In the Loupe
In the Loupe
By the Numbers: A Look Back at 2024's Metrics & More
We are back! Mike shares e-commerce trends from Punchmark's data, focusing on average cart value and sales performance across different months and compares year to year.
Take Aways:
• AOV reveal fluctuations in average cart value from 2021 to 2024
• Notable months for sales performance include April, August, September, and October
• Friday emerges as the top day for e-commerce purchases
• Providing flexible financing options boosts sales potential for retailers
• Diverse payment methods enhance customer convenience and engagement
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Welcome to In the Loop. What is up everybody? Welcome for the first time to Season 6 of In the Loop. This is going to be our kickoff episode and we're going to be diving into some data and trends surrounding the Punchmark e-commerce platform and some of the statistics I was able to pull. I got a report delivered to me at the beginning of every month that kind of summarizes the previous month and what I've tried my best is to pull a couple of key data points from the past few years and then see how 2024 kind of stacked up to it and then maybe I'll do a little bit of projecting and predicting surrounding 2025. So I think it'll be a really good talk. Let's jump into it. Maybe a shorter episode.
Speaker 2:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmarkcom. Slash go.
Speaker 1:And now back to the show. All right, let's jump into this thing. So, like I was saying in the intro, I get a report delivered to me from the Punchmark system on like day five of every month and it recaps the previous month's e-commerce performance. And I have been having this report delivered to me and I kind of do a little bit of formatting and finagling so it's more readable for the last four years, ever since November of 2020. Last four years, ever since November of 2020.
Speaker 1:And some of the things that it tells me, for example, are the number of clients in our system who made at least one sale, and it's something that we're tracking because we want more clients to be successful. Not every client has e-commerce turned on, though we hope more clients turn it on, but we are tracking clients that successfully make clients turn it on, but we are tracking clients that successfully make one sale. It's kind of like landing a fish. If you're fish and you go and you land at least one fish, it means you have the right bait. Then it's about getting on the water more, and that's kind of how we see e-commerce is. If you successfully land a fish, that means that you're at least fishing in the right spot and that there's fish in the pond. Another thing that we are also tracking is the number of sales in a month. This can fluctuate and, as you'll see, I break it down by year.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I've seen is that some years there's more sales, more number of sales, and those years sometimes have lower cart values. That can sometimes have to do with just fashion trends. So, for example, in 2023, lab-grown diamonds were kind of like at its all-time peak value peak, I don't know, just buy-now reasoning, like you get such a great diamond for pretty cheap and people were sort of you know all the consumers were buying it up because lab grown diamond jewelry was pretty valuable. So, as a result, people were buying and checking out with you know those more often and, as a result, the average cart value or average order value, aov, is a lot higher, but there were fewer checkouts. So no one metric is inherently more important than others.
Speaker 1:I guess you could say total sales dollars is important, but that's beside the point. And then some years we see there's like a really high number of sales but the average value is a lot lower, and that can actually be like last year. Last year we saw a high number of monthly sales and we saw a low average value, and that's because people were buying stuff like fine gold jewelry and, like you know, simple, simple jewelry online instead of having a diamond in it. And if you have a diamond in it, like, it pushes it up a lot more, so there's no inherent value. That is the end, all be all, I guess, besides total dollars transacted, which we do pay attention to. But that can also be lied about as well, because sometimes one of our biggest whale clients you know we have a couple of clients that do really well on e-commerce and they do sort of move the needle. If they have a sale that's like really successful online, they might single-handedly move our system and skew a lot of our results, which has happened in the past One year.
Speaker 1:I was looking let me see if I can go back and see there was one year oh yes, august 2021. One of our clients had this sale for, like, diamond necklaces or something like that, and they moved like a hundred of them in a month and the average value of the diamond necklace was very high and it skewed all of our results for that one month because it was like suddenly there was like all of these pretty expensive necklaces that were getting shipped out, and it really changed, kind of like what our normal, because a lot of times people are just selling you know pendants and you know little stones and stuff like that and those get. They all get weighed the same. So let's talk about some of the trends that I noticed from 2024. This is e-commerce trends. So I don't know anything about what's going on in your store, but I can tell you what we saw from your system. So the average cart value so I say cart value because it delineates order value away from just your store, because sometimes people can conflate it and it's different. Some people call it AOV, I'm just calling it average cart value. So I'll give these actual, true numbers so that you can kind of see how things fluctuate, because things did change kind of a lot in 2020 to 2024.
Speaker 1:2021, obviously the pandemic was in and we were still getting stimulus dollars and people were spending their dollars on luxury goods online and nowadays you kind of have to compete with the travel industry the you know travel industry. So in 2022, I'll give you an idea the average cart value was very high. It was $554 for an average checkout, but we actually had that was our fewest number of sales per month. So like there was high average order value but lower number of sales. You see how they're kind of like inversely correlated a lot of the times. But in 2024, our average cart value was $457.
Speaker 1:So one of the things about this system and about this episode in general is a lot of times I'm probably not going to be saying true numbers, like it's not in our best interest to share how many dollars were transacted on our system, because that might be a lot to some people and it might be not a lot to a lot of people. You know, if you compare it versus a platform that has 2,000 retailers on it, as opposed to, you know, 500 retailers on it, obviously it should be four times better. Their numbers should be four times better. But if ours is 3.5, or theirs is 3.5 times better, maybe our clients are doing better. Do you see what I mean? So the other thing that we're seeing is I'm noticing that the number of sales per month stayed very consistent across all of the months, with the exception of a couple of months.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to tell you what months were big and which months were bad this year as compared to other, like months. So I have a system set up where I compare January 2024 to January 2023. And what I'm able to see is so January, february, july, 2024 were down compared to 2023. The month that was the most down and I have been trying to figure it out, may did a lot worse, did a lot worse, and just e-commerce wise. Why is that? Well, I could speculate, I wonder sometimes. If May, you know Mother's Day, it's not as big of a deal. There wasn't as much of a marketing push. Also, the economy was like a little bit weird around, especially around April, may.
Speaker 1:In general, we didn't really know what was going on. There was a lot of fear with the dollar. We didn't know if there was that word I hate that word recession vibe session. The vibes were down even though there wasn't a recession. People felt like there might be one. But when you compare months that were up, here's the months that were really good for 2024. The months were April, which was actually really strong, august, september September was one of our best Septembers that I've ever tracked and October. So the months that were up we notice April, august, september, october. So if you notice those months in particular August, september, october. That's when things kind of solidified, I feel like the you know impending recessions sort of dried up, and you'll notice that the months that were the worst were at the beginning of the year.
Speaker 1:So do with that information what you will. It's just something I've been paying attention to. So another thing I pay attention to is what days of the week are people buying, and one of the things that I find interesting is if you ask people, hey, what day do you think people buy online, you might expect it to be the weekends and you could be a little bit right. Saturday is our second best day for buying and our best day is Friday, but Sunday is actually our lowest day, which is weird. I'm basing a lot of this information on the month of November, because November does have a lot of transactions and it's probably the cleanest set of data I have. But in order of most popular days, it goes Friday, saturday, thursday, which is interesting, and then Sunday no one's buying anything. They're focused on getting ready for the workday. I guess I don't know, but that's just kind of the data I'm able to pull. So what I guess I don't fully understand is the average number of sales per month is pretty good this year, but the average cart value was down and I would probably have to, you know, if I was to give a reasoning behind that. I think one of the things I would say and I'm in, you know Jewelers, helping Jewelers, and you know, ijo, exclusive, rjo, exclusive I was noticing that a lot of people were saying that their months leading up to the holiday seasons were really good, that they had already beat their goals for Q2, q3, q4 pretty early on, and then their Decembers had a really late start and that they kind of were having like a there's a couple of people freaked out a little bit about how slow their December started.
Speaker 1:From what I saw online, it ended up, you know, meeting the norm. I saw this one post I can't remember, I think it was Travis Piper. He said he commented on someone's post who was asking that same question and they were like hey, like, don't freak out. Every year, when I do better than average, I always come back to normal, and when I do worse than average, I always come back to normal, and that's what it is. There's normalization for a reason and I thought you know what? There's a reason why regression to the mean is a real thing, and it's one of like the laws of finances it's you're never as smart as you think and you're never as dumb as you think, and for that we should be grateful.
Speaker 1:The other thing I kind of want to shed a little light on, I would like to shout out if there's one thing I would recommend people consider for this year is do you have a good financing option, both online it's very important to have it online and in store. And what I like about these financing options, we have a couple of partners. So we have Sezzle, which allows you to split payments into four, and you have Affirm, which allows you to split your payments, I think, up to 12. So, for example, if you had a $1,200 ring, you could pay it over, you know, 12 months, I think, for like almost $0 of interest. And I believe both of these financing companies pay the merchant 100% upfront and they assume the risk. So what's cool about that is it doesn't really matter to you. I don't even think that they take any percentage or very much percentage. What they do is they reap the interest and they assume the interest loan.
Speaker 1:I would recommend that you look into a financing option, and the reason why is we saw that 8%, just about 8%, of sales were financed, and this is actually just for November. It's too hard for me to take every single sale across all the years or anything like that, but to give you a snapshot, November of 2024, we had about 8% of sales were financed. But what's interesting about that is of our top performing clients. So in our top 20 clients who you know, if you stack rank them for dollars transacted there were 10 of them. So fully 50% of the top 10 or so had, or of the top 20, had a form of financing and successfully checked, had someone check out with it.
Speaker 1:And what that's telling me is that it's not like a make or break but it does help, and I think it's twofold. A lot of times when you have a financing option, you are encouraging people who might be on the fringe of ability to buy a piece of jewelry to be able to say yes and successfully purchase. So maybe someone that's like, hey, I need a piece of jewelry for a gift, or I need a gift in general, it's $200. I'm going to split it out over four payments. That's $50 payment for four months and then suddenly it's within reach. But also what we're seeing is that financing is allowing people to have higher average checkout values. So people that do have financing I think that this is true across all industries they are typically having higher checkout values because people are able to go from you know, maybe their budget is $100, but they can split it out over four months and now they can afford a $400 piece of jewelry as opposed to just a $200 piece of jewelry. So we're seeing that it allows things to flex both ways.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing I kind of want to draw some attention to, and this one I don't even have a piece of advice related to it, but it's just more of an observation, so do with it what you will. Advice related to it, but it's just more of an observation, so do with it what you will. One thing I see is we have alternative payment methods. This is this kind of catch-all phrase, so what that means is we have Amazon Pay, which allows you to pay through your Amazon account. We have PayPal Pay, which allows you to pay through PayPal, which I got.
Speaker 1:To be honest, I don't use PayPal, so I don't, it's never been applicable to me, but some people like it. And then there's Pay by Telephone, and that one I've always been a little bit iffy about, because telephone payments, I've heard, are much more likely to be scams. That's why I always recommend that you have you know, um, that's why I always recommend that you have you know a second level of credibility behind it, such as a fraud protection system like, like um, clear sale or eye for fraud. So I think that having alternative payment methods is just a win. If people want to give you their money and, for some reason, they like PayPal, I think you should just be able to offer it. Luckily, the Punchmark system does offer those types of things and we're working to expand it to include other peoples, but it's worth mentioning. I think you're seeing it on a lot of different platforms, especially when it comes to luxury merchandise. It's worth it to you know. Offer other payment systems.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then I'm going to sort of wrap it up and see if I can put a bow on this. I think the main things I want you guys to focus on going into this year and what I can help you with. Okay, stay with me. Punchmark is so excited to announce the launch of our email marketing campaigns crafted specifically for jewelers. Take your jewelry store's marketing to the next level with Punchmark's email marketing campaigns crafted specifically for jewelers. Take your jewelry store's marketing to the next level with Punchmark's email marketing service. We created tailored, data-driven campaigns that will not only engage your customers but also boost your sales. Whether you want to be hands-on or prefer a fully managed service, we deliver everything you need to stay connected to your audience and increase your ROI. Let's grow your business through the power of strategic email marketing. Learn more at punchmarkcom slash email dash marketing. Again, that's punchmarkcom slash email dash marketing.
Speaker 1:And now back to the show. Okay, everybody, this is going to be a little bit of a shorter episode anyway, so I do kind of want to wrap this up. But the one thing I want to sort of encourage and the one data point that I've been tracking the most and I'm looking at my data points across all months I have things split out over the course of the last four years and I have them all side by side in this bar chart Across the 12 months. I will say that it looks like it's about eight out of 12. We set records for the most clients who made at least one sale. So what that means is we've had the most clients who successfully caught a fish, and I think that what I really want to encourage people for this year, going into 2025, it's okay to try, man, and I think that it may be it's partially my fault.
Speaker 1:I think that a lot of people go into this and they're like I'm going to do a million dollars online or I'm going to do whatever that number is for you, I'm going to do $100,000 online, or they set these goals for themselves and I sometimes am like you know what? Just let's just get started first and then we can decide what is actually, you know, a benchmark of success. If I was to make a, you know, make a stance for something or make a projection, I would recommend that you do make some goals, but make them smart, and we talked about this in my second to last episode of the season with Hope, about making them manageable, attainable, time-related. So I would recommend making a goal for yourself and if you've never even turned on e-commerce, now would be a great time. That's a great first goal Turn on e-commerce, do the steps it takes to turn on e-commerce.
Speaker 1:If you have a punchmark website, it's very easy, but if you have another website, it's probably very easy too, and I would say just go out there and try to make your first sale and if that's already done, no problem. Let's try to make 10 sales in a month. And I always laugh, is that those 10 sales? If you had like a random you know day in the off month, we'll just say, like in March, and you have a kind of a slow month or whatever, and then on like a random Tuesday, you're out and you come in at you know four o'clock to say what's up at your store and hey, how was the day? Oh, you won't believe it, someone came in and bought 10 pieces of jewelry. Suddenly, it's like, holy smokes, pretty, pretty decent day, you know, and not a sleepy day. It's like, well, someone came in and that's a pretty decent purchase amount.
Speaker 1:I always think that we sometimes are always chasing bigger numbers, and I think that having them be attainable when you're just getting started would be awesome. The other thing I would recommend is, if you haven't done this yet, let's take our steps forward and start being more strategic. So, what kind of jewelry do you have on your store? I recommend you have your entire inventory on there. If you have the edge, you should be syncing it to your website. That is just.
Speaker 1:It's kind of goes without saying, and what that'll allow people to do is more than ever, is buying jewelry because they started online, put it in their wishlist, show up to the store and then say, hey, I want to buy this. What's really too bad about this and I promise I won't complain about this too often is we don't get the credit for that sale, even though people give us credit, but we don't get the credit credit for it, because we don't get to say, oh, that was an e-commerce sale, even if it started online. But at the same time that is what the omni-channel experience is about is maybe they go in store and they see a piece of jewelry and then they go home and they hem and haw or whatever, and then they buy it. That's one way, but the other way, more often, is they go and they window shop from your website and then they find two pieces, or maybe they let their significant other pick out two pieces and they put it into a wish list and they go into the store and they say, hey, do you have these pieces? And please have those pieces, because then it's just like, yeah, we got them and, you know, maybe we can even do a little bit better. We offer a service that really pushes it over the edge. That's what I think is pretty attainable and reasonable and time-based.
Speaker 1:The other thing I think is pretty interesting there are a couple of months in here that kind of stink. One thing that we see for e-commerce is that the good season, the up, is not always syncing up when the store's good season is. For example, I think that I'm looking at my metrics March kind of stinks. July not usually the best, but what's funny is like a couple of these are pretty good February obviously, valentine's Day pretty good, august also pretty good, and it's kind of like we should just be trying to take advantage of some of these random not random some of these months. And again, if someone came into your store, if you sold 20 pieces of jewelry online in a month and you might think, oh, that's not that much, and then if someone was to go into your store and buy 20 pieces of jewelry, or 20 different people was to go in and buy one piece of jewelry all over the course of like one day, suddenly you'd be like, ah, not bad, you know that, decent, decent, little rush.
Speaker 1:I think that that is what the perspective we should have on this thing is. Is it just kind of like, when I listen, when I, you know, post podcast episodes sometimes I'm chasing bigger numbers it's like, oh, only this many people listen to this episode. But then it's when I go to the client workshop and I see what you know, 40 people is like. It's like holy smokes. You mean, you know, 200 people listen to this. This conversation I had. And imagine having 200 people in the same room. It would be intimidating and scary. And I think that that's the kind of perspective Sometimes when you go online, bring it into a realistic, real life version, it kind of it'll freak you out a little bit and I think that that's kind of fun. All right, I think that with that we'll probably end our first episode.
Speaker 1:Good luck everybody with this year. If you don't have e-commerce on, just try it out. And if you do have e-commerce, let's try to get you your first sale. And if you have a first sale, we'll try to get you an average of three sales every month. That'd be pretty cool. And if you already are doing that and you're crushing it and you got this thing figured out, let's try to be more strategic. Let's try to set things up for in-store sales and let's set things up for, you know, strategic posts on your social media and, if that's the case, maybe you try to get into our 100K, 200k, 500k clubs where we'll send you a plaque for doing well.
Speaker 1:Okay, everybody, I think that's where I'm going to end the episode. Thanks so much for listening. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, michael Burfo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cockrum. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave us feedback on punchmarkcom slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers, bye, thank you.
