I sell bathrooms, and one of my competitors is apparently selling a lot
via taps4less.com, by a lot I mean a large amount (think what an
average guy earns per year, multiply by a few times, and that's the
monthly income).

Is there any way to see how the site is getting so much business? ie to
check out the sources of leads?

__/ [ Logician ] on Wednesday 08 March 2006 17:25 \__

Ideally, you would get access to that foreign server and grab the logs. That
would be the only way for the full story to be revealed. Of course it is
rarely possible and illegal too (I am being cynical here).

In practice, what you could probably do is derive estimates from channels of
traffic by looking at the competitor's placement for various search terms
and making a gross comparison based on the number of referrlas that you get
for the same query. If for some given search phrase you get a certain number
of referrals and your poisition is X, then depending on the position Y of
the competitor, you could possibly estimate how many people percolate
through that SERP to 'that other' site. There are more factor to consider
like page title, summary, etc. Other than that you could identify backlinks
and estimate how much traffic should be expected.

Lastly, remember that people over-inflate figures, so take whatever you hear
with a grain of salt.

Best wishes,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Life is too short to proofread"
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Roy Schestowitz wrote:
The figures are accurate - they are very reliable. I am talking about
money figures not clicks or visitors.

"Logician" <sales@logicians.com> wrote in message
news:1141841502.659875.71790@p10g2000cwp.googlegro ups.com...
But do you know the outgoings?
It's like gamblers, they always like to talk about
the wins, but you rarely here about the losses.

T.J. wrote:
I know they use shopping.com which is 20p/click, and Google adwords

Yes, but this information is really real. I checked out the site and
there is a lot of clever advertising, eg

- discounts are given for RRP and then VAT is added for the sale, but
RRP already has the VAT included. So the saving is not real (out by
VAT).
- also the restocking charges stock goods going back easily.
Re-stocking was illegal under DSR but I am not a lawyer. the law used
to say all returns are exempt from re-stocking charges for 7 days.

But I will try and find out what they are doing to get so much income.

"Logician" <sales@logicians.com> wrote in message
news:1141842820.379550.42300@j33g2000cwa.googlegro ups.com...
Yes, it is a nicely set out site for selling stuff,
Optimising isn't everything.
If they have access to the right products, at the
right price, have a good shopping cart, have good sales
staff and someone clever at doing the ads that is exactly
the sort of thing AdWords is perfect for.
It's all about ROI.
They may be spending £100k a month on Adwords and
Overture but if that brings back £120 k a month then good
luck to them.

Regarding the DSR:
They could argue that they sell predominantly Business to
Business, but if the crunch came and if a consumer stood
their ground, they wouldn't have to pay a re-stocking fee,
but as the company already have the money, would many
consumers go to the trouble of taking them to court?

If you think the ads are blatantly misleading concerning the
RRP, you could try reporting them trading standards, but
I doubt it will have much effect.

T.J. wrote:
How did you get £100k? That's sounds very high.

On 8 Mar 2006 09:25:51 -0800, "Logician" <sales@logicians.com> wrote:

Checked out the backlinks?

BB
--

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__/ [ Logician ] on Wednesday 08 March 2006 19:18 \__

Logician, the time you spend worrying about the competition could better be
spent improving your site. The same applies to statistics vanity and
excessive analysis. It can be distracting and discouraging, which is
unhelpful and counter-productive.

Best wishes,

Roy

PS - TJ: Liked the casino analogy.

--
Roy S. Schestowitz, Ph.D. Candidate (Medical Biophysics)
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On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 03:13:10 +0000, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@schestowitz.com> wrote:

Unusual though it is for me to disagree with Roy, I agree with
Logician here. In business, you have to worry about every damn thing.

BB
--

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bill.kr...ird-prints.htm
http://www.crystal-liaison.com/harmo...dom/index.html
kruse@crystal-liaison.com Gifty! Shiny! BB!