Will Store Items Benefit from New Results Format?

[Ina]

Previously, the main eBay.com search tool displayed auction and fixed-price listings, and would only show up to 30 Store items when there were fewer than 21 search results. Last week, search results pages began displaying all eBay.com AND all eBay Store items.

Storeowners were positive when the announcement about the change in search results was announced. But many were concerned when they saw exactly how it appeared once it was rolled out. Main concerns were:

A significantly higher number of items that may come back on a search, potentially overwhelming shoppers;

Lack of gallery images so shoppers can see thumbnail photos of the items;

And the removal of a link to all Store items on the results page.

So is the increased exposure having an effect, positively or negatively? And are the above-mentioned concerns playing out?

I asked Sellathon CEO Wayne Yeager if he was seeing any early indications. Sellathon markets the ViewTracker service, which helps online-auction sellers track traffic to their listings. Here's what Wayne said on Saturday morning, less than a week after the changes rolled out on eBay:

>>>>>
I haven't noticed anything one way or the other, but I think that's mostly because it hasn't been up long enough, and/or it isn't making that big of a difference.

It fluctuates from category to category, but our stats suggest that search represents about 60% of eBay navigation. By comparison, store browsing and searching combined rarely ever breaks above 10%. So adding store item links to all search pages should have a net positive effect on store traffic.

Two things will be interesting to watch:

a) how much eBay's decision not to include upgrades in these listings will discourage the payment for those upgrades.

b) how well store owners are able to convert these visits into additional store item visits.
-Wayne Yeager, Sellathon
http://www.sellathon.com
<<<<<

If you would like to share your thoughts, particularly if you are seeing an increase or decrease in sales of Store items, let us know. Be sure and tell us in what category you sell, since it might make a difference.
Thanks!
Ina
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Ina Steiner, AuctionBytes.com

[dianne63]

We had a increase in our store sales before we realized the change in the search engine on ebay. We went from perhaps 1 or 2 sales a day to 10 and 12!

We sell primarily books and music items (LPs and CDs). Now we are scrambling to list all those items we didnt want to list at the expense of an auction item and had left sitting till we 'had time'.

For us, it's a good thing. For very high volume sellers, our results might not sound like alot, but we are happy with the change.

[sun818]

Do we also have numbers on overall traffic to the site? There may or may not be more sales, but we would also have to attribute that to traffic levels on eBay.com - For example, you might have more sales in Stores because there's been more traffic overall to eBay.

[Ina]

Yes, it's true this is not a scientific study. But with a dearth of available data, anecdotal information can be interesting.
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Ina Steiner, AuctionBytes.com

[leeflang_archives]

We sell antique periodicals and, considering a comparable situation of number of fixed price items, auctions and store items, our sales doubled.

I note here that our listings are very descriptive so 'keyword text intensive', that we have a featured store subscription and that we relist store items on a regular basis as fixed price items to get more search engien exposure. Most likely the impact would have been greater without those. It makes one wonder if such costs could be reduced now. We'll be testing that.
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Peter

[Millennium Raven]

The traffic to my store has doubled, including "visits" -- supposedly 30 minutes of continuous browsing. I didn't run any auctions last week because of computer problems, so was surprised at how much traffic was reported.

More questions from shoppers, but no increase in sales yet. I'm hoping.

Many of my items would have shown up in search results anyway, with the extra features. I am an antiques and collectibles seller. My inventory features uncommon, but moderately priced, items. Buyers for uncommon items are uncommon as well. But Ebay has worked better for me than any other I've tried.

As someone who also loves to browse and shop on Ebay, I welcome seeing the store listings. I'll always click on a title that is descriptive of something that interests me, even without the gallery pic or other inticements.

Jana

[JulieA]

Most of my store items have watchers, which rarely happened before the recent changes. I like the new exposure, but I, like most sellers, wish that potential customers could view gallery pics.

[dianne63]

The gallery pics still show within your store pages. Thats worth the extra penny a month for us.

As store sellers, we shouldn't make this such an issue. I know as a bidder, I didn't notice it much before. The little camera icon was enough for me to know there was a picture in the auction.

If we make a big enough stink over this, ebay will decide the gallery option for store items should be 25 cents or more per month. Do we really want this??

[JulieA]

When I am browsing auction listings, gallery pics are helpful when I am contrained by time. With the hundreds/thousands of store listings now showing up on any given search, I now, more than ever, tend to skip over listings without gallery pics, including the newly exposed store listings. However, I'm glad that not all potential bidders are like me!

As for the "slippery slope" theory behind Dianne's post, I don't buy it. Since when has Ebay turned on us when we sellers voice our opinions when asking for change for the better? If Ebay started charging 25 cents per store listing, they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face...and they know it. If this new store exposure is an experiment, then feedback is vital to its success. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

[reed]

As I suggested earlier in another thread, I preferred the old system where I could choose to look at store listings. Now, there are way too many listings under my common searches and it I find that I am wasting a lot of time sifting through the auction and store listings mixed together. Maybe I would see it differently if I sold on eBay.

[sun818]

I ran about 50 listings as auctions over the past two weeks. Sell-through is okay, but ending prices are just awful. I've known this for several years now but this latest experiment with auction just goes to show that the excitement of auctions in certain categories (read: commodity items) has been over for a very long.

As eBay becomes a bigger venue of commodity items, it makes sense for them to push Store Listings in general searches. That's the trend. eBay will become the half.com and Amazon.com model. No or little start up listing fee with higher commission on ending prices - possibly order total versus ending item price.

[cruetsonly]

I've seen a few more items sell out of my store, but nothing I can really attribute to eBay's new search results policy. However, I've been on eBay long enough to readily agree with Dianne. It seems like everytime eBay 'gives' us something extra, pretty quickly they are charging us for it. (Notice how we are now paying a higher percentage FVF when store items sell?) I am pretty disgusted with eBay. Sell-through rates and selling price have both plunged in the past year. I have started listing on Yahoo!.
~Lisa

[Tradguy]

Well, they already are "taking away" - remember, they DOUBLED the store final fee %. This move allows them to take advantage of it.

I sell clocks, buttons, and magnets across a very wide range of subjects, and in prep for the changeover I did a few things.

First, I did a make-over on my store items template and re-uploaded the entire store. My "watched" stats are starting off completely clean.

Second, I haven't run a single auction this year.

Normally, I wouldn't expect many store sales without also running auctions - perhaps only a few per week. But since the changeover, I'm getting several per day. I've had my store for about 3 or 4 years, and the increase in both traffic and sales seems undeniable based on my experience.

Overall, I'm quite pleased since over the last year or so I've gone from having at least 300+ live auctions running at any given moment, to less than 20. Most of my biz comes from my website, so any increase in ebay sales is a real treat!

Rich

[jen6889]

I am a seller on ebay, but I do not have a store. I probably buy quite a bit more than I sell!! LOL!!! I sell glassware and other misc. items at our local antique mall. Listing them for sale on ebay has proved a waste of time, since I can never get anywhere near their value and many people do not want to pay the higher shipping fees for heavier items now. When I actually sold something, I was barely making the money back that I spent on the items. I went back to just selling my kids outgrown clothing or what I can't sell in the antique mall due to date restrictions.

An opinion on this from the Buyer perspective - I can't stand the new display for the Ebay store listings. It makes it so much more difficult for me to find what I'm looking for. I typically search daily for certain things, many have quite a few returns and I don't need to search through all the listings again. I only want to view the new listings. The store listings are now lost somewhere in the auction listings with no way to tell which page they begin on and I can no longer just click on the "View store items" link to skip over the auctions to get to the store listings. I also find it aggrivating that the gallery pictures for store items will not show during a regular search. I am an avid post card collector (among many other things as well ) and search every day for cards and other things to add to my collections on subjects that interest me. Now when it comes to post cards, so many have the same title but are completely different, or they're the same thing but different view, or not listed as any specific place within the town, etc. The only real way to know if I have it or not is the see the picture. When I have to search through hundreds of items, the gallery picture makes it quicker and easier for me to see it, rather than having to load the auction page for each and every one (which, of course, is very time consuming, especially when my internet connection is not behaving).

I found a way around the problem of finding store items by going back to the advance search page and finding the right link to view only store items. And yes, the gallery pictures will show then. I have to admit though, it makes it much more complicated for me to search this way, so now I don't bother with trying to find store items as often as I use to.

[Robnzak]

As for the "slippery slope" theory behind Dianne's post, I don't buy it. Since when has Ebay turned on us when we sellers voice our opinions when asking for change for the better? If Ebay started charging 25 cents per store listing, they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face...and they know it. If this new store exposure is an experiment, then feedback is vital to its success. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

eBay cuts off it's nose with regularity. It's never about what's good for the seller, it's about what's good for eBay. But I completely understand why store gallery images do not come up in the search results. It's all about that "level" playing field. It simply isn't fair to charge .35¢ for gallery on auction format and only .01¢ for store format when both come up in the same search.

What I envision is that store owners will be given some kind of option to pay an additional rate to have gallery included in search.

As to the topic at hand, I really haven't seen much difference in sales since the change took effect, but that might be because...

I spent most of 2005 defining & refining my store for optimum sales. At the beginning of last year, I was lucky if 20% of my montlhy sales were from my store, but as I worked on it, I saw a gradual increase every month and since mid-August of last year, my store has consistantly produced 75-80% of all sales.

rob
See you at eBay Live!
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http://violetpots.robnzak.com