A "Must" use Facility to Help Those Sales!

When I first started with Ruby Lane, like most of us, it took me some time to become familiar with all the modules in our shop home. I’d login to Ruby Lane daily and eagerly click on BUYER’S WISH LIST to see what items our visitors liked best and then head over to REPORTS to check out the number of “shop visitors” and the “click report”. I daresay that’s probably what most of do before we scurry off to add new items or go to our day jobs or whatever.

But one day, I got curious about that other heading under REPORTS ie. “Web Log Statistics”. I clicked the link and then on yesterday’s date. Lo and behold, up came information I’d not seen and really wanted to know, like the number of visitors who’d bookmarked my shop the day before. Wow! How exciting to see that 16 people had found my shop interesting enough to bookmark. This was info that went beyond what they’re putting on wish lists!

Eagerly, I began clicking on all the links on the left hand side of the page:

ACTIVITY STATISTICS – this told me which days, even which hours were the busiest along with how long buyers were staying in my shop!

RESOURCES ACCESSED – this told me exactly which items potential buyers were looking at, which items were being looked at the most, what they were adding to wish lists or shopping carts, what page brought them to my site & which page they looked at last.

REFERRER STATISTICS – this told me where my visitors were coming from, how they’d found my shop in the first place. Did they stumble across us when searching Ruby Lane for an item? Did they type terms into a search engine like Google or Yahoo? Did they come over after reading any of my blogs or from visiting my other websites? What a fabulous tool!

PUBLIC SEARCH ENGINE STATS – this told me which search engines had a link to items in our shop that people were trying to locate (read that, interested in buying!) It also provided some crucial insight into what shoppers are looking for and made me examine whether we’re offering those items in our shop. If they’d searched for something, dropped by for a few seconds and exited, obviously we didn’t have what they wanted!

GEOGRAPHIC REGION – this told me where in the world buyers were coming from. I learned that 90 – 95% of visitors to our shop are from the US. The other 10% were coming from Canada, Europe and Asia and sometimes even Australia, New Zealand or places I don’t even think of like Kuwait!

There’s other information under WEB LOG STATISTICS in our home at Ruby Lane but I have found the ones I’ve mentioned above of huge importance in running our shop. After all, as sellers, it’s critical to our success to know where our shoppers come from, what they’re looking for, how long they stay, how they found us in the first place etc. For instance, if you’re thinking about, but procrastinating on writing a regular blog to promote your items, or you think it doesn’t work, consider that at least 10 people a day are coming to our site from my 2 blogs! I also get traffic from my personal sites. This information proves to me that I’m not wasting my time and efforts by running jewelry-related blogs or websites. Incidentally, dare I mention that my stats show no traffic coming from my Facebook or Twitter pages. Hmmm…

And how useful is it to know just what folks are looking for when they’re searching on Google or Bing or elsewhere? Well it gives me some guidance as to what to buy or not buy for our shop! If you’re buying for your own pleasure, that’s fine. But maybe some pieces are not worth putting in your Ruby Lane shop if no-one’s interested in them. Maybe they’d be better sold on other online sites. Ruby Lane does appeal to a certain demographic and a particular kind of buyer. As sellers we always have to think as both buyers and sellers i.e. buy what you you love so you can promote it properly but also buy what people are looking for. And you can find out what that is by consulting your Web Log Statistics!

There’s so much more I could say but I just really wanted to alert anyone who’s not aware of this useful and important section of our Ruby Lane shops to what you just might be missing, and with which you should become familiar. This is the kind of information that big businesses pay lots of money to researchers and marketing firms to find out so they can stay on top of their game and continue being successful. Ruby Lane includes it with our monthly fees. It’s as good as free but it could be worth a fortune in sales to you!

Viga Boland

VINTAGE JEWELRY SHOWCASE

http://www.rubylane.com/shops/vivijewels