Average ecommerce sales

[ferhanz]

I have a client who exports leather to US and Canada now he also wants to move to ecommerce, and he ask me to give him any sales estimates an average small e-store for selling leather goods,pls let me know if someone have a clue, you may tell ANY estimate if u know because i have to answer my client :)

[mikebaxter]

A recent article by James Maguire on improving sales conversions at http://ecommerce.internet.com/how/customers/article/0,,10363_3376771,00.html quoted an Aberdeen Group survey of 225 online retailers. This broke ecommerce sites into Laggards, Industry Average and Best in Class. The Laggards were achieving less than 2% sales conversion. The Industry Average were achieving 2-3% and the Best in Class were 3-10%. He concludes that the best way to increase sales conversion is to improve site navigation and help customers find what they are looking for - couldn't agree more!

[Tholzel]

I have a client who exports leather to US and Canada now he also wants to move to ecommerce, and he ask me to give him any sales estimates an average small e-store for selling leather goods,pls let me know if someone have a clue, you may tell ANY estimate if u know because i have to answer my client :)

I'm in the same boat: a client who wants an estimate of what his revenues will be over time as he launches a unique shopping search engine. Trying to get any kind of estimates at all from the Big Boys (Overture, et al) is useless. Their sales people have apparantly been told under pain of death NOT to give out any hints of how well one could do.

Thus, they are essentially saying, "Sign up with us and be happy." Still, it would be nice to see a couple of revenue growths from anybody--good or bad.

[jestep]

I think it totally depends on the industry that they are in and the time and money that they are willing to spend on marketing and working on their online sales. In many markets there is really no way to succeed unless you know exactly how to rank well in search engines for extremely competitive search terms, and you have a lot of time and money backing your online campain, because $10 - $20 per click from overture and adwords will never make you a profit. Otherwise if the product is only moderately competitive they could really make some good revenue on the internet.

I think it is especially important to make it clear to them that it is going to take time, and patience to get anywhere especially on the internet. Contrary to many people's belief.
If you build it -> they will come, this is definately not the case. It takes a lot of effort to turn a good profit in any market on the internet, because there will almost definately be a lot of competition.


The Laggards were achieving less than 2% sales conversion. The Industry Average were achieving 2-3% and the Best in Class were 3-10%.

I would say that these figures are from established businesses, on the internet, and that one should not expect to turn figures like these until everything is up and running smoothly. Also you have to look at the products that you are marketing. 3% for sales of ship building contracts would be phenominal but 3% for hot sauce would be teriible. Also look at the overture and google CPC's and see if there is any margin for profit at all. Sometimes search terms go for $2 - $3 per click, while the average sale is only $5. There is not much gain there.

So basically to sum it all up, it is impossible to give an accurate prediction of what revenue a company is capable of with out analyzing the exact trends of the industry that they are marketing, and the exact details of the advertising/marketing costs and the amount gained per sale.

[Corey Bryant]

jestep is correct. You cannot predict what people will buy. If we could, we would all be billionaires. It sounds like that want you to help write their business plan. They should seek a specialist in economics to help them understand something like that.

[globalhostinggroup]

People always ignore offline growth from online presents ask a company that gets a good targeted site to ask their in house calls where they heard of their company (how they found them) and I think you will find startling results. One of my clients did this on my request they said that 30 – 35 % of their in-house business was generated from internet leads and 1% online sales.
All it takes is 1 or 2 major purchasers to find that site and start buying.

[fdmaps]

I thought the question was "he also wants to move to ecommerce, and he ask me to give him any sales estimates an average small e-store for selling leather goods"

I run a parts website for a shop.

May 05 first started website number one it was a traffic driver
August 05 ecommerce site first month $3,000 in sales

June 06 $60,000

April 07 $100,000

Since then sales are bouncing from $100,000 to $150,000 a month.

Now a little low with economy sales are a little slow