June 2011
21 posts
8 Reasons Why We're Really Excited About the...
On July 9th I’m going to do something that most startup CEO’s never do.
I’m going to share some of our actual sales/revenue data from the first month of Fab.com.
Ahead of that post, here are 8 reasons why we’re really excited about the Fab.com business model:
Prior to Fab.com, there was no single destination for design online. Prior to Fab.com consumers had to go to...
“When you are able to find an elegant way to bring data-driven decision making...”
– me
We Fab Braintree Payments
Fab.com works with Braintree Payments for our mission critical online payments solutions. Braintree has been a joy to work with. Their API documentation is fantastic. Their customer support team is informed and responsive. They really mean it when they say on their website, “We love developers.” They do. Braintree made the daunting task of getting our Fab.com payments solution up...
The day social media took ahold of Fab.com
Since launching Fab.com on June 9, 2011, daily traffic has been consistent and typically looks as follows:
2/3 of the traffic comes from our email subscriber list
Another 17 to 20% comes from direct traffic to www.fab.com
Around 5 to 6% from Facebook
Then, 2% each from Google and Twitter.
Today, social media took ahold of Fab.com and the curve changed dramatically:
26% of traffic so far...
“Behind every great design, there’s a great… couple.”
– Couple Up | fab blog
“Unlike most E-commerce companies, we decided to build everything ourselves. We...”
– My answer to a question on Quora as to what “e-commerce platform” Fab.com is built on.
Energy, Transparency, and Sanity
I’d wager to say that I’m one of the few startup CEO’s who manages to workout twice a day most days and blog and tweet.
Here’s the breakdown:
Energy. I run on a treadmill each morning at around 6:00 a.m. for 30 to 45 minutes. This is all about energy. The morning run gets the juices flowing, wakes up the mind, and helps me focus on key things I need to accomplish that...
Flash Sales - Literally
They’re called Flash Sales for a reason.
Each day, emails go out to Fab.com subscribers at 10:45 a.m. Eastern / 7:45 Pacific, and then our sales start 15 minutes later. Quantities are limited and prices are far below market. A rush ensues.
Here is a chart of hourly revenue. This picture is exactly the same every day so far. 30% of sales take place in the first hour of sales, then...
What happens at 4am?
So far we’ve been averaging a remarkable $150/order across all purchases at Fab.com.
But what the f is going on from 4am to 6am (or 1am to 3am pacific)?!?! During those hours the average shopping cart value dips to around $75. We’ve seen the same trend on this daily.
Anyone have any ideas? Are middle-of-the-night shoppers just lighter in the wallet?
This is your company, accelerated
We’re on just day 6 of Fab.com and we’ve already done 75% of our revenue plan for the month.
And, that’s scary!
Scary because we had planned for a gradual build-up. And scary because now we need to keep delivering on the promise to our rapidly growing number of enthusiastic customers.
Now, we’re in hyper growth mode from day 1.
Now, we need to figure out how to scale...
“A lot of technology people don’t realize this but good taste is a highly...”
– As said to me today by a Silicon Valley VC regarding Fab.com.
5 Days of Fab.com, Email is King, Mondays Rock
Continuing in my push to be overly transparent about some of the numbers behind the launch of Fab.com, here are 3 new charts. The following data is after 100 hours of the site being live (we started 11am Thursday June 9th).
1. The death of email is greatly exaggerated. Email is delivering twice the traffic vs. any other source and 70% of the revenue thus far.
2. Email visitors convert to...
Mobile Spikes As % of Total Traffic On The Weekend
Learning a lot about mobile traffic this weekend.
On the first 2 days of Fab.com, Thursday and Friday, mobile + iPad combined for about 18% of all visits.
Today, Saturday, iPhone + iPad + Android = nearly 1/3 of all traffic to Fab.com, and that’s all browser based as we don’t have any mobile apps yet.
Traffic Sources, Conversion Rates, Anatomy of...
A lot of forces converged to make the launch of Fab.com a big initial success. The result of which was that we outperformed our revenue plan by 400% on day 1.
Here are some of the details of our first day.
105,000 unique visitors
530,624 page views
35% of all shopping carts resulted in purchases
38% of all visitors came from our email campaign. Here, building up an opt-in subscriber list of...
Entrepreneurial Zeal and the Velvet Rope →
