Your buyers are looking for 2nd hand goods

October 23, 2008

A report out from Hitwise today reveals that UK buyers are increases their searches for 2nd hand goods online. They report searches containing the words “second hand” are up 22% on a year ago. Classified websites traffic is up 47% suggesting consumers are turning to the Internet to beat the credit crunch.

The most popular Internet searches in the 12 weeks up to 11th October are:
1. second hand cars
2. second hand books
3. second hand car prices
4. second hand furniture
5. second hand bikes

Traffic to Freecycle, the website where people can pass on their unwanted goods to others increased 35% in the last year. Gumtree is by far and away the most popular classified site in the UK with a 14.32% share of the market, it’s nearest comptitors are Vivastreet (5.66%) and Ad Trader (4.18%). 9th most popular classified site in the UK is Edinburgh Gumtree (2.53%) which is incredible as it’s just a part of the Gumtree site.

If classified ad sites (and especially the UK’s most popular - Gumtree) are not a part of your sales strategy it’s time they were. Tests have shown eBay sellers can achieve sales on classified sites, and often there are no fees to pay. If that’s where your buyers are you should be listing on classified sites too, regardless if your goods are second hand or new.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 13 Comments 

eBay UK was top Christmas shopping site

January 22, 2008

This post was written in January 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

A little bit of good news amongst all the speculation for eBay today: eBay was the most popular shopping site again this Christmas for UK shoppers, and was the nation’s fourth most-visited site on Christmas Day itself.

Figures released last week showed that Amazon beat eBay.com in the US for the first time ever. What ought to be read into this depends on your point of view, with ex-seller Randy Smythe believing that Amazon is just better, while optimistic shareholder OnlyeBay thinks that the rise in the use of BIN is responsible for the fall in eBay’s traffic.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 3 Comments