The reason sales went up

Ask a small online seller why one month went better than the others, and there is almost always a story ready.

It was the video with the child laughing in it. It was posting in the evening instead of the morning. It was the new photo of the product held in a hand rather than on a table. The story is told with confidence, repeated to friends who also sell online, and soon it becomes a rule. Always post in the evening. Always show a hand.

It is a lovely kind of explanation. It is simple, it puts the seller in control, and it feels earned.

It might even be right. It might also be that the month in question was the one before the school term, when parents buy anyway. Or that a single happy customer told a large family group about the shop. Or that a competitor ran out of stock for three weeks. Any of those would produce the same jump, with or without the laughing child.

Checking would not be hard. Post the same thing in the morning for a fortnight and see. Ask the next twenty buyers how they found the shop. Look at what happened in the same weeks last year.

Very few do, and not because they are lazy. The story feels good. A test can only take that feeling away, so the test never gets run, and the seller spends the next year faithfully posting in the evening for a reason that may never have existed.

Nothing about this is special to selling online. It is what happens to anyone who finds an explanation they enjoy.

Being wrong about the evening posts is not the real cost. The real cost is that the asking stopped. Curiosity does not switch off on its own. We choose to put it down, and a pleasing story is what makes that choice feel like knowledge.