Happiest holidays... ever. What's next?
What a start to the holiday season for Bonanza sellers! It has already been one heck of a Q3/Q4, between the launches of Webstores, Direct Checkout, Affiliate Program, and Background Burner Pro (not to mention the recently lowered price of Shipping Labels, our top-voted feature from the feedback site). Even by Bonanza standards, our programming team really outdid themselves this quarter. They get a cookie. Most websites wouldn't be able to launch that many big features in a year, let alone 4 months.
Yeah, it's about that time
Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are in the rearview, we can finally begin to gauge what kind of impact these new additions have had on our sellers' bottom line.
Put it in context
Before jumping into our numbers, it is worth noting for context that its been a good start to the holiday season across the web. According to the Washington Post, ecommerce sales were up an average of 12.6% amongst their surveyed retailers. Comscore was even more bullish, measuring an average increase of 29% over Black Friday & Cyber Monday. From the improving economy to the proliferation of mobile connectivity, it's a great time to be an online seller.
Playing a different game
Meanwhile, at Bonanza, our sellers have taken full advantage of new opportunities to make that 29% growth look paltry. This year, the average Bonanza merchant saw an increase of not 29%, but 129% in the value of merchandise sold over the Black Friday weekend, compared to 2013.
Color us impressed, and grateful! Thanks to your efforts in finding the best merchandise and making happy customers, you averaged an increase that was 4.5x greater than the rest of the ecommerce world. Not bad at all, gang.
Now what?
Things should get even better from here. With ever-more sellers diverisfying their outreach through their own webstores, plus capturing new streams of buyers via the affiliate program, we are optimistic that this momentum can be carried into 2015 and drive Bonanza toward becoming the next major marketplace brand.
Of course, it won't hurt that with the breakneck sales growth of our sellers, we will have more revenues to direct toward advertising both online and in print. In addition to the many developer roles we are now hiring for, we are also actively seeking to build a sales & marketing team so we can excel not just in building a product that users love, but also in making sure we continue to attract new customers and continually broaden our reach.
This is where you come in
Last year at this time, we emailed an annual survey that thousands of our sellers were kind enough to respond to, giving us a blueprint for how we could make your life easier in 2014. As Mark outlined in this recent blog post, within 8 months of the survey, we had managed to implement almost every major feature request we had received from your suggestions.
Now is the time to build our blueprint for 2015. We have a long list of our own ideas about how to keep improving the new features we launched this year (Webstores and Background Burner Pro, in particular, will be improving rapidly over the next couple months), but your feedback is the most essential tool for calibrating our efforts with your needs.
I am currently putting the final touches on this year's seller survey -- expect it to reach your inbox within the next few days. As with last year, we promise to listen to all ideas, to summarize the results, and to follow up on this survey later in 2015. We plan to be accountable for bringing your suggestions to life.
Now, get back to breaking records
In the meantime, keep on breaking those sales records, and don't be shy to tell a friend about the exciting movement underway here. With your help, we believe Bonanza has a golden opportunity to take the busywork out of becoming a successful ecommerce entrepreneur.
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13 responses to Happiest holidays... ever. What's next?
Dang… I tired myself out just READING about everything that was done this year. Great job! Bonanza Webstores 2.0 can’t get here fast enough – but sellers need that ability to move items between booths to help create a better webstore. I want my webstore to have only certain items in it, so I need to split my booth items into two different booth accounts so that one of them can be used as the anchor for my Webstore. Alternatively, a way to keep certain Booth items OUT OF the Webstore would also work for me. Kind of like the publish/unpublish feature that we have on the Webstore pages.
Here’s an additional feature I’d like to see: the ability to give coupon/code discounts in my Webstore that are NOT given in my Booth. I want to use a special Webstore discount that serves as an incentive to drive sales to the Webstore. Something like “on your next purchase from my Webstore get an additional 10% with this coupon code” (but I don’t want it to work on a Booth purchase or sale).
I’m also hoping that you can squeeze in some real blogging features into the Webstore (maybe using a WordPress extension if that’s possible).
Sounds great! My sales have certainly picked up some speed here. I’m looking forward to bigger and better things with Bonanza this holiday season and in the new year!
My sales have been in the casket for months…not sure what I’m doing wrong here, but nothing sells. Really at a loss to figure out what I can do now…
Hope things improve for you soon spencer455. We have created a help page that will help you zero in on potential opportunities, http://tinyurl.com/IncreaseYourBonanzaSales
Let’s offer sellers the shipping choice of USPS Regional Rate A and B boxes – they really save the buyer shipping costs.
I am pleased with your dedication to move forward to make this a better place to do business. There are a few things that I see that are not conducive to the pleasant atmosphere of buyers and sellers here, because they cause a lot of stress and waste a lot of valuable, productive time.
>Delivery and Payment options really needs some tweaking. I have noted that in the survey. Payment options and shipping costs play a big part in sales for buyer’s costs and seller’s profit margin. In addition, there are some very large items that are not practical to ship, yet ‘pickup’ is not provided as an option.
>A place where one can get clear and concise answers (help). I have spent countless hours searching for answers, reading through forums, and contacted customer support, and still do not have answers. This creates a state of frustration, and does not help business or sanity at all.
Thank you for your feedback VintageSpecialties, we appreciate that.
We have been working on improving (and will continue to improve) our help pages so hopefully it takes you less time to find information that you are looking for. We had a look at your support requests and could not find any requests that went unanswered. If you are still needing assistance, please do reach out again (Attn: Mark) and we will do our best to assist you.
Thanks for everything.
My sales have been pretty slow this year, but I accept all blame for that. I’ve been working so much in ‘real life’ that I’ve had no time to dedicate to improving and adding to my listings. I expect that to change in Feb. or March, and hope to get new listings added, and to fix up the ones I have.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all the Bonz staff!
My sales were dead for almost 4 years until recently. Now, thanks to some site improvements, ALOT of inventory and hard work, my sales are picking up a little bit. However, I agree with mwdouglass – some different shipping options (for calculated shipping) are needed. I would like to see the ability to offer local pick-up and Standard Post or Parcel Post. All of my listings are listed with Priority Shipping simply becuase there is no better choice. I’m sure sure that customers would like to make the choice themselves…either Priority or Standard/Parcel. As a customer myself, I would like the choice as, often times, I don’t need something right away and am willing to wait for it and pay a cheaper cost.
All in all, I’m happy with the improvements and look forward to seeing continued tweeking and improving, along with new tools to help all Bonanza Sellers do well.
I would like to see y’all develop a mobile app! It’s frustrating when my other stores DO have apps that I use; and when I hear that cha-ching on my iphone, it takes me awhile to realize that it has to be a Bonanza sale because I can’t find any notifications from my other apps as to what sold! Also, without the app, I can’t check on store business for Bonanza when away from my computer as I can w/the other store apps! It would be nice to be able to answer customer questions when they are sent instead of waiting till I got home to the computer. I feel this is holding me back considerably in doing what I’d like to do here. I’m sure the customers would appreciate it more too.
I would like to be able to charge the full price for the most expensive book, then 50% off for books of same or lesser price in the same order. I tried leaving a message to that effect in the chat box, but discovered later that the chat box does not appear for unregistered visitors. Besides, doing it that way, they would have to contact me to get the deal. The discount should be able to be set (10%, 25%, etc.) I would probably use this feature in my other booth also (not books) with a smaller discount.
Also, I would like to have a link to show all of my Freebies from each item listing page. So that the buyer could easily pick out a Freebie when they make their purchase.
(I intended to put this on the annual survey for my second booth, but I guess I just get to answer the survey once. lol)
Thanks for all you do, Bonanza staff!
When showing the “current items for sale”, etc. on my edit or update page I would really like to be able to click on my items that are “ready for sale” to see which ones they are without having to go though every item looking for a pale green dot. If there is a way to do this that I am unaware of, could someone please let me know?
Thanks again, and Merry Christmas!
Hi, Grammatami….
Use the Batch Editor (Update Items as a Group) to filter your items to those that are READY FOR SALE. You will find the Batch Edit function under the “Sell on Bonanza” menu in the top left corner of your webpage. It can also be found on the Add or Edit Items page. It is one of the four tab choices near the top of the page.
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