One of my goals this year was to finally put together some data for my Filipino Tattoo website to drive business decisions and validate or invalidate some of my assumptions. Overall, I think I was pretty accurate. After 2 years of tracking, I finally have the ability to compare KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Here’s selected data I wish to share with you.

Transactions by day
- This one made sense but I didn’t think it would be so drastic. The best day is Monday and tails off by Thursday. Weekends were typically blah. This data tells me that I should launch my marketing early Monday morning. My feeling is that most of that activity is late afternoon/evening.

Transactions by month
- The tattoo season is Spring/Summer but last year, I had a big spike in September and November. I can see why September being big because students might want to get inked before going back to school. I have no idea why November was so big. Maybe new ink for Xmas?

Facebook demographics
Every company should have a Facebook page. Besides presence in a site that recently had more page views than the mighty Google, you also get a free basic analytics tool to give you some insight about your fans.  Since I added a Facebook widget for my fan page, it has grown to nearly 4,000 fans organically. It’s pretty tough to get this kind of data for your website if accurate at all.

My tattoo site sells Baybayin translation so that people can get inked. Summer is the hottest season for tattoos for obvious reasons. Right now, I’m feeling the impact. I estimate translation orders are down about 40% (alsodue to the economy). Traffic is still strong but conversion is lower. Some of my ideas jumpstart the site:

Education – Getting a fresh tattoo in the summer/spring is bad for your skin and tattoo. Sun is the worst enemy for tattoos. I’ll educate my visitors and urge them to get inked in the winter so that the will be fully healed and the ink has settled in the skin by beach time. This is a similar tactic of gyms and diet companies. Work hard during the off-season and relax in the summer.

Create a non seasonal product – The most obvious one. I have a few that I’m developing. It should hit with a bang. More on my strategy later.

This caught my eye today at the store. As you can see they are $3.99 and Mint Chocolate. It reminded me about a lot of online business models of having a low-cost or free version of their product and have a “premium” version.

I experimented with this Free and Premium business model on PinoyTattoos.com where I offered free Baybayin translations for names and charged for non-names. I think it was pretty successful as I was able to do away with the free product. With the only free product being the blog, I think I need another free product to give back to the community.