Is SMP lowering your visibility in search?

December 12, 2008

smpIt’s been well publicised that the most important factor determining how high your product appears in Best Match is Recent Sales. However some sellers are finding with Selling Manager Pro (SMP) automation rules they’re losing all Recent Sales advantages gained when items are relisted.
 
Scott from scott_the_scot discovered that Recent Sales scores are reset to zero if SMP relists it with either of the following automation rules:
1. Keep a fixed number of listings alive
2. List according to my schedule.
 
If you use SMP automation the optimal settings to take advantage of Recent Sales already gained on your listing is to mirror the functionality of a Good ‘Til Canceled (GTC) listing.
 
1. Create a product with the right quantity available to sell
2. Create a template with any quantity and duration except GTC.
3. Assign Automation Rule – ‘Relist continuously whether it sells or doesn’t sell’
4. As stock arrives/gets depleted (outside of eBay sales) modify the quantity available in the Inventory product. EBay sales will update the quantity automatically.
 
This is will retain popularity score and keep the listing alive till the quantity is sold out.
 
It’s worth noting that any sellers using the “Keep a fixed number of listings alive” rule may need to modify their settings by January 27th 2009 to comply with the new duplicate listings policy.

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

Maximum 60-days recent sales score today

November 24, 2008

Today is 60 days from the eBay UK fee changes on the 25th September and is the first time it’s been possible to have a maximum 60-days Recent Sales score on listings. It won’t last long though, those with Good Til Canceled listings will see their relisted items drop from 60-days to 30-days Recent Sales, which in truth shouldn’t affect them too much as the most significant sales are those in the last few days.

The drop is because Recent Sales only carry over to relisted items once, current 30-day listings have benefited from sales from the 25th September. Items relisted today (the second relist) will lose Recent Sales boost from September and early October sales (the original listing).

It may however assist those sellers who have the 2nd, 3rd and 4th spot in search results especially if they’ve been trying to dislodge someone from the top spot of search results. If they listed their original listing a few days later in the short term they’ll have a long tail of 40 or 50 days of Recent Sales score.

For sellers who have 30 day listings ending, the best practice is to relist as quickly as possible to regain their spot in search results. A delay of even a few hours gives competitors an opportunity to gain sales and each sale gained while your listing is off the site increases your competitors Recent Sales score in comparison to yours.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 18 Comments 

Do you have to be cheapest to get sales?

November 19, 2008

Click to embiggen

Click to embiggen

In a recent webinar eBay revealed that top sellers on eBay.com are adjusting their prices on a daily basis in order to keep sales momentum, giving an example of how four sellers of a Sat Nav reduced costs over the period of a month.
 
In order to carry on attracting sales the sellers were forced to compete with price drops at times of less than a dollar. As soon as a competitor entered the market, with a new listing at a lower price, existing sellers were forced to trim their margins or sales dried up. The end result is a product which started selling at $142.95 in less than a month dropped 10% and is now sold at £128.97.

Competitive pricing is nothing new to eBay or the Internet as a whole. Apart from convenience one of the major benefits of shopping on line is price comparison and being able to find the best product and service at the lowest cost, it’s no surprise that sellers have to be ultra competitive on eBay.

What is interesting is the difference between eBay.com and eBay UK. On eBay.com price appears to be one of the most sensitive factors in Best Match, that’s not the case on eBay UK. In the UK Recent Sales are so important that it’s difficult to dislodge and incumbent from the top of Best Match, even if you offer a price that’s significantly lower. Undercutting by a few pennies in the UK appears to make little difference in search standing making it much harder for new sellers to gain visibility, especially for products with a high sales velocity.

On the UK site sellers that listed multiple item fixed price items first and gained recent sales have built what at times looks like an unassailable position at the top of Best Match. The more sales they attract the higher they appear in search and, in a never ending circle, the higher they appear in search the more sales they attract.

Buyers seeing a product at a reasonable price at the top of search results appear to be acting as eBay expected and buying the “Best Matched” product. New listings, even if offered at a lower cost, are finding it harder and harder to compete. This is especially true on low cost commodity products where margins are often measured in pennies rather than pounds. Quite often the Best Matched product is no where near the Best Priced, it’s simply the listing with the most purchases.

Recent Sales can be counted as far back as 60 days on back to back 30 day listings. Once a seller has a long history of sales on a product even outselling them 3 or 4 to 1 isn’t enough to discount their previous sales and dislodge their search standing. Although the most Recent Sales are weighted as more significant a seller with hundreds or thousands of previous transactions on a single listing appears to have an unassailable position at the top of Best Match.

Prices are being driven down and sellers margins squeezed as they fight for visibility but on eBay UK, for sellers that do gain the top spot in Best Match, it appears they can hold their position without being being overly pressured to reduce prices. The chances are they’ll keep the top spot in search results until they run out of stock.

Which site is best for sellers? In the US price appears to be key and if you’re not the cheapest and managing your prices to ensure you stay competitive sales dry up. If you’re in the UK and you’re not at the top of Best Match with a long history of sales from your listing it’s almost impossible to compete against an incumbent.

One thing is for sure, margins are finite, sellers can’t afford to supply at a loss and prices can only drop so far. Those with the biggest inventory will win in the long term and running out of stock on a top selling line is the worst possible situation to be in. Once you lose your position in search and your next delivery arrives it may be nigh on impossible to regain your former search standing and resultant sales.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 22 Comments 

UK sellers disadvantaged - a poor buying experience

October 9, 2008

The first two weeks of Best Match being enabled on the UK site with Recent Sales boosting popular listings has been interesting but it’s becoming clear that UK sellers may be being disadvantaged on the UK site.

UK sellers that wish to get visibility on international eBay sites are currently disadvantaged to their overseas competitors. It’s not currently possible to use the International Visibility Feature (IVF) on UK fixed price items. This allows overseas sellers to list on their own sites and pay a minimal fee for visibility in the UK.

It isn’t just fees though, there are two other factors which need addressing - search advantage and product suitability.

Search Advantage

Sellers listing on non-UK sites are getting huge advantages in search visibility. Many have a Recent Sales advantage, but not from sales on eBay UK. A listing on eBay.com with IVF will appear on eBay UK, but if it attracts sales on eBay.com it appears to get a corresponding boost from Recent Sales in search results. The listing may never attract UK sales but still appear right at the top of Best Match, which pushes UK sellers lower in search results and isn’t great for buyers either.

Listing enhancements that haven’t been paid on eBay UK appear to carry over to the UK site. Listings with UK visibility from IVF get to the top of the page with the Featured Plus listing enhancement. Highlight, Bold and Subtitle also carry over to the UK site even though the features were paid for on another site.

A corresponding advantage isn’t available to UK sellers as IVF is only available for auctions. A UK seller can’t get to the top of Best Match on eBay.com through Recent Sales and listing enhancements gained on the UK site.

Buying Experience

While there are many buyers happy to purchase from overseas (and sellers willing to ship to or from the UK), there are products rising to the top of UK Best Match that are either not attracting UK sales or shouldn’t be available in the UK in the first place.

Power Outlet
Creative Commons License photo credit:
edkohler

Some products are simply incompatible, electrical products listed on eBay.com with IVF appear at the top of UK Best Match but have US power cords. Products such as computer keyboards do well on Best Match but, if they aren’t UK layout, UK buyers simply don’t wish to purchase them. There are countless examples of non-UK items at the top of Best Match for which it’s highly unlikely a UK buyer would consider purchasing.

Other items are illegal and simply shouldn’t appear on the UK site at all. Throwing knifes are banned on eBay UK, but there are knives available, appearing on eBay UK but listed on eBay Italy and eBay.com. It’s illegal to export items manufactured pre-1930 from China, but in the collectibles category there are many “Chinese Antiques” shipping from China - these products must either be fake, or shouldn’t be shipped outside mainland China.

The two main issues with search results are first the advantaging of products listed on overseas sites and gaining search advantages not gained on the UK site. (A specifically different situation to overseas sellers listing directly on eBay UK, gaining search advantages from UK listing enhancements and Recent Sales to UK buyers). Second the raised visibility of products which either aren’t compatible, or are illegal for sale in the UK. UK buyers simply don’t want to buy these products, or will be disappointed with them when they arrive.

eBay are continuing to optimise Best match which is still a relatively new system. Doubtless they’ll be looking at which listings are appearing on the UK site and if listings are being unfairly advantaged or simply aren’t relevant and shouldn’t be appearing at all.

It’s been said that in recent times eBay has relied too much on data-driven decisions and not enough on reality. Hopefully that’s changing and will start with showing UK buyers not just the most “data-relevant” products but the ones UK buyers actually want to buy.

My own experiences since Best Match was introduced are encouraging, especially the boost listings gain from Recent Sales and resultant purchases. Although it’s working well for me, sales are up, and I’m optimistic for the future, it’s still tough competing with listings that have gained huge UK visibility advantages with search benefits inherited from overseas sites, not from UK sales.

Edited to add: While this article was being edited eBay have blocked throwing knives listed internationally from being visible on eBay UK

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, News | 25 Comments 

eBay UK defaults to old search - 30 day BINs vanish

October 6, 2008

Many users on eBay UK appear to have been defaulted to the old search experience. Instead of displaying Best Match with only auctions sorted ending soonest, fixed price listings are also displayed in the pre-Sept 25th sort order.

What’s worse is that sellers who have made use of the new 30 day listing format get zero visibility in core search results. 30 day BINs act as SIF listings in the old search and for many sellers this means they now have very few, or even zero, listings appearing on the core site.

It’s possible to opt back into the new search experience, but the big question is how many buyers will? Threads are starting to appear on discussion boards including Q&A and the PowerSeller board suggesting large numbers of users have been switched back to the old search experience.

If eBay are running tests with small numbers of users still showing the old search experience that’s one thing. If vast numbers of users have been switched back it has serious repercussions for sellers who have switched to 30 day listings as buyers simply won’t see their products.

I’m hoping that eBay move most users back to the new search experience in the very near future. In the meantime sellers who have worked to get to the top of Best Match with Recent Sales are reaping no rewards, but are actually being disadvantaged against sellers who blindly re-listed 10 day BINs.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Glitches | 54 Comments 

7 Top tips to game Best Match with Recent Sales

October 5, 2008

Being at the top of eBay’s Best Match is a little akin to winning the blue Buy Box on Amazon, the listings at the top of eBay’s Best Match are starting to attract the lions share of the sales.

Some experimentation over the last week has revealed some great strategies to ensure your listing is at, or near, the top of search results. Best of all many of the tactics won’t cost you a penny to implement.

Recent sales are the surest way to gain exposure for your listing. The big question is how do you kick start sales to get to the top, especially if other seller’s listings have had sales already? Here are my 7 top tips to gain Recent Sales including two ways auctions can be used to boost a BIN listing’s visibility in search results:

1) Featured First

Featured First is the only sure fire way to the top of search results but it’s going to cost you (£44.95 for up to ten days, £134.95 for up to 30 days). Featured First is a great way to buy exposure but, as it’s success starts to be seen, more and more sellers are starting to use the listing enhancement.

If you’re one of just two sellers to use Featured First in a category then you’ll always be at the top, but as more sellers start to use the feature you listing will appear in a rotation and the exposure starts to fall.

This is a feature that should only ever be used once on a listing with good run rate, and then recent sales should be keeping you at the top of search. However, for slower sell through rate, high value items, Featured First is definitely worth considering on an ongoing basis.

2) Auctions to drive sales

Yes auctions are old hat, as a seller you probably prefer to know you’ll get the price you want and many buyers want to buy instantly rather than bid. Well that might be the case but auctions are still sorted using Ending Soonest and are still a great route to getting your listings to the top of search results.

Auctions at an attractive start prices will get buyers looking, strong links from auctions are a great way to kick start some sales on your main BIN listings. Look at the auction as a loss leader to gain attention and drive traffic from the auction to your BIN. Also consider trying an auction with a BIN price for an instant sale because….

3) Auction to Recent Sales Advantaged BIN

… It’s possible to gain a Recent Sales advantage in Best Match from an auction and this is the main reason sellers should be experimenting with the listing format. If your auction sells at a final value price that you’d be willing to sell at (or below), relist it but convert it to a BIN.

In testing it appears that Recent Sales advantage is transferred from a sold auction to a new BIN listing and can propel the BIN towards the top of Best Match at best, and above an identical BIN listing with no sales at worst. Auctions can be used to actively gain a head start for a multi-quantity BIN.

4) Best Offer

On your first listing of a new product always add Best Offer. It only takes a few sales to make a huge difference in search results standings. Some experimentation with this tactic has thrown up some interesting trends, the most significant of which is that early sales will tend to be Best Offers, but once an item reaches the top of search results buyers start to buy at the full price rather than making further Best Offers.

It’s well worth accepting the first one or two offers at less than you’d normally consider, in order to boost your listing in search results. Offers are worth accepting even if you make a slight loss on a couple of sales - it’s still probably still cheaper than paying for Featured First, to get to the top of the page.

5) Email Marketing

Get smart about your email marketing, use it to drive traffic to the listings you want to sell. Use emails to highlight new listings that you need to gain Recent Sales to increase Best Match placement.
Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Selling Tips | 21 Comments 

Recent sales and auction/bin mix

September 29, 2008


Recent Sales

Multiple item listings with recent sales are working, and working well. I’ve watched one of my own listings with no listing enhancements (bar gallery) climb the search results pages. A search for KVM returns around 900 listing spread over 18 pages, by the time the listing ended late yesterday evening it was the third highest BIN with four auctions displayed above it.

I relisted the item with one edit, changing from a 10 day to a 30 day listing and within a minute the new listing was back in the same position (currently eighth from the top of the page out of 892 listings). Recent sales is working to gain visibility and the boost does carry over to a relisted item with no noticeable disadvantage to the new listing.

If you have any fixed price listings end which have had sales relist them as soon as possible to keep the search advantage. (The method I used for relisting was to synch in TL, relist from ended items, adjust the quantity down as some had sold, and upload back to eBay.)

The Blend

eBay have changed the order of search results to blend auctions ordered ending soonest with fixed price listings ordered by Best Match. The number of auctions displayed vs fixed price listings varies according to category. What is interesting to watch is, as an auction finishes and disappears from the page of search results, fixed price listing retain their position.

Each auction remaining moves up one auction slot with a new auction listing moving from page 2 to the bottom of page 1. The slots don’t vary so the only way a fixed price listing can move higher up the page is from recent sales or when a higher ranked fixed price listing ends without being relisted.

Featured First

There’s some interesting twists to the new Featured First listing enhancement. Sellers using the feature have reported an increase in questions from potential buyers and sales from the promoted listings. One seller of commodity products who listed a Featured First listing on Thursday, the day of the listing, watched his listing climb the search result pages as sales came in and within a couple of hours it reached the first page of search results with just a couple of sales.

Featured First definitely appears to be working if you can justify the initial cost, but should only ever need to be paid for once. So long as the listing attracts sales it’ll climb to the top of search results where it will retain it’s position naturally.

eBay have stated that “There are two Featured First placements, and the listings appearing in the slots will be picked at random“. These slots don’t appear to be dedicated slots, but are appearing in the space alongside where Featured Plus listings would normally be displayed. Featured Plus listings are only boosted to the top of the page the listing naturally falls on, but Featured First listings are boosted to the top of the first page of search results.

There appears to be a glut of old SIF listings which are being displayed alongside Featured First listings. It’s strongly suspected that these are SIF listings for which the Gallery Featured listing enhancement was paid prior to the 24th September. I wish I’d known, I’d have launched a load of SIFs with the Feature to get a boost in search!

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Selling Tips | 21 Comments 

Where are your auctions today?

September 25, 2008

eBay have rolled out major changes to the site over night with the end of SIF and introduction of the new 30 day BIN listing format.

The big question is how will it affect your listings and in particular for the categories you trade in which selling format is most effective?

I’ve done a few searches of my favorite categories for buying and selling and the blend of auctions to BINs varies greatly. In Pottery Vases every fifth item is a fixed price listing, out of a page of 50 listings just 10 are fixed price. Switching to a search for AA Battery it’s a 50/50 mix of auctions and BIN but search for a Dell PA-6 laptop power supply this drops to just 13 BINs out of 50 listings on the page.

With the sort order now being Best Match and recent sales coming into play, auctions may be a great way to gain exposure especially if few of your competitors are using the listing format.

How are your categories affected? Do they have more fixed price listings or greater exposure of auctions? How will this affect your listing strategy for the future?

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 31 Comments 

eBay / ChannelAdvisor webinar oversubscribed

September 22, 2008

Although held on possibly the busiest day of the week for eBay sellers the ChannelAdvisor hosted eBay webinar was oversubscribed. ChannelAdvisor will be making a recording available within the next few days. If you were unable to get logged or didn’t plan to attend you can still register to be informed when the replay is available.

Rafael Orta from eBay opened the webinar with a short overview of the changes starting with the premise that eBay “Want you to load all your inventory on the site by Christmas”. Multi quantity listings are now the name of the game - they save on insertion costs, save time creating listings, can be good til canceled, and most important of all increase the chances of appearing high up in search results as soon as they attract sales.

All listings will be in main search results and best match will be tweaked to show the most relevant listings first although the option to kick start listings with the new featured first listing upgrade can jump start sales.

The Best match criteria will vary by category and continue to be tweaked and eBay guarantee a relevant mix of auction and BIN in search results.

Then it was straight into the Q&A session largely answered by Rafael, but with assistance from Max Leisten in the US ChannelAdvisor office. The first question was for those who haven’t received communications regarding the changes and the details can be found at http://ebay.co.uk/buyitnow08.

There were several questions regarding what changes will affect the recent sales boost in search results. This will be an issue for those who tweak prices daily based on fluctuations in their supply chain. If the sales price is increased then all recent sales advantage will be lost. The other listing edits which will lose the recent sales advantage are changes to the item title, item condition, description and the category listed in.

Interestingly changes to the postage cost do not affect recent sales according to Rafael. It does however mean that if you reduce your postage costs but increase the item price to compensate that any recent sales advantage will be wiped out - if you change to free post it really does have to be “free” to keep the boost in search.

When relisting the recent sales advantage will be carried over to the relisted item, but the window for relisting has not been disclosed. Rafael hinted that it would be no more than 7 days, but it could be less in some circumstances.

There is still no easy solution for listing an item which is compatible with multiple models, e.g, a car spark plug could fit hundreds of different vehicles. Rafael advised to make sure the most common are in the 55 character title but with the option to list duplicates with different titles to ensure your products are found.

There was a question regarding fees and would they go up or down overall. There is no easy answer to this (insertion fees will be less, but some final value fees are rising) as it’s likely seller behaviour will change dramatically. Sellers are likely to have less listings for each product line, but are being encourage to list more product lines and put all of their inventory on the site. As the selling model is changing so drastically each individual seller will need to assess the impact of fees based on their own listing strategy.

Best Match is already active on eBay UK, but is a different implementation to the eBay.com site. In the UK there will be no removal of duplicate listings from a single seller in search results, but the duplicate listing policy remains in force. From the 25th all listings will appear on the core site including current Shop Inventory items, but listings already live will incur fees (insertion, final value and listing enhancements) based on the old fee structure.

Auctions will continue to be important and crucially they will still be displayed with a time ending soonest sort order. This means if you list auctions regardless of other sellers gaining a boost in search with recent sales or by using the featured first listing upgrade your items will appear at the top of search results just before they end. Even if you add the BIN option to an auction it will still be treated as an auction in the search display order.

Finally a question was asked by a seller who’s listing strategy has always been to make sure she had listings ending daily - “Does new fee structure mean you can have just one listing instead of multiples for visibility”. The answer is a resounding “YES”. eBay.co.uk is changing this week, and your listing strategy needs to change as well.

Edited to add: The recording of the webinar including the Q&A is now available.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips, Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 56 Comments 

eBay.com turn on recent sales tracking early

September 9, 2008

The US fee and listing changes are to take place on the 16th September, but they’ve already started tracking recent sales.

The most significant change is the introduction of 30 day Buy It Nows, and although this listing format is not currently available US sellers can start to take advantage and this is how:

  • Recent sales will be used as a measure of a listings popularity, listings with recent (last seven days) will be given a boost in Best Match search results.
  • Listing a multi-item, 10 day listing on eBay.com now will ensure it’s live on the 16th. If it has sales between now and the 16th it will be advantaged over a similar listing without sales.
  • Waiting to list on the 16th will automatically mean your listing is disadvantaged as it won’t have any recent sales.
  • Recent sales are rolled over when a listing is relisted, even if you relist a few days later.
  • When you relist it will be possible to edit the listing to the new 30 day Buy It Now listing (You can’t keep the recent sales boost if you make major changes such as to title, category, condition, or increase the price).

Recent sales tracking has started now for eBay.com, it’s time to ensure you have multiple item listings for each product and ensure that in the future if a listing ends with sales that it’s relisted rather than launch a new listing for the same item.

This change is currently for eBay.com only. I’m guessing that recent sales tracking will start a week early in the UK which means listings with sales from the 17th onwards should be relisted rather than a new listing launched.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, Selling Tips, Site Changes, eBay.com | 26 Comments