“Free post” increases price and sell through rate

December 26, 2008

It’s almost the New Year and from the 27th January all DVD sellers will have to offer free postage and packing, but will it really increase sales? The guys at Terapeak have run some reports looking at eBay UK DVD listings and the effect a free postage offer has on sell through rates and final values:

Title Average
Price		 No. of
listings		 Success
Rate
Contains “Free Post DVD” £8.69 1056 54.17%
Contains “Free Postage DVD” £8.75 2414 45.03%
Contains “DVD”, Does not contain “Free” £6.90 1.3m 30.76%

 
Whilst the data only highlights listings which specify free shipping in the item title the results are staggering. Sell through rates increase by almost 15% just for including “Free Post” in titles. Not only that but final values are up to 25% higher for items calling out the free postage offer.

eBay have been offering incentives to sellers to offer free post, not only in the UK but around the world. 2009 is likely to see more categories move towards a free post model with listing promotions encouraging free post in categories where it’s optional. For the DVD category the sales data speaks for itself - buyers do appear to prefer listings with free shipping.

If you’d like to research eBay sales data, to celebrate the Christmas holiday, there is a 12 day free trial offer available until January 2nd. “The 12 Days of Terapeak” gives you the entire holiday period to explore Terapeak and research the categories of interest to you.

I’ve been using Terapeak to look at the effect of including “Free Post” on the computer products that I sell and the results are similar to those for DVDs. Check out your own categories and let us know the results.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured, News | 14 Comments 

Terapeak Value Track: Price trends on eBay

December 17, 2008

Terapeak are beta testing a new Value Track tool, which allows you to save your favourite eBay searches and weekly reports are then generated showing how these items are performing on eBay. The information is presented in a similar format to share prices highlighting rises and falls on the eBay marketplace.

Value Track reports the change in number of live listings, average price and sell through rates. Creating a list is easy - simply enter the keywords you’re interested in and select the eBay site, category and currency.

top10toysvaluetrackfromterapeakWe ran the official top 12 Christmas toys for 2008 list (announced by the Toy Retailers Association) into Value Track and you can see the results by clicking the image to the left.

I can see two main benefits of using this tool - firstly for anyone researching a new category it allows them to watch it over a period of time. Value Track will reveal which products are selling well and warn of any items for which sales are slowing.

For existing sellers the changes in average prices will enable you to tweak prices according to availability - if prices are rising because a product is in short supply you want to know about it. Equally if prices are falling you may need to adjust your listings to stay competitive.

For toy sellers who want to track the hottest products in the run up to Christmas it’s a great tool. Any seller will be able to build a similar list of products they wish to track and Value Track will give a weekly breakdown of their performance on eBay highlighting where prices are rising or falling and for which products sell through rates are changing.

Existing Terapeak customers who sign up for the Beta test of Value Track and complete a feedback questionnaire will receive two months free access to the tool when it is officially launched.

Finally, for anyone that was wondering, the Toy Retailers Association top 12 toys this year (which are all available at less than RRP on eBay) are:
FurReal Biscuit, My Lovin’ Pup, Hasbro (RRP £149.99)
My Life, Flair Leisure Products (RRP £49.99)
Star Wars Clone Trooper Voice Changer, Hasbro (RRP £29.99)
High School Musical 3 Musical Dance Mat, Vivid Imaginations (RRP £22.99)
Rescue Pals Swim To Me Puppy, MGA Entertainment Ltd (RRP £29.99)
Bakugan™ Starter Pack, Spinmaster (RRP £12.99)
BABY born® with Magic Potty, Zapf Creation® (RRP £33.99)
Elmo Live, Mattel (RRP £59.99)
Catcha Beast, Bandai (RRP £19.99)
Ben 10 Deluxe Omnitrix, Bandai (RRP £15.99)
Cupcake Maker, Character Options (RRP £29.99)
In The Night Garden Upsy Daisy and Her Chase and Play Bed, Hasbro (RRP £34.99)

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 7 Comments 

Terapeak to replace eBay Marketplace Research

August 19, 2008

Terapeak are to offer an alternative to eBay Marketplace Research, which they say is to be retired on 15th September this year.

Marketplace Research by Terapeak will be offered to all existing eBay Marketplace Research subscribers and all eBay users will be able to subscribe in the future. Terapeak plan to extend the range of reports and features available including up to two years of category trends, seller-specific
searches, and dedicated customer support.

If you’d like a preview of Terapeak they offer some free eBay research tools as well as paid reports

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Site Changes | 7 Comments 

Project Echo: 3rd Party tool integration into SMP

June 17, 2008

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

Kumar Kandaswamy, the Senior Director of the Developer Program and Innovation at eBay, gave TameBay the inside track on Project Echo, the new API tools available to allow developers to integrate their applications with Selling Manager Pro (SMP).

He told how back in 2000 his team opened up the eBay platform using the Application Programing Interface (API) to allow third parties to develop eBay tools. With millions of users although eBay provide some great tools, they’re not enough to meet the needs of all users world wide. Over the course of the last seven years over 70,000 developers have used the interface with some 12,000 live applications using the API today.

Over 28% of listings come through 3rd party applications or 1/2 billion listings. If you include TurboLister and SMP the figure rises to over 60% of listings launched by tools using the API.

Kumar explained how Project Echo will enable the 3rd parties to bring their expertise and bolt their applications directly onto the eBay platform. Instead of having to visit a third party site or use a desktop application the tools will be accessible directly through SMP on eBay.

We can expect to see the first five applications available in SMP on eBay.com in Q4 this year, with public Beta starting in Q1 2009. Full product release is scheduled for the middle of 2009, with worldwide rollout to follow.

The first five applications built into eBay will be Terapeak (eBay research) and Hosted Support (customer support automation), who have already built their applications with Sagefire, MyStoreCredit and ShipRush to follow.

On the left of SMP there are already links to eBay features, so applications such as Terapeak will be added into the menu as a consistant seamless user experience.

Kumar explained that eBay will not compromise on security, scaleability and seamless useability. They will ensure applications offer the same security as eBay itself and that the providers are able to scale up for the thousands of users Project Echo opens their application up to. Once implemented users will be able to seamlessly click from SMP into the application without leaving the eBay site.

3rd party providers will also make subscription costs clear and Kumar is insisting that they offer a 30 day free trial so that users are able to try before they buy.

This is a golden opportunity of developers to put their applications in front of thousands of new buyers and sellers. For eBay users in the future your favourite application will be available seamlessly on eBay without the need to visit the developers sites or download applications.

Kumar is very excited at the API applications being given access to the eBay core platform, and rightly so. I can’t wait until every third party tool I use is available through the one website interface and is available from any and every PC that I log into.

What’s your favourite application and what features would you like to see developers build into eBay?

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

eBay to unveil new platform at DevCon

June 16, 2008

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

TechCrunch reveal that eBay’s Developer Conference will today unveil Project Echo, an expanded set of APIs allowing developers to build applications which can appear within the Seller Manager section of the site. Until now, only eBay’s own tools have been available within SM. The platform will not launch publicly until next year, but a couple of partners will demo applications built on it: Terapeak can show recent market research data to sellers, and Hosted Support offer a communications management tool.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 2 Comments