Quiet Or Technical Issues?

#33

Unbelievably quiet here too. Lucky to get 1 or 2 sales a day. The app on my phone shows that I 65% down on last year. Ebay sales are up on last year, so I’m not sure if Amazon is doing something wrong or ebay is doing something write!

#34

I dont think ‘a few weeks’ is reliable enough data to positively identify ‘a trend’ :grinning: but welcome to the precarious world of Amazon

#35

That’s the thing though about passing everything down to underlings during the quiet times, you don’t make money, they do lol. You just bear the brunt of the expanding overdraft.

#36

clear your cookies and cache history and you should be back to normal

#37

Same here! Since Friday sales have dropped dramatically. Is it a technical issue or customers not in a buying mood before Black Friday period?

#38

same here. upto last weds - pretty much as expected (ie usual trend) but from thurs till today so far - REALLY slow. and perhaps the worst weekend we’ve had on amazon in 2 years

#39

I have found that Amazon’s search facilities are somewhat flawed. Over the years I have listed several items which, though active, do not show up if you conduct a search for them. For example, I recently listed a Rupert Book, and although the listing is active, if you conduct a search for that particular book it doesn’t show up on the site. And I am sure that we have all conducted searches for, say, a particular DVD and have been presented with hundreds of products that could be books, tape measures or dog food. There is frequently no logic to Amazon searches, which will affect sales if your products are not showing up as a result of those searches.

#40

Today is a desert. No ad impressions at all (usually they start showing up by mid morning) and no sales across my lines (granted, only 5, and gifting, but i usually sell a few by now each day); which is highly unusual by this time; indeed, its a first in my 3 months of being FBA.

Really odd.

#41

Retail in the UK in general is in the toilet. It’s not just Amazon.

The prevailing climate is not one that causes people to go out and spend frivulously.

We’ve got another 4 or 5 weeks of this realistically before Christmas starts.

#42

I think I will agree with you on this.

This being my first Amazon xmas, I have been looking back over previous threads to understand (well, to try to understand) what sort of volume increase i may be able to achieve - and therefore to give me some sense of the stock levels i need in the next few weeks), and these ‘quiet period’ themes appear quite regularly over the years.

It is very tough as a newbie, understanding the intricacies of Amazon; especially when there is a complete absence of general input from Amazon itself (spending trends, that sort of thing). In recent weeks my sales have been mixed; though the overall trend is upwards. I have just had my images renewed (at £275 for an afternoon’s shooting, I hope this works) and have been working hard on my copy, keywords and so on. I feel , aside from tweaking of my copywriting on the bullet points, continuing to drive my rankings through advertising, there is little else I can do aside from let the system run.

Whether this strategy works, time will tell.

But I will be interested to ear from others whether there are any other techniques to help drive sales on here.

#43

Ah, I have just seen this: worst retail sales on record in september (last month). In the following link, a remarkt that even online sales are stalling. This could explain a lot.

#44

A slight understatement!

Amazon search is nuts :peanuts:

#45

Down 50-60%. Been trading on Azon since 2012. Worst year ever on here. Ads campaigns getting poor results too.

#46

My sales are slow too, but this is normal for this time of year, although each year I worry thinking ‘oh no, this is it, it’s finally game over!’
 but then the sales shoot through the roof again in November.

I’ve now put a reminder in my calendar for next year reminding myself
 “Don’t panic, Don’t panic, DON’T PANIC!!!” :smile:

#47

Here’s hoping Bitty :slight_smile:

#48

after the sales drop last month ive finally had a normal sales weekend but mon been dead

#49

Thanks Nosey_Parker I do that every time I get logged out. Its just really annoying.

#50

Haha I would agree :grin: We seem to be back in the game (for now)
It’s been a steep learning curve to say the least!

Happy sales :wink:

#51

Same here actually had a near normal weekend of sales for this time of year ! However and I liked this one 
 Did another search for different lines and I’ll use prelude mum birthday card as an example. Search results on the brand page was 77 !! Yay that’s about right !! Choose prelude so I could look at this marvellous selection 
 Back to main page and behold 29 cards 
 Where did the other 38 go to 
 Had another look at the brand page and now only 45 cards available 
 Weird as I can see all of them on the shelf behind me !!

#52

What on earth have they done to the product search?!?!

I’ve seen people mentioning how search results have become ‘erratic’ of late, but hadn’t realised just how terrible things have become. For exmaple, I’ve just started putting together xmas gift lists on amazon for the kids christmas present ideas to share with family.

I’m searching for quite basic, popular stuff like ‘marvel superhero figures’ and am getting quite an eccentric search return using Amazons own search function - a couple of spot-on results (though dodgy looking sellers, suspect its not official branded gear) but then a load of generic guff that is clearly only appearin because of misuse of keywords.
Honestly, you’d think there were only a handful of sellers flogging that sort of gear.on Amazon! Then conducting the same sreach using Google I get loads of spot-on results popping up (listed on Amazon) that were nowhere to be seen using Amazons search (or buried 50 pages deep in the search return).

I find this alarming as now is the time people are starting to plan for xmas, and if they can’t easily find the products they want then they’re likely to shop elsewhere. Amazon may be the biggest but they’re not the only online retail platform around and shoppers want a nice quick easy shopping experience, not to have to dig and dig to find what they want.

Amazon a clearly aware of this, and you’d hope they’re beavering away on a game plan is to rectify the issue (if they even do want to rectify it, who knows with this bunch!).

Will be interesting to see what happens though - on a personal note I gave up looking onAmazon and went onto another retail platform where I coudl find what I was looking for straight away - I suspect that I won’t be the only one to do so this year.