New ecommerce, suppliers out of stock

[Jeffry]

Hi all,

I'm really new here and should probably find a place to introduce myself correctly.

In the meantime, we are a bricks and mortar business that has developed a new ecommerce business based on 2-3 day delivery of our products. We have around 2000 products on the site so far.

We have set up an adwords campaign with a £2k per month budget and are 1/2 way through our first month.

Lots of traffic has been driven to the site and we have recieved enquiries for goods that all our suppliers have no stock of.
Every enquiry has been for OOS goods. Currently we are unable to show stocked goods only or stock levels of goods.

The suppliers we are working with generally have excellent stock levels (we know this as we work with them in the Bricks and Mortar store).

Have we just been very unlucky in our clients seletions to date?
Is this the way ecommerce works?

I know we are only a few weeks in but I have spent months on this and at the moment I'm pulling my hair out as I can't service the potential orders.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

 

[Esk247]

It's coming up to Christmas so suppliers are getting sold out.

Not many are importing because there isn't any point this close to Christmas, they'll sell out of the new lines first and then finally sell those lines that have been cluttering the warehouse since they ordered them in January.

You're going to struggle to fulfill all the orders. Next time you need to order in larger quantities in the build up to xmas knowing that you wont get much in November and December.

On top of this, sort your stock control system out because customers won't be impressed that they've placed an order and now you're saying its out of stock.

Also you're spending a lot of money on PPC but don't have the stock to pay back the investment.

No need to tear your hair out though. It's a learning curve, scribble it all down so you're better prepared for next year.

 

[deniser]

There are two issues here:

1. you not having access to your suppliers' stock records (or do you?)
2. your site showing products that are out of stock

First, you should not be dropshipping anything that you don't have access to stock records for. We only dropship two suppliers' lines. For both, we get weekly stock sheets sent through and we go through them once a week updating the website. Closer to Christmas this happens twice a week as stocks run low.

Secondly you need to update your website so that out of stock products do not show at all. In our experience, if you do not have something, the customer, having already decided to buy it, will then look for it elsewhere, rather than choose something else.

Think of it in terms of your B&M business; people can only see the range which is displayed and will pick from that.

It is always the most popular products that will sell out first so inevitable that the products your customers want are the ones that are out of stock.

Not having the most popular products is not necessarily a bad thing - as long as your customers can't see them - as it gives you a chance to shift the rest of your more unpopular stock.

I always use this time of year to run my stocks down a bit. But I preplan and order the best lines in early so I make sure I have plenty. I got caught out last year because of the backlog in fabric dying in China which made my best selling Christmas lines arrive too late (early December). This year I ordered super early and they arrived mid October which is perfect.

 

[Jeffry]

Interesting, thanks. I hadn't previously been aware of seasonality in our industry but you are the second person to say that to me today.

Would you suggest we cut back on the PPC for a while and let the site build up slowly? We have done some SEO and it is ranking quite well already for induvidual product searches..

 

[Jeffry]

There are two issues here:

1. you not having access to your suppliers' stock records (or do you?)
2. your site showing products that are out of stock

First, you should not be dropshipping anything that you don't have access to stock records for. We only dropship two suppliers' lines. For both, we get weekly stock sheets sent through and we go through them once a week updating the website. Closer to Christmas this happens twice a week as stocks run low.

Secondly you need to update your website so that out of stock products do not show at all. In our experience, if you do not have something, the customer, having already decided to buy it, will then look for it elsewhere, rather than choose something else.

Think of it in terms of your B&M business; people can only see the range which is displayed and will pick from that.

It is always the most popular products that will sell out first so inevitable that the products your customers want are the ones that are out of stock.

Not having the most popular products is not necessarily a bad thing - as long as your customers can't see them - as it gives you a chance to shift the rest of your more unpopular stock.

I always use this time of year to run my stocks down a bit. But I preplan and order the best lines in early so I make sure I have plenty. I got caught out last year because of the backlog in fabric dying in China which made my best selling Christmas lines arrive too late (early December). This year I ordered super early and they arrived mid October which is perfect.

We have stock sheets for one of them, the other two no. I'll make a call and see if it is something they will give out. Interestingly, our competitors don't have this on their site, take orders and get the most terrible reviews. Not how I want to run my business.

 

[deniser]

We never did any PPC past the original £50 adwords voucher!

Not that that is necessarily the right approach but wasting money on product you don't stock is a definite no! If you get the clicks you want to make sure they are going to buy!

Have you thought of investing in a PPC expert to advise you?

 

[Jeffry]

We're paying the site developers several hundred pounds this month to advise us. They can't understand why nothing has converted either. We've had over 700 visits, our prices are excellent and the OOS products probably account for 2% of the products on the site. Could it have something to do with the site being new, does it take a while for buyers to build confidence?

 

[deniser]

700 hundred visits is very few.

You need to build that up.

Do you have a mailing list of your shop customers?

 

[JMRidley]

Hi Jeffry, I think what you are seeing happening is this. A customer is looking for a particular product. It's out of stock on most other sites so they are looking a lot harder than usual, so they'll try all the sites on page one and then they'll click on the next few pages of the google search results. So sites, like yours that are quite new and not ranked well yet will get clicked on, whereas when everyone else has the item back in stock you won't get a look in. I'll give you a recent example. We sell a children's nightlight. We've had them in stock for nearly a year and only sold one. We don't rank well for this product and there are lots of other retailers who sell it. In the last two days we sold the remaining 8 we have in stock! So I did a check on our competitors and guess what - they're all out of stock and the UK distributor isn't getting any more in for 3 weeks. Do you use google analytics or getclicky? If so, you can check if your clicks for out of stock products are coming from natural search. If they are then I would think the above scenario applies. If they are coming from google adwords then I would stop those particular ads!

Re stock levels generally, as ESK247 says, it's a learning curve. We didn't have enough of some of our lines last Christams so have ordered more this year but don't know yet if this will be an over or under estimate! It's only our second Christmas so I expect we still have a lot more learning to do...

 

[a1anm]

Could you make your PPC campaign a little more specific so it only targets customers looking for the products which are in stock? You may see a better return if this is a possibility.

 

[Jeffry]

Thanks for the comments, it's interesting.

Is 700 visits low for a just launched site? What should we be aiming for?

I've spoken to a each of the suppliers, 2 out of 3 say that the data would be out of date by the time I publish it so it's a pointless excercise - I disagree but they seem reluctant to dish it out.
I'll keep trying.

We don't have a (e) mailing list of the shop clients, we're working on this

 

[alanc]

Is 700 visits low for a just launched site? What should we be aiming for

Is that 700 Unique Visitors? Over what time-frame (a day, a week, a month)?

 

[Jeffry]

Is that 700 Unique Visitors? Over what time-frame (a day, a week, a month)?

3 weeks so far, don't know if they are unique. We are really new to this...

 

[tclick]

Sounds like the wrong type of customers. When we initially went into PPC we spents '000's per month on PPC and although we recouped our investment we still ended up with thousands of visitors who just sailed on by.

The trick is to be smarter about who you are targetting and don't be too generic in your advertising.

If your PPC word is 'Mortar' you don't really want to be appearing in loads of ads underneath university clothing suplliers!

It is far more efficient to have less traffic but more focussed traffic.

Also, we found that many people in the construction industry used the site to make up quotes and often bought the following month!

Finally, there are many people that say they can do PPC, but very few are actually very good at it. Best thing you can do is build up the organic process as quick as possible!

 

[alanc]

Where are you getting the figure of 700 from? That really isn't very many (33/day). You say your Adwords budget is £2K/month. How much of that has actually been spent? If it has spent 3 weeks worth (£1500) then 33 visitors doesn't look like the right figure. For that kind of money you should see a lot more visitors.

Your website should have a stats package like awstats that will tell you how many Unique Visitors you're getting.

If you're spending that much on Adwords then you had better be selling something 'household' as that is quite a large budget.

Your Adwords campaign probably still has the option for Google Content Network turned on. This means your ads will be shown on every Tom, Dick and Harriet's website - not necessarily good quality traffic. it also tends to be the biggest eater of money. It might be best to only display on Google at first.

Your Adwords campaign will show you which search phrases are being used to generate your ads. Keep an eye on these and get rid of ones that aren't approriate (like the 'mortar' example, above). Use negative keywords to do this.

Using 'Exact Phrase' matches rather than 'Broad Match' will generate better-quality traffic.

 

[Jeffry]

That figure is only form our adwords page, I've requested the analytics but am awaiting the details.
In three weeks we've spent £760 so far which has resulted in 672 clicks.

I'll find out about content network now.

 

[Jeffry]

Thanks for the advice by the way!

 

[Esk247]

That figure is only form our adwords page, I've requested the analytics but am awaiting the details.
In three weeks we've spent £760 so far which has resulted in 672 clicks.

I'll find out about content network now.

and that has generated how many sales?

thats working out more than £1 a click

 

[Jeffry]

A grand total of £0.

The orders that we have been unable to fulfil due to non stock are £4200.

My question is how much longer should I try PPC before trying an alternative method?

 

[Esk247]

A grand total of £0.

The orders that we have been unable to fulfil due to non stock are £4200.

My question is how much longer should I try PPC before trying an alternative method?

holy carp! well its not PPC thats the problem its your stock matey.

you can't afford to throw 700 quid away and have that many disgruntled customers.

4200 in unfulfilled orders :O

slow the PPC right down, you've got no stock, you're just pishing money up the wall.

get stock in and warehoused then go back to your PPC.

i'm really confused now, why is PPC NOT working? it IS working...you just don't have any stock to make your money back.

 

[Jeffry]

Sorry perhaps I'm confusing things.

We have had 3 potential orders with a combined value of £4200, each of these orders were for product that our suppliers should have in stock. Out of the 2000 products on the site, approx 30-40 will be OOS at anyone time. 2%. It just seems very odd to me that the only three orders have been for OOS product.

 

[kulture]

it is not at all odd. If your suppliers are out of stock the other retailers are also likely to be out of stock. So customers will be looking for web sites still "stocking" it. So you are MUCH more likely to get orders for stuff you have not got.

 

[Jeffry]

it is not at all odd. If your suppliers are out of stock the other retailers are also likely to be out of stock. So customers will be looking for web sites still "stocking" it. So you are MUCH more likely to get orders for stuff you have not got.

This makes much more sense. I completley understand this. But, why then are we not managing to convert anything else? At all??

Any ideas?

 

[deniser]

But, why then are we not managing to convert anything else? At all??

Any ideas?

We haven't seen your website so hard to say.

If I were you I would stop the PPC straight away, sort out your website to only show things that are in stock and then work hard in house on SEO.

Have you had your website reviewed by someone independent?

Have you fully tested the checkout process?

 

[Jeffry]

We haven't seen your website so hard to say.

If I were you I would stop the PPC straight away, sort out your website to only show things that are in stock and then work hard in house on SEO.

Have you had your website reviewed by someone independent?

Have you fully tested the checkout process?

The checkout has been tested by us and the developer and the site reviewed by friends so far a couple of who are web designers and media types.

If anyone would be kind enough to offer a review I could PM a link?

 

[JMRidley]

I'd be happy to have a look if you PM me.

 

[Jeffry]

We've made a sale.
It's a sample and the client may want a further 15 but it is a start!
To be honest I'd expected a lot more than this but can't figure why it is so slow. We have really pushed the ppc click budget over the last 24 hours to see if we were below some kind of critcal mass but it hasn't made much difference. I'm flummoxed. Good word eh?

 

[Esk247]

We've made a sale.
It's a sample and the client may want a further 15 but it is a start!
To be honest I'd expected a lot more than this but can't figure why it is so slow. We have really pushed the ppc click budget over the last 24 hours to see if we were below some kind of critcal mass but it hasn't made much difference. I'm flummoxed. Good word eh?

You'll need lots of traffic (targeted is best) to make regular sales.

I'm concerned about your PPC though, you're probably paying around 50p a click which is unsustainable if the value of your goods is say £5 (or something).

How much did that last sale cost you in PPC? (look at your adwords and analytics).

If you're spending £750 a month or whatever on PPC then it might be best to talk to Steve Gibson on here, bet he'll sort your budgets out and may be able to offer advice on landing pages to ensure conversions when people arrive on your site to buy.

 

[Jeffry]

PPC is £2.30-£2.50 right now. Value of products £100+ if the sample is OK and they order the rest, this order is worth £2400 the profit of which more than covers the cost of the campaign for yesterday.

I'd decided to spend £1k on PPC today to really drive some traffic to the site and hopefully win some sales but we haven't even had a phone call...

 

[Esk247]

PPC is £2.30-£2.50 right now. Value of products £100+ if the sample is OK and they order the rest, this order is worth £2400 the profit of which more than covers the cost of the campaign for yesterday.

I'd decided to spend £1k on PPC today to really drive some traffic to the site and hopefully win some sales but we haven't even had a phone call...

really...1 grand...1,000???? in 24 hours??

http://www.stevegibsonconsulting.co.uk/pay-per-click-services.html

 

[david.duncan]

Hi Jeffry, I think what you are seeing happening is this. A customer is looking for a particular product. It's out of stock on most other sites so they are looking a lot harder than usual, so they'll try all the sites on page one and then they'll click on the next few pages of the google search results. So sites, like yours that are quite new and not ranked well yet will get clicked on, whereas when everyone else has the item back in stock you won't get a look in. I'll give you a recent example. We sell a children's nightlight. We've had them in stock for nearly a year and only sold one. We don't rank well for this product and there are lots of other retailers who sell it. In the last two days we sold the remaining 8 we have in stock! So I did a check on our competitors and guess what - they're all out of stock and the UK distributor isn't getting any more in for 3 weeks. Do you use google analytics or getclicky? If so, you can check if your clicks for out of stock products are coming from natural search. If they are then I would think the above scenario applies. If they are coming from google adwords then I would stop those particular ads!

Re stock levels generally, as ESK247 says, it's a learning curve. We didn't have enough of some of our lines last Christams so have ordered more this year but don't know yet if this will be an over or under estimate! It's only our second Christmas so I expect we still have a lot more learning to do...

This is absolutely true. PPC will only get you so far. You need to be on page 1 of google organically to make the real conversion of sales in your line of work.

 

[Jeffry]

I've emailed Steve Gibson.

 

[TheGeekestLink]

Sorry perhaps I'm confusing things.

We have had 3 potential orders with a combined value of £4200, each of these orders were for product that our suppliers should have in stock. Out of the 2000 products on the site, approx 30-40 will be OOS at anyone time. 2%. It just seems very odd to me that the only three orders have been for OOS product.

This is not odd at all. We're two years old and I still get a huge amount of business from people who tell me they've tried all their usual sites and then come to us.

It's quite depressing, actually, but a few of them do come back on a regular basis, so things build up. You really are playing a long game starting up a retail website.