I had a chance to interview Jason Skinrood (Plastic Rewards) on his thoughts of the 2008 shopping season. Jason has some pretty amazing insight because its his business to keep an eye on it. He is heavily involved in the credit card industry, an avid credit card industry blogger and has a passion for helping people find the credit card that is right for them.
All of the Dream Systems Media sites did really well this holiday season, but I feel we have a good grasp of what needs to be done to keep sales flowing, and what to do to take advantage of a down economy. I just wanted to get some general insight, and over all statistics across the board when it comes to Internet sales. I appreciate Jason taking the time to answer these questions – (we went back and forth on chat so I just cleaned it up and will post it all together here)
Sales and Marketing
2008 holiday shopping season, economy, online sales
This is a question I get asked all the time. Today I was doing a webinar with about 40 people and I was talking with the group about strategies you can use to source products, the only problem was most of them were more interested in me telling them what to sell as compared to how to find it. So many people are interested in doing business online, but they don’t have any ideas about what they want to sell. Because of this I diverted a little bit and spent about 20 min. talking about how to qualify a product and come up with ideas. Here are my recommendation on that subject.
General, Sales and Marketing
Products
All in all I have to say Cyber Monday was a success for those of us here at Dream Systems Media. We saw an average of 5% conversion rates with all our sites. I really think a lot of it has to do with what industry you are in, but we really try to make sure we are in industries that can survive recessions (which we seem to be in).
I have spoken with many of our clients and they had very successful Cyber Mondays too. One of our clients had a 10% conversion rate for the day, and that is their best ever. This year we saw an overall sales increase too. We did have some rough months compared to last year, for example October was probably one of th worst, but overall the whole year was a huge success and increase in almost every statistic from last.
Sales and Marketing
Cyber Monday
Today, Cyber Monday, is the biggest online sales day of the year for many online businesses, but is it and has it really been all that this go-around? It appears not.
Cyber Monday became known as such back in 2005 after the National Retail Federation Trade Group coined th phrase, in an attempt to define the largest online shopping day of the year. As compared to Black Friday for traditional retailers (called such because that was the day that most offline retailers financial spreadsheets went from showing red numbers to now showing black numbers, meaning they are no longer negative). And, as you can guess online retailers have been tentative about what they expect today in the form of gross revenue.
Because of the economic turns and the results seen from Black Friday I think that most e-tailers had formed their own opinion that goes something like this:
General, Sales and Marketing
Cyber Monday
What if I told you that my sales increased on one of my website by almost 50% by doing one thing? Would I have your attention? Well now that I have your attention lets talk about that one thing. The anticipation is killing you isn’t it? It is nothing ground breaking or earth shattering, but its a simple thing you can do that will change things in a big way. Add a toll-free number, and even one better, add an answering service toll-free number if you are not able to man the phones 24 hours a day.
Open For Business 24 Hours a Day 7 Days a Week
The web is open for business 24-7
Sales and Marketing
answering service, increase sales
I recently made a decision to sell my car because I want to buy a new cross-over SUV so I have a little more room in the vehicle for things and what not. My old car (I now say old car because I sold it in about 3 hours after listing it) was a 2001 Ford Focus. I know that Focus’s are not considered hot or hip vehicles, even though there are some out there that trick them out, so I had thought about going the easy route and trading it in when making my new purchase, but the business man in me just couldn’t hack the thought of getting a trade-in value for the car that I knew would be 50% less than what I could sell it for on the private market. Because of that, I decided to put my marketing background to work for me and listed it on Craigslist and a local news station’s classified section here in Utah, ksl.com. It worked like a charm.
Sales and Marketing
Craigslist, Marketing, Sales
