Slow Business

Hi everyone, whilst in this recession is it right that commonly most businesses are struggling, and to succeed in business at this point in time our we all need to significantly cut our prices and consequently will have reduced profit margins, as a consequence consumers will buy from us if the price is very cheap as many will be motivated to buy only by price?

I am asking this as we have had a spring sale on our website, however this has not helped to generate a huge amount of sales on recently and I don't know if it is to do with the recession and people not buying our products, or if we need to improve upon the website further on what we already have.

Cheers :smile:
Chris
https://www.centralplay.co.uk - Providing DVDs, Games, Music

1. Header seems empty, add more images, maybe flash animation
2. Product description is not as good as it could be. Buttons seem to be placed at random, description is somewhere below (why?).
3. Add low, high and hd video samples to games, movies. For games add official trailers as well as visually attractive replays from multilayer games (like "top 10 frags ever" etc)
4. Create banner presenting differences between dvd and blueray. The one that You have already does not convince me to click on it.
5. Add 'Customers who purchased..' etc. Or even better, hire data mining guy and talk to him what can be done. [expensive]

In any economic environment (but PARTICULARLY now) you have to think like a customer when you design and configure your retail business.

A good way to find out how (potential) customers may be reacting to your site is to get a group of friends to visit it and tell you what they like/don't like about it.

Look also at the possibility of using features like GoogleBase to list your products - but here, price is one of the main drivers... You may need to cut margins to the bone, but if you use it strategically, with well-placed loss-leaders, apply cross-sell and up-sell techniques once people get to the store, they will be encouraged to spend more.

So if you can make a few (generally popular) products very cheap (so they get good responses on GoogleBase), when people click through to those products they are then enticed to buy additional goods through well-designed up-sell / cross-sell mechanisms.

data_digger:

2. Header seems empty, add more images, maybe flash animation

3. Product description is not as good as it could be. Buttons seem to be placed at random, description is somewhere below (why?).

4. Add low, high and hd video samples to games, movies. For games add official trailers as well as visually attractive replays from multilayer games (like "top 10 frags ever" etc)

5. Create banner presenting differences between dvd and blueray. The one that You have already does not convince me to click on it.

6. Add 'Customers who purchased..' etc. Or even better, hire data mining guy and talk to him what can be done. [expensive]

Cheers for that, Do u know anywhere exactly where video samples can be got from instead of using some from say youtube. Also I am relatively new to zencart and am not entirely sure how buttons, if atoll can be moved with the current template?
Also I am not too sure what you mean by a data mining guy?
Cheers for the feedback
Chris

I have the same problem.
What I did to help out was add Used Products.
This has helped some but sales are still down.

Now I'm constantly working on my SEO and FINALLY managed to get placement 4 on Google for used computer games.
This did help increase traffic though sales are still tight.

Next I thought I might try adding an affiliate link for gamefly.
Their percentage payout is pretty good and they pay for anyone that tries their free trail. This worked out and manages to pay my overhead.
I also added an Arcade that brings people around and tried pushing products through there. Conversions on products were not that good from the arcade so I replaced my ads with Google Adsense. This has added some extra income though they don't pay much for taking someone away from my site.
I guess there isn't much left to do but keep pushing for more traffic through blogging, articles and other forms of networking.

Just know you are not alone and there are many of us struggling for sales.

The best of luck to you.

Kendur,
I really like your store website. It's nice to know that you can make that much changes to Zen Cart. I'd like to learn more from you for my new store :)