A day late, but here we are with the last monthly review of 2014. December I shall be doing my yearly review. It’s going to be huge, so I am in two minds whether to split it up into smaller posts or write one big Goliath of a post. Anyway that is for another day. It’s time to take a look at November.
A tale of two months
For us at the day job, November started OK. Not as busy as the summer don’t get me wrong, but sales were healthy as leads we had gone on earlier in the year started to come in. The pre-Xmas rush was definitely in full swing and customers were putting pressure on us to get prices to them and fit them into our installation schedules before the end of the year. Not always the easiest task if you’re an installer.
But as we got to the end of the month, things really tailed off. The thoughts of Christmas shopping must have taken over in our area. But, at this point we had already passed our yearly target, so anything sold and surveyed after this was a bonus. So we couldn’t complain too much! What it does mean is higher targets for us in 2015 and a reassessment of our monthly targets as we had a FAR stronger first six months in 2014 than we thought we would have. I think the normal industry habits and patterns have well and truly gone…out of the window!
Warm weather help
For me, I think the warm start to November helped us out a bit. It wasn’t a particularly cold start to November. In fact it was pretty mild. It followed on from a very mild, if not Warm October, which saw the mildest Halloween on record. I think unusual warm weather like we experienced provides a small boost to industry’s like our as it means homeowners are still pottering about outside, keeping an eye on the outside of their house, aware of what needs changing and updated. As I said above, the sales for us at the start of November were strong, I think the weather might have had a slight part to play in that.
What warmer weather at this time of year also means is easy fitting. This time of year can be hard work. It can be raining, rather windy, even snowing if the balance is right. Luckily, a very long period of dry, bright and settled conditions made for some rather good window and doors fitting weather. So no fitting schedules should have been disrupted through November.
DGB reaches visitors record
November also saw DGB reach an all time high in the number of visits to the site. You know me and my stats, I love them! But for me they tell the story of the site and chart it’s progress throughout the months and years.
The site is approaching the 100k mark in visitor numbers for the first time. It’s already reached a high, but breaking the six figure mark would be a great way to end the year. As for the page views, it was another 20k+ month. But the daily average is slowing down so getting to 250k page views by the end of the year might be a scrape!
