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ALV (average lot value) is pointless
I don't have ALV, However with 2 recent "painful" multi-lot orders I was considering it, after doing a little investigation I won't be!
I have been keeping a check on daily/ weekly sales as a whole also looking at "all orders"
Current example is this : one order is slightly "painful" 53 lots for $8 = about $0.15 per lot
However when I look at ALL outstanding orders I have 71 lots for $97 = well over $1.00 per lot actually $1.37/lot
Looking at all orders (one random page of 60 orders) 60 orders with a total of 1139 lots for $1521.00 $1.34/lot
Most of those with lot limits are set at $1.00 or less which would mean you would accept an order with 71 lots for $97 or 1139 lots for $1521.
My point then being :- look at your total sales rather than each order. You don't need lot limits, all that achieves is customer dissatisfaction, and may well be driving sales away across the board.
Graham
I have been keeping a check on daily/ weekly sales as a whole also looking at "all orders"
Current example is this : one order is slightly "painful" 53 lots for $8 = about $0.15 per lot
However when I look at ALL outstanding orders I have 71 lots for $97 = well over $1.00 per lot actually $1.37/lot
Looking at all orders (one random page of 60 orders) 60 orders with a total of 1139 lots for $1521.00 $1.34/lot
Most of those with lot limits are set at $1.00 or less which would mean you would accept an order with 71 lots for $97 or 1139 lots for $1521.
My point then being :- look at your total sales rather than each order. You don't need lot limits, all that achieves is customer dissatisfaction, and may well be driving sales away across the board.
Graham
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These are LEGO sales, so stores have to be realistic about what people buy based on their needs. I'm sure it would be a dream to constantly sell 3 lots of 500 1x2 blue and yellow bricks constantly but the reality is that for most of us builders we want 40-50 lots of 10-30 of certain non-standard bricks and only occasionally bulk of the more common bricks.
As a seller, keeping the customer in mind is more key than the intermittent frustration of a large order. Last night, I pulled a 108 lot order for under $30. Just before I started in on it, I tried not to think about the time it would take, but as I was pulling the order, one though I kept having was, "I wonder what they are building?"
While I do like the orders that are 10 or so figs for $50, it's the little orders that always pique my interest.
If a seller does decide to sell parts (higher and/or faster return compared to the MISB option), then one needs to live with the fact that once in a while an 'akeward' order will roll in and that they'll have to deal with it, one way or another.
Dozens of 'easy to pick' orders 'compensate' for that. I do not use the 'average lot value', I've evaluated it and in my opinion it's a 'loosing business' feature and so I simply prefer a 'minimum', which also has it's inconveniances for buyers, but at least, if they do reach my minimum, I do not see why any kind of order would be a problem. Highest I had on BO is over 5000 parts in over 800 lots, the 'price per part' average was pretty low, but I knew in advance as the buyer requested a quote on it (and I even offered free shipping). At that point it wasn't so much about the 'picking time' and the low cost order (which was still a couple of hundred), but I was actually pretty glad the buyer cleared me out on hundreds of lot's that had been sitting in my stock for quite some time. I'd do it right over...
As a buyer, I walked out on dozens of stores having ALV, even though I was planning on buying for pretty decent amounts, soon I started 'calculating' the ALV, there was hardly a way to 'reach' the sellers expectations. Their loss, another sellers 'win'...
I am seeing and agreeing with the above comments, having looked at a store a while ago to buy parts, I too abandoned a trolley.
I also believe that you have to take the good with the bad. I personally hate the large orders because in my store I have a few of everything and a large order generally means lots of lots and lots of counting.
The return is that the buyer cleans out the dusty items along with the fast moving items so a win and lose situation, but money is made and that is the aim of the business. So with the dusty items gone, I can use the money to source other parts and replace the commonly sold items, and sell to someone else. Dusty items hold the store back, because few people want them, so replacing them with different dusty items attracts different customers.
Regardless whether I hate the lost time, and the stress of recounting and recounting lots of small lots, the next order could be a couple of minifigs worth double digits and be gone out the door in a minute or two - basically suck it up I say.
From a sellers point of view those of us that accept the orders as they come have less competition for the other buyers. :)
The whole site however fails when buyers head over to other sites because they want part/s, and perhaps in a certain quantity.
One wonders how often this happens?
One can hope that this post brings a perspective to some sellers who are on the fence and at least encourage them to at least experiment with selling options.
Castle.
1. At the top of the cart review pages. Same place you would display "this store is currently closed" messaging.
2. As items are added to a cart, we're on the store's page for that item - I believe the lot average messaging is currently shown on the right sidebar in that case but it's not very apparent and requires always scrolling down. Better to also duplicate the messaging just below the store banner (above the breadcrumb navigation) OR right below top-right messaging about what is currently in the cart for that store.
Another suggestion:
It seems there's resistance to offer either a "favorites" and/or "hide" feature while browsing stores (the filtering can be done the same exact way the countries filtering/dropdown works though so it wouldn't be too hard) so how about this: a store search with all the parameters of a store. For example being able to search for stores based on multiple attributes:
Country/region
Minimum cart $
Minimum lot average (range or max)
Dispatch speed
Various store attributes
Shipping quote or minimum shipping cost
Rating (with a forgiveness factor so decent stores with 1-2 jerk customers don't get filtered out)
Payment types
I like the rating option - with the forgiveness factor....the internet has sure gotten messy and trolls seems to be everywhere, so it is good to think of stores which try hard and still likely to get the odd bad customer.
Castle.
If every store implemented ALV I believe BrickOwl web site would out of business pretty quick.
I would highly encourage being able to "only show stores without ALV" - AS WELL AS Favorites/Least Favorites... @Lawrence
I treat it as time well spent in customer relations - treat people well and they will be more likely to return. If you make it hard for them to meet your terms, they will either not buy, or be less likely to come back.
Very well said! 100% agree