Part 2 : The mechanics of success

And apart from your salary, what budget do you have to achieve this amount of sales?
I pay the salaries of 3 people, plus the costs of maintaining a website, plus all the printing cost involved in making flyers, catalogs, etc. There is also a tiny amount, CAD$20,000, allocated to advertising. As you can easily imagine that doesn't leave much room for mistakes.

When many are bemoaning the difficulties of selling on the web, how do you explain your success?
Outrageous Customer Service, Totally Awesome Products you truly can't get anywhere else, and the willingness to do anything that is Fun, Cheap and Legal to get the site known!

And where do you think others are going wrong?
I think a lot of people aren't really looking at their ROI. I guess I'm blessed by not having a lot of money to spend - I can't just buy key words on or Alta Vista. I have to rely on spending what little money I have on things that return customers quickly. And I don't wait long before I stop kicking dead horses.

For example - I decided to try using Goto.com. In a month I had spent almost US$100 to get 14 sales - total value of US$87 US. Now it doesn't take a lot of financial background to see that this is not what you call a winning situation. I've been told that these numbers aren't significant - I should wait for things to improve. But I'm not that patient.

What about your conversion figures - how many of your visitors are buying?
Good question. If I'm not running an ad, or doing something to bring in casual visitors, I generally run about a 10% conversion ratio - visits to sales. I've noticed that running an ad generally dramatically improves the number of visits, but while sales increase, it's not at my normal conversion rate. I might drop down to about 5 to 7% depending on the type of site that's running the promotion.

In comparison, Goto.com was running at about 2.3% conversion - they just weren't my kind of people!

The site goes for a simple, homemade look - is that a conscious decision or a budget issue?
Very deliberate decision. My customers are people who want to cook great tasting soup for their families, themselves, their friends. They aren't looking for flashy graphics, sophisticated interfaces, or even cute javascripts. Plain, simple, easy to use says warm, friendly, comfort food. And that's what we offer; soups that aren't terribly fancy - just really, really good. Most of my customers compare our soups to their memories of their grandmother's cooking.

For example, I added a search engine to the site and so far only one person has actually bought something off it! My customer base isn't the young and hip - so they aren't looking for that kind of site! I get a lot of WebTV users - and of course AOL users - and speed is critical for them. I don't want people leaving because the site took too long to load or crashed their computers.

I've also been told that the site is very memorable. The graphics are rather different from the ones found on most sites, and that makes us stand out. On the other hand, I think my free sample page is too cluttered. I'm going to be re-vamping it very soon.

To give you some demographics numbers - my customers are 78% female, and 78% between the ages of 30 and 60. Not the average net user by any means.

Continued...