It was April 2012. We just lost 3 large wholesale clients that were responsible for 80% of our revenue. Our online sales were dropping. We had reached 3k/wk in

It was April 2012. We just lost 3 large wholesale clients that were responsible for 80% of our revenue. Our online sales were dropping. We had reached 3k/wk in online sales at our peak but in the few months prior we steadily dropped down to $500/wk. We were falling apart. I was advocating for giving up on our shopify and focusing on more wholesale sales to retailers. My partner was convinced we should build a larger online audience. He went on a few forums and started pitching our products. The next day we had 10x the sales we had the day before. We're hovering around 4-5.5k/week since then. I have many anecdotes that all tell the same story: About 90-95% of the things we try don't work. The remaining 5-10% of our initiatives lead to huge boosts in sales. A very well known counterexample to the article is the 37signals Highrise redesign. Changing the site design lead to a 103% increase in paid signups (http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-testing-part-3-final http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2991-behind-the-scenes-ab-tes...). Now I think we should be a bit more rigorous here. There are two parts to making money selling a product/service. There is customer acquisition and customer retention. These examples focus on customer acquisition. I think it would be much harder to keep customers 5x longer than it is to get 5x the customers to purchase your product.