All I hear about is internet sales are up for everyone but me http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=16979 . I am pretty much even-steven for the year. My retail store sales were up 5% for the year, my internet shopping cart sales were up 3% for the year and my customer service telephone sales were down 7% for the year.
I think my internet sales would have been more, if I too, had not fallen victim to the “lets upgrade our website for better sales” idea. Like everyone else I tried to upgrade a perfectly good website and lost ranking and sales for a month or so before turning it off and switching back to the old tried and true website.
My retail store did pretty good because I gave everything away at 50% off to keep up with the big retailers. Only bad thing is the big retailers are buying direct from China and I am not. So my profit margin went down even though my sales went up.
The jury is still out on why my telephone sales suffered. But I am thinking it is a lack of new employee’s knowledge training and product confidence coupled with their customer follow ups. Sounds like it may be time to hone my management skills.
