aStore Follow-up: Big traffic increases

A few weels back, I wrote about setting up an Amazon aStore on my personal blog. The results were surprising. After a brief substantial uptick from links followed from my posting and Nick Carr's, the traffic declined. But the aStore has been transformative, dramatically increasing my Amazon Associate sales and drawing far more traffic.

In the 15 days before the aStore was introduced, my Amazon page views averaged 5.8 a day. For a few days, I was getting between 400 and 600 page views a day, because of linking to my ZD Net posting. I figured it traffic would drop back to normal.

Instead, my aStore continues to draw 10 times the traffic as the old Amazon links of old. During the most recent 15 days, page views have averaged 63.6. Conversion rates are roughly what they were before, about one percent, yet the increased traffic has resulted in proportionally higher sales. I'd had four items sold during the entire quarter before the aStore and now am closing in on the end of the quarter with 24 items ordered.

My recommendations sell about as many books as before while visitors are browsing for titles I've never heard of, as well as food and electronics.

So, I have to say Amazon's aStore is a winner. The company still needs to give me greater control of the retailing going on to make it a more integral part of my site. aStore has a ton of potential still if Amazon gives me the ability to open even more doors to books and stuff I like—welcome to the era of digital handselling.