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If you’ve ever wondered why your ecommerce site is having a slow sales day, it could be a number of factors. Watch today’s episode to learn 6 items to consider when questioning the performance of your online store.
Does this sound familiar?
It’s shaped to be a normal day for your online business. You wake up and check your dashboard, but there’s no sales. A few hours later? Only two orders. At the end of this slow sales day, you yell, “What the #$!%?”
Don’t worry, these days happen to even the biggest ecommerce sites. But to help make sure it’s a normal blip, look at the factors presented in today’s episode. Ranging from PPC issues to external forces, there are several reasons you’re having a slow day of sales.
Happy selling!
-Matt Winn, Online Communications Specialist, Volusion
What do you think ? Let me know by leaving a comment below!
You can also read along here:
Hi everybody! My name is Matt and I’m an Online Communications Specialist here at Volusion. Welcome to Two Minute Tuesdays, where we give you two minutes of ecommerce advice to bolster your online success. Today we’re going to answer a very common customer question, regardless of if you have one product or a million: “My sales are slow – what the heck is going on?” Before you freak out, ask yourself some of these questions to help track down the culprit.
First, especially if you heavily depend on PPC, check on your ads. Are they even on? Are they working? Has your relevancy dropped? If there’s an issue, you can attribute this to a lack of traffic, which explains your slow sales.
Next, take a look at your organic traffic, especially if you’re reliant on SEO. Again, if your keywords aren’t ranking as high, you can check into AdWords and see where the traffic is (or isn’t) coming from. Any variations or traffic lags could also explain a lack of sales.
Third, if you’re traffic is normal, you might consider any recent changes to your ecommerce site. So if you’ve reworked your navigation, reorganized your categories, or redesigned your homepage, customers may be getting lost by the change you’ve made.
You also need to think about the timing of any marketing messages or pushes. For example, if you sent a customer newsletter the week before, you likely received a lot of instant and residual traffic/sales. But if it’s been awhile since talking with your customers, they may have forgotten about you or haven’t had a reason to come back to your site. Thus, it might be time to engage with them again through new communications or promotions.
The next factor is pretty important, although you may have never thought about it. Be sure to factor in external forces. For example, is it a holiday? If it’s Spring Break, there won’t be near as many people shopping online. Is the day near the end of the month when customers are waiting for their next paycheck? Simply put, there are tons of reasons why people aren’t buying that are just out of your control.
Lastly, and most importantly, just remember the nature of business. You’re going to have ebbs and flows in your business cycle every single day. Just think – if you have a really high spike in sales one day, you wouldn’t question that, right? On the same token, it’s understandable that you’ll have lower sales days, too. Business is never steady and that’s what makes it exciting, just like the world of ecommerce!
Hopefully this is helpful in quelling some of your fears on an unfortunately low sales day. If you have any questions, we’re happy to help.
From me to you, happy selling!