Really Big Mall: Merchants Mall Link

MERCHANT INFORMATION

Welcome | The Mall

The Mall

If you haven't already been to Really Big Mall, click the logo at the bottom of this page to see what it looks like and how it is arranged. Then use your browser's Back button to see how you can best place your store.

So we can use the same terms in discussing placement, Really Big Mall is designed using three types of pages:

The Really Big Mall home page, also called the mall "Atrium and Directory". This is the page visitors first see when they go to "reallybigmall.com". It has links to eleven mall "areas", such as Technology and Clothing.
Eleven mall "area" pages. These pages bring our visitors to various areas of interest. All the Technology stores are grouped in one area. All the Clothing stores are in another. All the Entertainment stores in yet another. These "area" pages are interlinked to encourage browsing through the mall, and in fact are arranged to look like a top-down map of a real mall, complete with trees, fountains, and sculptures. Each "area" page links to the related "category" pages. For example, the Clothing area has links to the Women's Clothing section, Men's Clothing, Children's Clothing, Shoes and Accessories, and so on. Each area page also has premium positions for a very few stores.
The mall "category" pages, layed out in multiple "floors". Here is where most of the browsing and shopping occurs. There are 53 categories, such as Women's Clothing, Young Adults and Teens, Bookstores, Housewares and Appliances, and so on. When a visitor clicks on "Women's Clothing" in the Clothing area, they enter the "1st floor" of the Women's Clothing category. From the "1st floor" they can take an escalator to the "2nd floor", and then to the "3rd floor", and so on. The first two floors for each category have 12 stores each and 18 stores on each floor thereafter.

Traffic Profile

Our average visitor views 7 pages at our site, visits 5 stores, and spends a total of over 43 minutes shopping with us.

Here are some useful statistics within the category pages. Although the categories vary, on average there is a 40% drop in traffic from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor. From there, the drop off is a less drastic 10% per floor. So for every 1000 people who visit the 1st floor, about 600 visit the 2nd floor, and about 540 visit the 3rd floor, with a reduction of about 10% per floor thereafter.

Non-Traditional Entry Points

It's important though that we point out that a very significant percentage of our visitors enter the Really Big Mall site via non-traditional entry points via search engines. EVERY one of our pages IS an entry point for a significant number of visitors. So while there is more traffic in "1st floor" positions, those stores in "4th floor" locations usually aren't waiting for people to click through the previous pages. Many visitors will enter Really Big Mall right at that page or adjacent pages. (In some months, in parts of the mall, "page 4" of a category will get MANY more visits than "page 3"! It's not predictable, but that DOES illustrate what we say about non-traditional entry points.)

The Unexpected "Best Buys" at Really Big Mall

Many merchants we've spoken with over the years have a mindset of "we have to be on the first page". And we don't really discourage that, because our income is better on those pages, and those pages DO get more visitors. But because of the visitors who do come in through all the other pages, we have to tell you that for many stores, the base amount of $12 per year to get into the latter pages is the real bargain on our site. (Compare our "visits per page" averages a couple paragraphs up with what we charge for those pages. The cost per customer is much lower as you get further into the site.)

Page Position

Surprisingly, we've found that within a single mall page position does not seem to be a factor. We were surprised because we had planned to charge a premium for locations on the top half of any page. But all our statistics so far, show that position on the page has no effect on click-throughs.

What Attracts Customers

The most important factors appear to be your name, logo, and description. Interesting logos and descriptions at the bottom of a page always outdraw drab logos and non-descript stores at the top of the page. Make sure we've got the best logo we can use for your store within our dimension requirements (200 by 60 pixels, 256-color GIF file) and let us know what you'd prefer under the logo for your store's description.

This is the link to the mall