I am the owner of a small baby clothing and toy store.  I have been
considering building an e-commerce site to support my store.  How much
traffic, or more specifically sales, should I expect from my website. 
Please assume no online marketing through search engines (Google and
Overture).  Purely based on in-store promotion what is a realistic
amount to expect.  Please support your answer with first hand
experience or quotable research facts.

Hi there,

I've been involved in an offline marketing campaign for a children's
toy store website and I believe this experience may relate to yours.

Speaking strictly in terms of in-store operations, our initial promotions were:
Coupons exclusively available online
balloons/free small toy for customers who sign up for e-mail mailing list
flyers promoting features of the website including
 - preordering items
 - free shipping above 50 dollar purchase

While we also advertised with out of store promotions, such as local
newspaper ads, we held an online-related survey for a discount coupon
and the following were the results:
Total survey takers - 758
flyers: 28%
e-mail list: 12%
newspaper ad: 49%
other: 11%

The customers wrote the survey at check-out either online or at the
cashier, when they purchased a product online or in-store when they
use an online coupon/pre-ordering.

However, it is important to note that the store had a lot more success
once they promoted with popular local websites.

If you would like to know any statistical trend or any other detail
regarding the campaign mentioned above, please feel free to request
clarification.
If you have any specific questions to me or the project manager, I
would be happy to forward any follow up questions to him as well.

Cheers,
Tox-ga

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Clarification of Answer by tox-ga on 15 Feb 2005 01:19 PST

Please note that the surveys were held for a two-three week interval,
and the average traffic to the store was approximately 350 people a
day.

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Request for Answer Clarification by purevelour-ga on 19 Feb 2005 09:18 PST

Are you saying that this promotion drove 350 people to the website? 
If so, what percentage purchased?

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Clarification of Answer by tox-ga on 20 Feb 2005 12:22 PST

Hi there,

The 350 represents the total number of traffic to the site, per day,
during that two-three week interval.  This includes those who visited
after finding the site out by other means, not just in-store
promotion.

However, approximately 50% of the visitors who actually ended up
purchasing something (which is more readily measurable and
significant) were led to the site through in-store promotion.  During
the period of 2-3 weeks, approximately 50% of 758 people represent the
number of those that went to the site -and- ended up purchasing a
product directly online or printing a promotion coupon and buying a
product in-store.

With no promotion or search engine ads, traffic will be approximately
zero (plus or minus 1 click a day). Also forget about getting a high
ranking on a search engine. It's a multi-year process.