I launched my e-commerce site in 2006. Business skyrocketed just about from day 1.
Sales started to decline about 8 years ago. Now, they’re at a point where the site is losing a few dollars a month. Promotions via email don’t even help much whereas they used to do well.
We launched originally on the X-Cart platform. X-Cart was expensive to maintain and hosting was over $500 per month.
So, I had a Shopify store built. There was little improvement other than the store was losing less with Shopify.
Can my problem be that I haven’t upgraded the store to Shopify’s new version? Should I learn AdWords and advertise? Some competitors have used Facebook but I’ve noticed they’re off in a few months.
I like the business but younger companies, and Amazon, have blown past me.
How can I save my store!?
Being an entrepreneur is a roller coaster ride for sure. The digital realm and ecommerce world have changed a lot since 2006 and that playbook won’t work in todays environment unfortunately. Without knowing more about your product, or where you sell outside of online, it’s hard to give any specifics but before you start spending more money on updating your site, I’d say that you should take a detailed look at your overall business. Chart your growth and decline to see if there were any events that led to the drop-off; Identify if there are any issues with your products: Determine if you are still reaching your core demographic; Have you done customer surveys to learn from them?
Ad words have worked well for us and knowledge is power, so learning how to use them effectively is never a waste of time. Advertising in the Metaverse is becoming more and more expensive, difficult, and competitive. I know of several companies that saw rapid online growth and ecommerce sales using Meta, but they invested 6-figures annually to achieve it…and profitability was absent or lean at best.
It sounds like you need to rebuild your community and evaluate the demand for your current product line-up.