Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Business Observations

Pirate Teddy Bear holding silk Rose

After whining about how slow my sales and traffic were in early January,things really started to change about the last full week of January. It's like someone opened the floodgates and suddenly my traffic tripled and orders started coming like crazy. Many of those orders were for Valentine's Day, of course, so we shall see what happens in the next few weeks. Of those many orders, I had at least 5 that were obtained via toll free phone calls. I've never had that many people call me in such a short amount of time. In fact, I'd almost bet that those 5 calls were more phone calls than I received all of last year. Very strange, but good business, so I'll take it.



Here are some interesting things about the traffic. Monday I received a sale from a lady in Germany who wanted an item delivered to a city in Kansas by Valentine's Day. It just so happened that the city is only about 30 minutes from my home, so her chances were very good that Priority Mail will get it there Tuesday. I offered the Express Mail option, but she didn't want to pay more for shipping than for the item she ordered and I couldn't blame her. Anyway, in checking my stats to see if I could find how she found me, I saw that she had searched for "gifts for valentine's day in kansas" or something like that. In google, I came up #13 in this search, which I thought was not bad at all considering that "kansas" is only mentioned once on my index page down towards the bottom where I have listed my name and location, toll free number, etc. I believe that is the first time I have received an order because someone searched for gifts in a certain location.



Then there's the traffic from blogs. No sales from this traffic yet, but still I thought it was interesting. The first traffic from a blog, was not from my own blog, but someone else who has linked to my site, in reference to Valentine's Day as being "Freaky Teddy Bear" and something else day. Not exactly a complimentary link, but people have clicked on the link to see my
freaky teddy bears. Sort of funny really.



Now for the ultimate funny and the reason why I do not make up a lot of any bears ahead of time. I AM A TERRIBLE PREDICTOR of what people will buy. I put in the time and effort to make a very nice page of Valentine gift ideas. I thought I was being very clever in having several different sizes, a wide price range and making the shopping easy by it all being on one page. There were a couple of items that sold well last year and if I had had my helper
working on clothing ahead of time, I would have had her making those items. Guess what! I had almost no sales for those items this year. Know what I sold the most of?? PIRATES! They were not on the Valentine page, people searched for Pirate teddy bear and found me. I don't know if the pirate movies have caused a surge in interest in Pirates or not, but I would never had predicted that many pirates going out the door for V-day. If I had made up items ahead of time, I would have been stuck with that inventory and really have no use for it until next Valentine's day. Some people have told me that there were ads on TV for a pirate bear (not mine, of course!) and perhaps that put the thought in people's heads. I don't know, but I sure sold alot of them and I am glad. That Pirate Bear is one of my very best sellers. Who da thought??

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