Learning About My Customers

Submitted by Morrisons on Tue, 20/09/2011 - 11:37am
I'm pretty selfish when it comes to re-stocking my store, I love "collecting" and then selling books. I rarely think of the customer. But I'm thinking, why do people buy books? I see a few reasons, a.) To increase intelligence (but correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't need to read THAT many books for an intelligent pet right?). b.) To try and get one of the book awards (this is a minority group). c.) An avid book collector (pretty unlikely, although if I weren't selling books I'd definitely be collecting them!). d.) Sell them for higher. e.) Quest? So this is a totally different market than the mainstream neggs, codestone etc. All my prices in my shop (http://www.neopets.com/browseshop.phtml?owner=morrisons) undercut or almost undercut any book in the market place (they come up first or second on the SSW) but don't sell that fast. I don't mind because they do sell and I have a lot of fun re-stocking bought books, but not at a great speed. When I used to sell codestones and dubloons (I got bought of the auction house and exploiting dailies) if you underpriced the lowest current SW price, it was gone within the hour. I'm thinking for books should an advertising strategy be different. Does the shop wizard lose its effectiveness? How many book-shoppers know the book they want to buy before they see it? Should I be looking to spend large amounts of money upgrading my shop to be part of a mall so I get the general "book browsers" who click on the "Book" image on the banner rather than searching for a specific item? Questers can't use the SW so that rules those out to. Should I be focusing less on price, and more on exposure and if so, how should I gain that exposure? Thank you for allowing me to pick your brain :)
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Public - The Lobby - Shop Advice
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the demand for codestones will always be high as like you said.. books have a cap while training is essentially unlimited. ----------------------------- [color=purple]Are you protected?[/color] http://www.neopets.com/~punchback_bob CG information & more
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saudor | Tue, 20/09/2011 - 5:00pm |

That's a good question. I think if someone is looking for books their pet hasn't read they would go through a book shop and buy what they need. So advertising would be best for those customers. But if someone is looking for one book in particular they would probably go straight to the shop wizard. You could put the quest books cheaper so when people on the quest boards look it up they see your shop on the shop wiz.
muffinhead777 | Wed, 21/09/2011 - 10:17am |

So my the main types of book customers we agree are: Questers (purchase through shop wizards, after someone else has looked it up) Book Browsers (they're not looking for anything in particular, found page through external link) Re-stockers (looking to grab my stock if i'm lowest on shop wizard and reprice on their store). I would certainly like to increase my amount of "Book Browsers", but how you expose yourself to these customers without running out of stock really fast (I have around 40 books yesterday, today I have less than 20, i'm thinking maybe I'm being a bit TOO competitive with the shop wizard). NB Ads are to expensive for me to be effective, and I am to small to belong to a mall. Thanks for your reply. P.S How would I find out "quest books"? I thought they were mostly random. Edit: I found this http://www.neopets.com/~Quest_Items#water though i don't know how in-date it is. oh and PPS, was the faerie bookshop really cheap yesterday because it was the festival, because I've now added quite a few of my books to my database that were restock worthy, but everything seems a lot more expensive today :P
Morrisons | Wed, 21/09/2011 - 10:39am |

I find that exposure definetley gets more results. Advertising with NB ads, small or large bring exposure to your shop for an entire week. There are also the chat boards. I don't feel the exposure is the same there and unless you are plugging you board all the time you are only getting lookers with the ocassional buyer. With your shop you are displaying one page but have several items that have more than one quantity. If you offer more of a variety you will get more results with your NB ads. Example: If you are having 3 quantity of an item and they have already read that book they will not buy. But if you have 3 different books they may not have read all three thus producing a sale. This is how you can focus on changing the dynamics of your shop. This will also have the NB, especially the larger ones, paying for itself. As you add stock, shoppers will buy regardless of your prices as now they are already there and it becomes a thing of convenience:) A Simple Thank You Goes a Long Way!
A Simple Thank You Goes a Long Way!
bsmith97 | Wed, 21/09/2011 - 2:20pm |

Excellent advice bsmith97. The shop is only one page because so far i've been to stingey to upgrade the shop, my inventory usually has a further 30 or 40 books and my SBD always hold about 10 because I run out of room, taking the high quantities down a bit and putting in a variety aswell as exposure you mentioned may prove useful. I will consider an NB ad viable, but how much do you consider a "small" ad to be, that will generate some exposure?
Morrisons | Wed, 21/09/2011 - 2:45pm |

Small ad can be any amount that will show up on the NB ads. If you go to the last pages of the NB ads you will see the amount. Usually between 1,000 - 2,000 nps. There are many people there that consume the last few pages...you can do that too or just place up one or two ads. People will go to your ad becuase it is different than those that consume those pages. A Simple Thank You Goes a Long Way!
A Simple Thank You Goes a Long Way!
bsmith97 | Wed, 21/09/2011 - 3:14pm |

Thank You :). So in theory there's two ways to RS sell, increase the profit margin drastically on all your items to reduce the impact of non-sellers and have a large variety of stock at all times. This method heavily relies on promotional exposure, as you'll get no shop-wiz hits. OR the method I'm currently using, the shop wiz is my source of income, making 100-1000NP on every item and mass-stocking. I'm assuming the first method is better as your shop gets older and a lot larger (size 100+?) and you have a way to promote yourself through NB, malls and shop banners. I'm not sure how I would make the transition to the more "veteran" method as I get older though, I shall have to think about it. But, out of curiosity lets say I have 300,000NP savings (because I do). With that money I could purchase a lot of books in a singular quantity and increase my price margin fairly drastically, but would it really pay off? It's a lot of money to blow on a failed project, if you know what I mean? Could I really ensure I get the exposure I need to make it pay off? At the moment I've been slowly pouring about 500k into stock and i'm down to 300k. I know that stock will pay off (buying at 15NP). But this feels, different, is it not?
Morrisons | Wed, 21/09/2011 - 4:35pm |

As you bsmith said, it is better to have variety than quantity, that way you get more searches to show your shop. Also keep into account that searches through the shop wizard depend on the initial letter of your name, so that means that people will receive searches in the SW only for a certain group of names. For example my name starts with "H", that means that when someone searches for a negg in the SW they might get my SW group, which consists of letter H, letter U, and number 7. If someone has that particular item in their shop and their name starts with either of those 3 characters then they will show up on my same SW group. So what I do to price my items is to put it at the lowest 5 on my SW group, depending on how much stock other people have,I wont put a purple negg more expensive than someone who has 50 same neggs in stock, get it? Notice that I dont use the SSW, as not that many people use it. Also, try to restock books that people look more often, like books that faerie quests ask for, or books that the job agency asks for. I for example, stock a lot of novas, since I know that they are required by the quests in the job agency or by some faerie quest. Normally I have 40 novas just sitting there, but after 10 days or so, they're gone. I also recommend having some really cheap books just sitting there, as many people when they come searching a shop for a book and see another one really cheap, like for 100nps that they havent read, then they qill buy it. (I am this class of people lol, if I see a book at 10 or 100nps then I will buy it to read it, and of course it brings some hits and bookmarks to your shop, as people get to know you restock that kind of stuff.) Highly recommend you to stock the booktastic books, the ones that only sell on kreludor moon. Those are REALLY expensive if you get your hands on a nice one, but you have to be refreshing on the shop to get hold of those, as most times only the normal ones are available. Good luck with your restocking and your shop!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.neopets.com/~nightmarewithin Misbehave Mall ~ Everything You Need At The Best Prices!!!
harrier93 | Thu, 22/09/2011 - 10:06am |