a lot more customers, buying habits have changed. I think that if you know what you're doing then its easier than ever. Our business is growing at an alarming rate.
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For real? There are many very successful businesses that use Amazon or eBay that do not rely on Google on any level.
Businesses that use a single sales channel have an inherent single point of failure. Not only that but with Google they are relying on a commercially motivated business who change the rules of their game to give themselves the competitive advantage.
It's the equivalent of town planners moving the high street your shop sits on and sticking it out in a sink estate
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For real? There are many very successful businesses that use Amazon or eBay that do not rely on Google on any level.
Businesses that use a single sales channel have an inherent single point of failure. Not only that but with Google they are relying on a commercially motivated business who change the rules of their game to give themselves the competitive advantage.
It's the equivalent of town planners moving the high street your shop sits on and sticking it out in a sink estate
Where do you think Amazon and EBay get the majority of their traffic? Yes, Google.
I think that half the problem here is the belief that Goggle is there for your benefit. Trust me it isn't. Google clearly have their own agenda. That doesn't make it bad.
Believe me, we all need Google today. Maybe in years to come the market will change and then so will we. Until then Google should be your best friend.
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No disrespect to you (or all the other SEO/site building companies out there) but that is the response I would expect. You have every minute of every hour of every day to check what Google is up to - most people running an ecommerce business don't. You see in my mind, if I'm doing fine one week and not the next, I'm sure you can come along and tell me what the problem is and make a nice few quid at the same time. Then what happens in a year when Google move the goal posts again? The only basic rule I have ever followed in regards to Google is to ignore them and set my site up for the customer. Individual headings and descriptions, good photos and a site that's easy to navigate, as well as filling in all the relevant meta tag information. I am not, for example, going to go through my descriptions and see if I have used a keyword too many/not enough times. If I have, tough sh*t. I wrote it for the customer not Google.
As Deniser said, one week we were on page one with hundreds of our products, the next week all you could find were the big boys. So would you have told me my site was perfect one week and not the next.
It's for this reason I have scaled right down on the internet side of things and found something else to do. Checking what the competition was up to and doing the best you could to present your products made ecommerce a fun and enjoyable experience. Checking the latest from Google every day is most definitely not.
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Nope, I would wager the vast majority of Amazon and eBay shoppers go direct. Google listings will contribute no doubt but not in such a huge way with these other well established sales channels.
A bit like banks, why do people think they exist for their benefit!?
Nope, my existence would not be negatively impacted by the absence of Google... unless the only way you could take a wicket or score runs on a weekend was to use a Google-powered cricket bat
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For real? There are many very successful businesses that use Amazon or eBay that do not rely on Google on any level.
Businesses that use a single sales channel have an inherent single point of failure. Not only that but with Google they are relying on a commercially motivated business who change the rules of their game to give themselves the competitive advantage.
It's the equivalent of town planners moving the high street your shop sits on and sticking it out in a sink estate
It is so easy to just blame Google. I agree with you on one point. It is up to you to decide how many hoops you will jump through. However, I have never seen a business loose its ranking without reason.
Many of the mistakes made online are down to lack of knowledge. Some are not. Everyone wants to be top. Those spaces are reserved for those who change with the tide and adapt.
Google were never out to harm you personally. Businesses will continue to try and beat Google by breaking the rules and Google will continue to find ways to stop them. If you got caught up in this and tarred with the wrong brush, find what you did wrong and fix it. Google don't hold grudges.
I have a simple formula that works every time.
If you search Google for one of your products by name and cant find yourself in the top ten pages the you haven't even got the basics down.
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Nope, I would wager the vast majority of Amazon and eBay shoppers go direct. Google listings will contribute no doubt but not in such a huge way with these other well established sales channels.
A bit like banks, why do people think they exist for their benefit!?
Nope, my existence would not be negatively impacted by the absence of Google... unless the only way you could take a wicket or score runs on a weekend was to use a Google-powered cricket bat
Would you like to fix the serious errors on your own sites? No Charge.
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Am I supposed to guess which one that is?
I figure from your response you doubt I will have much to offer. So we get off on the right foot, I am not on here to pull your site apart but to offer you constructive help. I have got nothing to prove here but I am happy to publicly show you how to rank all of your products on the first page of google. From the few minutes I spent on your sites I found no first page listings and many items not on the first ten pages. Is this a problem you are aware of? Maybe I've been looking at the wrong sites.
I figure from your response you doubt I will have much to offer. So we get off on the right foot, I am not on here to pull your site apart but to offer you constructive help. I have got nothing to prove here but I am happy to publicly show you how to rank all of your products on the first page of google. From the few minutes I spent on your sites I found no first page listings and many items not on the first ten pages. Is this a problem you are aware of? Maybe I've been looking at the wrong sites.
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You've nicely deflected this thread from a general discussion about ecommerce and the importance or otherwise of market dominating search engines, to whatever services you offer.
I disagree with your assertion that business cannot thrive or survive without Google, its not a personal attack just a difference of opinion.
And yes, the last time I looked at SEO for anything I do online was over 3 years ago when my primary shop was top of Google for all of its essential search words and phrases... I suspect a lot has changed since then
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It's a load of rubbish idea
survival of the fittest is the only way forward, Small shops have the facility to change quickly to meet customer requests whilst larger companies get so large (co-op springs to mind) they cannot react and die
A big threat is that trademark companies start restricting their sales to middlemen and only tradmarks come up on Google searches which is the owner company. they have the power to stop all others using their trademark
survival of the fittest is the only way forward, Small shops have the facility to change quickly to meet customer requests whilst larger companies get so large (co-op springs to mind) they cannot react and die
A big threat is that trademark companies start restricting their sales to middlemen and only tradmarks come up on Google searches which is the owner company. they have the power to stop all others using their trademark
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SwindonSteve
Like every industry, as it reaches a state of maturity, it will go through a period of consolidation and that will of course involve mergers and acquisitions.
The idea is absolutely not without merit.
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But take any large company which is well known as a trademark brand either in a country or world wide a few random ones, could be say Samsung, Levi's, Bendix, Dickies, Honda, Epson, and so on,
They could easily stop selling to retailers by opening up country based e-commerce centers and sell direct with far larger profits, just like Easy-jet and Ryan-air did a couple of years ago, so we end up with every thing being brand led with massive advertising to get brand awareness.
Small companies unless in a niche area would stand no chance and even monopoly commission could not act as they would be growing rather than merging companies
They could easily stop selling to retailers by opening up country based e-commerce centers and sell direct with far larger profits, just like Easy-jet and Ryan-air did a couple of years ago, so we end up with every thing being brand led with massive advertising to get brand awareness.
Small companies unless in a niche area would stand no chance and even monopoly commission could not act as they would be growing rather than merging companies
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i started a year ago running business out of my garage and have now expanded some what to a 200sq ft unit at a storage company. i still work full time and i am weighing up when to take the plunge. i sell my own brand of weightlifting equipment and accessories so i guess you could say it is niche to an extent, but i appreciate it is easy for someone to copy what i am doing. i am trying to build a brand identity so that people will come to me regardless of price. I have tried to avoid the race to the bottom but i agree it is hard to avoid! sales on ecommerce is never linear and some days you think you're never going to get a sale again. What i would say is don't be a victim of your circumstances. make a change and look at ways of improving either what you sell or how you sell it. engage previous customers with offers, make an effort to spend 30 minutes every day on some social networking engaging with customers or just putting something witty out there! i see companies who do this get far more engagement than just saying this is product x it is now on sale for amount b. people like to see the company has a human side to it, this is the advantage that a small niche business has over the large companies! another thing that i've learnt to avoid is to get too annoyed when people (usually ebay customers) kick off. i think you end up getting the most problems with people spending the least money. they tend to be looking for a bargain and these are the sort of people you want to avoid!
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All business is tough, if there was an easy business, i'd keep it a secret ;-) margins are dropping every where and this will continue as long as the cost of entry is low. There are lots of occupations that are far worse. If you are not making money or not enough to live on pack it in, if you are, then plan a few days off a month for getting away from the office/workplace.
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I believe that Hornby are trying to do something similar to this. They want people to go to their website and buy. They are squeezing the dealer margins and not increasing the RRP. Less profit for dealers so less stock and sell Hornby products, more go to the Hornby website and more profit for a failing company. I can see why they are trying to do it with all their product range.
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A why not - if it works as a business model for them
The question is is it the right approach in the long term but I think Hornby is such an established brand that it will be fine because the shops will have to stock it
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Then do something else!! I haven't read every word on this forum as after reading the first few moans, my eyes rolled. Nothing in life is given on a plate, everything evolves and everything changes. I think the saying is "if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen"
Nothing on this planet was ever created to make your life easy or simple, but the only survivors are ones that can adapt, diversify and not keep moaning about how things use to be, it will get you know where, as above you have clearly and concisely spotted how your business is effected, then the clear answer is do something else.
I was always taught, no one owes you a job and thats the same in business, no one owes you business you have to earn it, and it is bl**dy hard work, it will fail, there will be good times and bad but moaning about it will get you know where, in the time it took you to write that post you could have scribbled out a competitor analysis, look at ways of creating a better USP, restructure pricing, look at pulling out, adapt your product range.......anything.
Sorry to go on, and I await the onslaught of comments, but I just can't stand it when people moan about business and how they had it good once but not anymore, well times change, if a milkman came on here saying I think being a milkman is hard, I can't see why we should all sit around giving advice on something that clearly needs working on.
Don't blame or speak negatively about people like Amazon, I am sure if you were CEO of Amazon you wouldn't hold the same opinion, its individuals that look for blame then diversity that ultimately will fail, but then maybe you need to experience that fail in order for you to re-evaluate your approach and thinking, so ultimately in answer to your points raised
The postal charges keep rising and getting more complicated. - Thats life, prices increase and services expand
The distance selling regulations keep getting more onerous. - Thats life, regulations and laws continue to change, adapt and get on with it
Customers are becoming more fussy, more demanding, wanting everything instantly and being quite aggressive in some cases.
Ok so you now have your target audience tagged, so adapt and appeal to them, they want things quickly then do it, if you can't don't moan about it
The quality of goods available to stock is going downhill rapidly because of the pressure on pricing and cost cutting by manufacturers.
Thats life, prices from manufacturer will change, they have to survive and will make commercial decision, adapt or do something different
The social networking opportunities for promoting a business are either saturated or have become costly.
So don't bother or bother but moaning about it won't change the a thing
Big companies are now taking priority over niche businesses on Google.
Nonsense, they just have better marketing, if you were a big company turning over millions would you be complaining that you want to reduce your turn over to give something back to the little guys! no, so adapt and offer or do something niche!
Google, Facebook etc need to make large amounts of money.
Uh yes, not sure what your point is
Amazon is taking over everything and surviving on its low profit model
Uh yes, do you honestly feel Amazon's board sole decision making is how can they make less money and stop growing, and if you sat on that same board would you have the same point of view
The technology side is becoming more complicated.
Only if you let it, if you don't have the ability to keep up, then get out of the market, it won't change, it gets more progressive and advanced by the day, technology can't sit still
Internet fraud is increasing.
Uh yes as online business is increasing, more shops, more opportunity, but whats your actual point
Ebay has become pretty useless for some sectors as a sales channel.
Uh ok and how does that sentence help grow your business
Primark prices are hard to match for clothing.
Uh ok and how does that sentence help grow your business
Bedroom sellers with no concept of proper profit margins abound.
Uh ok and how does that sentence help grow your business
So my final piece, take everything you have said above and then look at your business, how has any of that helped you? Rant over
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silvermusic
So my final piece, take everything you have said above and then look at your business, how has any of that helped you? Rant over
I assume you've never been in retail B&M or online? If you were you'd understand how frustrating it can be, not only as a business but dealing with the public. That's not to say it can't be great fun and good money can be made if done well. But some days it becomes all too much and it feels like death by a thousand cuts sometimes.
After all is said and done I still love it after all these years.
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You see thats my point, Yes I have been in B&M, retail and Ecommerce since we had dial up, one of my previous companies reached £1M turnover, but the market changed, dramatically, but what I didn't do is spend then next 8 years moaning about it.
Adapt, innovate or get a job but don't spend your valuable time moaning about the market, if you don't like it, don't do it, no one owes you business, either go and get it or get a job!
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