Statistics, Analytics and Insights

When I began this blog back in January, I intended it to be, at least partly, a record of my experience of selling my greeting cards online. And I hoped that maybe others who were just embarking on this journey might benefit from reading about my ups and downs and gain some insights into what works and what doesn't. Inevitably, I suppose, I've drifted away from that original intention at times but last week, I made a sale that surprised me and brought me back into a more analytical mode. So, as it's six months since I started out with the PODstores and I've passed the 100 mark as far as sales are concerned, I put on my bean-counter hat, engaged my left-brain and took a closer look at my sales so far. I was looking for some hard facts that might point me in the direction that would most likely bring in sales both in terms of what kind of greeting card (or products) I should spend my all-too-limited time creating and also where the most fruitful marketplace is likely to be.

I'd already established that for me, Greeting Card Universe, brings me more sales that Zazzle, in spite of what appeared to be far more visits to my Zazzle Store.(Using Google Analytics, suggested by Ulla, has confirmed that the 'store visits' counter on Zazzle is wildly inaccurate!) But I wanted to know whether a pattern was emerging about which 'style' of design was most in demand.

First I'd better make it clear that I have no intention of giving up on the 'style' that is 'me' and trying to do something different because it sells better! But I do have quite an assortment of styles that I'm comfortable with and it might be more financially rewarding to concentrate my efforts on the one, or ones, that bring most sales.

Also, I think it's probably a good idea to establish who and where one's market is! A few months ago a friend of a friend, who had worked for a greeting card publisher, had commented that my designs would probably appeal to the 'older age-group' - no great surprise there, given that I'm not so young myself! So it was the sale of one of my age-specific birhday cards for a 30-yr-old through Greeting Card Universe last week that prompted me to look into this question of demographics more closely.

Looking through all my sales to date through Greeting Card Universe, I discovered that more than 25% of them were in the 'Pen and Wash' style that in many ways comes most naturally to me. The few greeting cards that I've sold through Zazzle have also been in this style. And, on the whole, they were either designs for that 'older age group' - or for children, arguably bought by that same 'older age group'!

         

So this recent one clearly bucked the trend!

In second place, with about 20% of sales, were my collages, though I think that 'statistic' was slightly skewed by the large number of sales of my Christmas Snowman Collage -

    

All the other styles were represented by just one or two sales each, with a strong bias towards the floral designs.

     

       

It's a very different picture when it comes to sales through my 'partyplan' venture, Kitchen Table Cards, where sales have been more evenly spread across my various different styles. But my little analysis of my online sales, as well as being useful from the point of view of which medium to take further, maybe goes some way to explain why I sell more through Greeting Card Universe than through Zazzle.

I may be completely wrong here, but my impression is that Zazzle caters for a much younger generation of customer, a generation that is more interested in the 'trendiness' of their T-shirts' logo than anything else. As with my floral mugs, my 'pretty' T-shirts have been favorably commented on by other Zazzlers but haven't been sold. I created this one last week -

'Sweet Peas' Ladies Spaghetti Top by helikettle
Buy t-shirts at Zazzle

- and somebody commented that it 'deserves to do well'. But so far, no interest, which seems a shame. And it leads me to ask whether that 'older age group' is actually shopping for T-shirts at Zazzle. Seems unlikely to me! So am I wasting my time making 'pretty things' for the Zazzle marketplace? I'd like to hear whether other Zazzlers' experiences are at all similar.

Is there anyone out there who succeeds at Zazzle with floral designs?

Meanwhile it's time I was planning some new 'pen and wash' Christmas card designs - with us 'Silver Surfers' in mind....

Shocking Statistics

First of all a big, HUGE -

Primroses 'Thank You' Notecard by helikettle
More Notecard Cards

- to all of the artists who contributed to 'All Creatures Great and Small' and especially to those who left such kind and encouraging comments! It's good to see that 'traditional' art is still alive and kicking and to hear that people are buying it, in spite of the competition from digital art and photography.

Earlier this month I was particularly thrilled and honoured that my handpainted sweet pea design was chosen by a US customer for her wedding invitations. You may remember that I was asked to help convert my sweet bookmark into invitations over the Easter weekend and the customer ordered just a pack of ten to begin with to check how they came out. She and I have been waiting for the invitations to arrive with baited breath, especially as I had come across a thread on the Zazzle forum that suggested that the finish might leave something to be desired! But yesterday I heard that they are fine and she has now gone ahead and ordered a lot more. Phew!

So that brings me nearer to the Zazzle threshold for actually receiving some money! I seem to work much harder on promoting my Zazzle stores (and stocking up my store with 'products') and yet I seem to sell far more through Greeting Card Universe. A bit of a puzzle as the statistics are showing a steady rise in the number of visits to my Zazzle store, whereas visits to my GCU store remain static - and low! So I did a small calculation and unearthed a statistic of my own that may be of interest to others who are using both of these online stores to sell their work.

In the four months that I've been with GCU and Zazzle, the visits to my Zazzle store have been nearly five times as frequent as to my GCU card store. But when I did the arithmetic, I discovered that I've had one sale through GCU for every 17 visits, whereas through Zazzle, it's taken 413 visits to achieve each sale. And that came as quite a shock!

A couple of possible reasons for this difference have occurred to me. Firstly, the range of products for sale through Zazzle means that, to make a sale, the customer will probably be spending a lot more money. For instance the keds shoes are £60 a pair in the UK! Secondly, I think it's quite likely that a great many of the 'visits' to my Zazzle stores are by other artists. There does seem to be more of that kind of interaction on Zazzle than on GCU. And maybe the fact that GCU actively promotes our greeting cards through its sister sites is another factor, though in fact the majority of my sales have come through Google searches.

I'd be interested to know whether anyone else is experiencing the same sort of discrepancy between store visits and sales and to hear any ideas about why this may be. I think it's important to know, as far as one can, what actually needs to be done to encourage sales. At the moment it doesn't look as if 'store visits' alone are a reliable indicator of sales opportunities, though of course, on the other hand, nothing will get sold if nobody comes to our stores!

In the past week I've made another discovery! At last I've solved the mystery of why I wasn't being offered all the options for creating products on Zazzle - I was starting from the wrong page! So much to learn! The one that was particularly bugging me was that I had no choice of style of keds shoes, just the ladies lace-up sneakers.  I was looking at the slip-ons and other styles that artists were creating with great envy - so this week I've been busy making pretty floral slip-ons -

Primroses Women's Mini-Slip-On by helikettle
Design your own personalized shoes with zazzle.co.uk

I made the design as a repeating pattern - something I haven't done since my screenprinting days  - and it took me a while to get the hang of it again. But I persisted because I was also determined to make a design that would 'tile' properly on the men's ties.

I don't think I know a man who would wear such a flowery tie as this one - 

Floral Tie by helikettle
Browse Tie Ties
 

- but you never know! 

And at least the pattern joins up nicely so I feel encouraged to try again with something a little more masculine!

I've also used these primroses from the shelf in my front porch to make birthday and Mother's Day cards for my GCU store, but they will take a few days to be approved - hopefully they will be appearing shortly.

UK greeting card design 10 years ahead of the rest of the world?

I just came across these 'facts and figures' for the UK greeting card industry.

I'm not sure what they can possibly mean about UK greeting card design! There are some really gorgeous non-UK designs from Judith Cheng here!