Closing An Ebay Store-Part Three

This is the third installment in this series. You can find Part One here and Part Two here.

As you may recall, I had just prepared a survey and sent it out their invitations.

Heres what happened:

• Just a little under half of the people I sent the email to completed the ten question survey. Not bad stats for a survey at all.
• When asked if they were concerned about the economy, the majority said they were.
• Those that responded they were concerned about the economy indicated they had reduced their non-essential purchases from 50 to 100 percent. This is important because, the last time I checked, vintage childrens books would NOT be considered an essential purchase.
• Every respondent said they were very satisfied with my product and service.
• All but one said they made roughly 25 percent of their purchases online. This would keep with making either frequent small purchases or infrequent large ones and my sales data backs this up.
• They listed quality followed closely by price in ranking the most important qualities they look for in an online merchant.
• As for rating their buying incentives, store sales took the top spot over shipping discounts by nearly a 2:1 margin.

All in all, I was very pleased at the results. It told me that my best customers are not above being concerned about the economy and that they are much more likely to respond to this fear by cutting way back on their non-essential purchases.

I also learned that if I wanted to get people’s attention I would have to start running sales.

Because I had gone to an all-auction format a couple of months ago, I had to get a little creative. When I used to place books directly into my store, I could pick a day of the week and, with the help of an ebay tool, put a bunch of books on sale for 50% off. The all-auction format meant I would have to work with an initial bid price point. I decided to run 99 cent auctions on Mondays with the possibility of expanding it to other days of the week. I also decided to include Buy It Now prices on select books.

I sent out an email a week ago detailing my plans for change in my store. It had a link in it to my first Camtasia video you can watch here. Remember, be kind…it IS my first.

The first of these 99 cent auctions closes tonight and I’m very interested how it goes. If my customers do not respond to the ability to get these books potentially for one third of their regular bid price with the possibility of not having to wait a week for the auction to close, then I’ll have to go back to the drawing board.

Join me in the fourth and final installment to find out how they responded and whether or not I’ll be able to continue with this store.

Jeff

[tags]childrens books, ebay store[/tags]