Better website would benefit sales for you guys, no question.
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Better website would benefit sales for you guys, no question.
Last edited by KyleH; 09-15-2014 at 01:05 AM.
And we'll keep doing business the way that has been working quite well for us up to and including today.Originally Posted by Petamocto
That's not arrogance, by the way, just a simple fact. Our website is incredibly busy, and nets us more than 60% of our daily sales WITHOUT PHOTOGRAPHS.
Case in point: I put a Beretta Model 71 pistol up for sale on our website at 9.30 AM this morning. Less than 5 minutes later I received a telephone call from a customer interested in buying the gun, but when I would not throw in spare magazines, he decided to think about it a bit longer.
Within an hour of that call, I received an E-mail from another customer who placed the gun on layaway, sight unseen.
Two hours later, another E-mail from another customer looking to purchase that same gun. Alas, it was already sold to the previous customer.
All with no photos.
But as we have noted in several conversations, customers are always free to request pictures from our secondary E-mail address, photos@ellwoodepps.com at any time.
And as for your claim that "people don't necessarily care about the specific firearm they're getting, so much as they just want to see a picture of the type of firearm you're selling", that statement is far from the mark. Ask our photographer how specific the requests are for the pictures he offers. Customers ask for photos of SPECIFIC firearms, showing SPECIFIC features of those firearms -- markings, internal conditions, stock conditions, sights, repair marks, weathering . . . the list goes on. I would counter your claim by suggesting that customers who do request pictures of our firearms ABSOLUTELY want images of specific examples, not generic broad-sweeping photographs of our general merchandise.
Yes, it would be nice to have pictures on our website, but as we have already explained in previous postings, this is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Our inventory is simply too large, and our turn-over times are generally too rapid to make that process viable. Not to mention what size the website would become, and the nightmare it would create for downloading and viewing the site on all but the fastest Internet connections. Nor the manpower it would require to take those thousands of photographs, process them, and post them on the website --- all before the firearms being photographed have already been sold.
Your advice to post pictures of just one SKS when we get 50 or so guns in stock at one time will not alleviate the situation at all. Stop by the store sometime and listen to the customers who ask to see 4 or 5 or 6 SKS rifles because they want to pick "the one in the best condition". Or put up a picture of one Browning Citori shotgun and listen to the customers who want to see 3 or 4 examples so they can pick the nicest wood. Or how about those customers who ask to see 2 different Savage Axis rifles because "one might be better than the other"!?! (synthetic stocks, really???)
Thank you for your invitation to attend a Marketing 101 class, but I have taken part in several of these seminars over the 30 years I have been in the retail business. I have even hosted several marketing meetings at different positions I have held throughout my career.
Salesmanship is not just about showing the product. A true salesman uses his knowledge of the wares he is selling to address his customer's needs and concerns, then offers responses and suggestions based upon the information presented by the customer, and in the end, matches a product to the customer's requirements. That product might not even be the same product the customer first came to the store with the intention to buy. After all, retail selling is a fluid and ever-changing art form. The displaying portion of any sale is the EASY part.
The website is not personally mine to modify. The management at Epps feels that our customers are well serviced by the site as it now stands, and the volume of business we deal with on a daily basis seems to support that claim. Take a look at the number of boards and posts on this site that repeatedly claim how busy our store is on any given day, and I believe those facts speak for themselves.
Last edited by Harrier .45; 09-18-2014 at 05:06 PM.
If gun owners in this country were truly a threat, do you really think our politicians would have lasted this long??
You know, without those pics on your site, and with all the positive things I've read about your store, you're making it very difficult for me to NOT drive up for a visit ;-)
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not ... Genius will not ... Education will not ...
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
Calvin Coolidge
Feel free to drop by, Dusty! We're always here to help!
If gun owners in this country were truly a threat, do you really think our politicians would have lasted this long??
I'm not saying that there's nothing good about your store, and of course I agree with you that there are many good things about it.
However, your position that you would not sell even more product with photos is absolutely false. It's like saying your car is fast enough and you're happy with it, and trying to convince me that a turbo wouldn't make it go even faster.
You think I'm telling you that your store or business model is crap, but I'm not. I'm telling you that if you had pics up you'd sell that much more.
Of course you get guns that you sell right away, but your website is also full of firearms that have been there for years. I can understand maybe not having the time to put new specific photos up if you're selling some models immediately, but how could it hurt to not at least put photos of of the things that have been there forever, like the Colt Python set?
Certainly your decision to make, and if you're okay with good enough, then I guess I'm not going to convince you otherwise. But if you measured your online sales every month, and added photos of everything you had, I can absolutely guarantee you that you would see a significant jump in sales. Not a few more guns per month, but I'd be willing to bet your sales would go up 20% or more.
The problem is. There are a very large number of people still using dialup to access the page. And having 5 or 6 pictures each a meg or so would create havoc for those people. As it is right now. The email for pictures works very well. And people get the pictures they want instead of a generic picture.
And as harrier stated the majority of guns priced properly on the site generaly sell within the day they are posted. Also they bring in dozens of guns a day. It would take 3 or more people to take the pictures of all the guns coming in. And likely to have them sold before the pictures are taken which is a waste of time from a management point of view.
I actually enjoy calling in to ask about whatever product I'm looking for. It's nice to have that human element in today's anti social age. I always get more info than I'm looking for, and usually end up buying more than I had in mind, but that's ok. I guess I miss the old days. Don't ever change
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