Because September and October are historically times when many people open their first business, this week is dedicated to topics surrounding starting your own business. While this is not an end-all-be-all list of steps you must take, they’ll help you get a solid head start on your new business venture. Thank you for joining us on this journey!

Once you have decided to start an online business the question still remains “What will you sell?” Here are five questions to ask yourself before you decide what you will be selling:

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Please note: Our 2009 prediction can be found HERE

(Click image above to enlarge)

There are a number of obvious advantages to shopping online. Studies in 2008 predicted that more than ever, people would shop online as opposed to hopping in their gas guzzlers to hunt for deals at brick and mortar retailers. According to the National Retail Federation, traditional retail sales were predicted to increase by only 3.5%, marking the slowest growth rate in six years. Although the growth rate for online sales wasn’t as high as previous years, 2008 still saw a record breaking day.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the Unnamed Day of Biggest Online Sales
A moniker has yet to be given to the biggest day of online sales, as it’s a bit harder to define than those days that have received some increasingly popular nicknames. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is labeled as the start of the traditional shopping season and is one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year. Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Thanksgiving and is the online equivalent of Black Friday, marking the start of the online holiday shopping season. Then there is “the biggest day of online sales”. This day became a record breaker this year yet again with $887 million spent online in 2008, topping the previous year’s total of $881 million.

(For past and recent sales data for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, see: Holiday Sales: When Will Your Site See its Peak Day? (*2008 Updates))

The Past Presents the Future – Predicting Online’s Biggest Day
Estimating a single day of highest online sales proves to be a bit trickier then estimating the total amount of sales. For example, an estimate of $44 billion in total online sales (which was made by Forrester Research for holiday sales in November and December of 2008) can be reached by meeting a dollar amount within a fluctuation of $999.9 million, give or take. In looking at the data we’ve collected in the chart above, you can see that making a prediction for 2006 would have been easy: “It will fall on the second Monday before Christmas.” The actual date, however, took the first step at deviating away from the norm by falling on a Wednesday instead. With fluctuations in traditional patterns, forecasters are becoming less likely to voice their opinions as to when this big day may occur.

Using only seven years of data (as there are no searchable records for largest days prior to 2000), there is a chance that future big days will not follow past trends. From 2000-2007, the biggest day of online shopping fell on a Monday, with the second Monday before Christmas marking the largest shopping day six years running. As seen in the chart above, the number of days between the biggest online shopping day and Christmas Day has increased on average, with only six days starting in 2000 and over twice as many in 2007. This also reiterates the fact that on average, consumers are doing their online shopping earlier year after year. The one instance where the number actually fell instead of rising was a rare case when, for the first time in seven years, the largest day of online sales came on a Wednesday in 2006.

Using the data available from 2000-2007, the biggest day of online sales for 2008 had an 86% chance of both falling on a Monday, and having an increase in the number of days between itself and Christmas. Although I predicted the big day of online sales would be on December 8th (see: Biggest Online Sales Day Near), the actual day fell one day later on Tuesday, December 9th. So when will 2009 see it’s big day? Although there’s no way to make an exact prediction, it’s safe to say that online store owners should be prepared for an increase in sales sooner than ever!

Total Sales for The Biggest Online Shopping Days of Years Past
2006 - Wednesday, December 13th - $666.9 million
2007 - Monday, December 10th - $881 million
2008 - Tuesday, December 9th - $887 million

-Stacie Leonard, Ecommerce Marketing/Copywriting

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As the price of fuel climbs with every fill up, consumers are looking for ways to drive less and scale back their lifestyles in effort to squeeze the most value from every hard earned dollar. A leisurely Sunday afternoon drive is a thing of the past as cash-strapped commuters are forced to reach deeper into their wallets to cover necessary transportation expenses.

While the cost of travel has become exorbitant – and prohibitively so for many – online shopping has come to the forefront as an attractive and economical alternative to hitting up the mall or supermarket. With everything from clothing to pet supplies to groceries available on the internet, unique opportunities exist for savvy online businesses poised to serve the needs of consumers’ changing lifestyles.

“Decreased fuel consumption may make gas station owners frown, but it could bring a smile to the faces of online business owners, whose products all of a sudden may have greater appeal to consumers looking to eliminate unnecessary shopping trips during the current gas crunch.”
Continue reading…

-Pam Westbrook, Ecommerce Marketing/Copywriting

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Blair Rhodes had experience with websites as a web designer for Hollywood studios and software companies. That’s why when his online store, The Pashmina Store, went down during the Christmas season of 2004, he knew he could do better.”We knew we needed a more reliable company and a better website, but the final straw that made us switch was Christmas 2004 when the website was down more than it was up. Every hour it was down

would cost us several hundred dollars in sales and technical support was non-responsive. It was horribly frustrating,” said Blair.

After doing much research, Blair chose Volusion. “I’m happy to say that we made the right choice in going with Volusion. The Pashmina Store has had 3 very successful Christmas seasons with Volusion and I cannot remember a single case of downtime during even the heaviest of traffic. Plus, our average sales growth has been over 60% a year since we have moved to Volusion.”

Blair has also used Volusion’s admin features to help streamline his business operations. “A great backend feature is being able to manage inventory so easily. I always know how many items we have in stock and can easily calculate our total inventory value. The most important day-to-day improvement that Volusion has helped with is shipping. By quickly being able to import and export customer shipping files directly in UPS software, we have saved over a thousand manhours each year. We actually used to have to enter every shipment by hand! Another great day-to-day time saver is the batch order printing and processing. This also used to be done one-by-one. During the busiest times when hundreds of orders are coming in fast, this saves an enormous amount of time.”

The Pashmina Store has continued to experience phenomenal growth since starting with Volusion. “The Pashmina Store is expecting to continue to grow at 60% a year for the next several years. We plan to do this by expanding our product line to include more elaborate prints and designs on our pashmina scarves, wraps and shawls and also adding cashmere clothing items such as sweaters and robes. As we continue to grow and attract more traffic, we will most likely move to a semi-dedicated hosting plan at Volusion. Since Volusion has been a big part of our success, we plan to keep our business there as our traffic and hosting needs increase.”

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Dennis Altman refused to spend $3000 and wait nine weeks to get the electronic air suspension on his Range Rover fixed at the dealership. “I hung up still laughing, when I settled down I hit Google and started learning. I’ve worked on cars since I was 14, my 7 years in the US Navy I trained and worked as a pneumatic and hydraulics mechanic on nuclear powered submarines so I knew I could tackle this problem.

Within a few days of serious digging I had found almost everything I needed to repair it for about $400. I had the suspension running in an afternoon,” said Dennis.

Dennis quickly realized that there was a market out there for Range Rover parts, since the dealers took so long and charged so much. ” I did a little brain-storming with my wife and friends, my wife made up a logo and I bought enough orings to put a 10 oring kits on eBay for $12. each in Jan ‘06. I figured if they sold by the end of the month I would be happy, and have some beer money. They sold out in less than a week and I’ve been growing since.”

Rover-Renovations started on eBay, but Dennis found that eBay was not scalable to his operations. “EBay was good for low volume, but more than 3-5 orders/day was killing me, it took 10 minutes to process an order and print shipping labels. I think recently eBay has gone downhill, kind of like a good antique market that has let in junk-sellers and the good dealers stop coming. I keep a few things listed there just to drive traffic to my store, I get maybe one order/month through eBay and I dread the email. I have few ‘problem’ customers and 90% of them purchase through eBay.”

After trying out a Yahoo store, Dennis used Volusion’s Yahoo Import tool to quickly switch his entire store to Volusion’s platform. “My Ystore import was almost 2 years ago, so I don’t remember much of the import other than I was amazed at how fast it was. I only had to setup my categories and payment settings (I already had my merchant account), do some smoothing and transfer my DNS settings.”

Since switching to Volusion, Dennis now gets 51% of his traffic from natural search results. “Volusion has helped my marketing immensely by saving me the time of worrying about SEO, it just happens automatically. I don’t have to constantly comb over my site for improvements,” said Dennis.

Dennis has big plans for www.rover-renovations.com. “I plan on leaving the day job in the next 6 months (several outside factors are going into the exact date) and going full time at running Rover Renovations. I am constantly adding to my product-line with a goal of being THE place to go for all things Range Rover. It is a small niche, and I want to own it.”

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