hornet3d posted at 8:44AM Mon, 11 January 2016 - #4248410

I don't think it is wild speculation to say that when traffic goes down, as it has here, that the chances are the spending drops as well. As less and less users visit a site to look at galleries or follow forums there is less traffic. I also don't believe that sites would provide galleries and forums just because they love the community, they do it to attract people, sure it may not directly make money but in business you need to look at the wider picture.

True the buying customers have no figures but the vendors never share their figures so they are really on a par we just have to trust they are telling us the truth and not working to some hidden agenda.

Despite what you say, the Dawn figure available today is very different to the original Dawn, if vendors are really saying I tried something a few years ago and it did not work and that is an end to it, that is their choice, but it does not sound good business to me.

As I said before, the survey was sent out to customers and they stated DS/Genesis products, not dawn. Customers mapped the current trend and the vendors follow that trend. That's good business; what you're suggesting is not. And site traffic may be down and not affect the spending going on, such as less use of the forum, yet increase in sales in the stores. Forum pages use more bandwidth than a store page.