eBay

ricarmic · ‎09-11-2015

This collaborates something Mr.E has been saying for a while around his free shipping experience.

For quite some time I've had "sales" of material in my store.

The first time a long time ago was an experiment to see how much I sold. Experiment failed in terms of sales, almost no on sale items sold!

However, it appeared that me having ANYTHING on sale meant that my exposure of other items was increased (my non-sale item sales seemed to be higher during the time other stuff was on sale).

Given the belief that having stuff on sale helps visibility of my other stuff, I've been running sales intermittantly for some time.

Recently, all the sudden, my stuff on sale has been selling too! (Same stuff as on sale before, these lots have been "live" since 2007/2008!)

Why, I don't know, I long ago gave up trying to figure out the "Why's" but now I'm increasing my efforts around sales as well.

My main point in posting this is even if you've had failed experiments in the past, it doesn't hurt to retry them. I, by accident, discovered that something that didn't used to work for me, works now!

momcqueen · ‎09-11-2015

Thank you for sharing this.

I too run sales and virtually everything in my inventory is on some degree of sale or other at any given time. I keep my regular prices set high (for several different reasons) but when I want to reduce stock on a certain item or category of items, I increase the 'Markdown Manger' discount.

My thoughts for doing it this way are twofold:

(a) the 'items on sale' link as available in the Listing Frame

(b) a reduction of 30 per cent off or more gets its own flag on the item listing page

I don't know how successful this tactic is but I suspect that a 'sale of 30 per cent reduced' garners more attention than one of say, ten per cent reduced, even if the end price for both is the same.

What I don't see as working for me is FREE SHIPPING to stimulate sales. For me, there is a very narrow subcategory of one-at-a-time purchases for which this is appropriate to use. Neither does me combined shipping discounts. I don't think this is an ebay thing; I think I have to find the right balance between item price and combined postage reductions. I want to be able to offer free shipping domestically on more orders but I don't see enough room to manoeuvre without a proper Promotions Manager such as what is available on ebay.com.

ricarmic · ‎09-11-2015

Hi Mj!

Hmm didn't know before that 30% off or more gets special attention, I may have to do more experiments now!

Yes free shipping has as almost as many views as there are people expressing them.... like just about everything in eBayland different things work for different folks....

I had a fellow fisherman explaining to me yesterday (one of the advantages of selling online, one can sneak away fishing sometimes) that one of the differences between people catching fish on the pier was which store they got their minnows from..... sometimes it is very subtle things that can make a difference, apparently on the pier fishing, as well as in eBayland!

pjcdn2005 · ‎09-11-2015

Hmm didn't know before that 30% off or more gets special attention, I may have to do more experiments now!

I wasn't aware of that either. I'll see have to see if I can find an example to see what it looks like.

momcqueen · ‎09-11-2015

You betcha. I don't know what it means in the grand scheme but it's a pretty little banner-type thing under the pic. Anything on sale with 30 per cent reduction or greater garners this stripe. My only complaint is that the price is in red type. For me, red type means avoid. Green is good. Red is bad.

Everything in my store is on sale.... I'm like a giant used car lot guy.

momcqueen · ‎09-11-2015

Oh wait, not stripe exactly, but an extra line of text.

Compare to a 'regular' sale. I'd also like to note that in the hours prior to my 'same-day' cut-off time, it also has a stripe there that says 'same-day shipping' or something. After the cut-off time, it reverts to a benign Located in Canada or something else.

momcqueen · ‎09-11-2015

Also, when a buyer looks through the List View of Items for Sale, it displays like below AND buyers get messages form ebay when sales are ending and starting if that item is being Watched. Things to consider.

pjcdn2005 · ‎09-11-2015

hmmm I only see that result on .com. On .ca there is no percentage shown in search.

I'm hesitant to mention this because I don't want to cause you any grief but it shows on that on ca you have 834 listings and on .com 830.

momcqueen · ‎09-11-2015

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
hmmm I only see that result on .com. On .ca there is no percentage shown in search.

I'm hesitant to mention this because I don't want to cause you any grief but it shows on that on ca you have 834 listings and on .com 830.

Oh, yes. You're right, I was going to mention that the last screen capture was from ebay.com. It looks similar to that of ebay.co.uk. Do you remember way back when I said you could tell which items had International Site Visibility based on the colour of the word 'watchers' ? I'm still trying to crack that. Sometimes Watchers is regular type. Sometimes it is boldface black and other times it is red or even red boldface. I haven't figured this out yet, which is which.

Thank you, I did notice it says I have fewer listed items on ebay.com than ebay.ca. I have no idea the reason for that. Everything ships to the USA. I think it give a new number for ebay.co.uk too. It might be the number is simply miscalculated. If something isn't visible, I truly have no idea what it is. I assume it is merely a delay in a relisted item(s) showing on other sites. I guess I could determine what is missing by viewing as Newly Listed first and seeing if the latest item is the same on each.

rose-dee · ‎09-11-2015

@mjwl2006 wrote:
... buyers get messages form ebay when sales are ending and starting if that item is being Watched.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

Yes, I noticed this recently since I still do occasional buying on eBay. I took note of it for my selling purposes.

I think eBay has made a lot of changes recently to searches and display parameters, things almost seem to change from week to week. But how can anybody ever keep track of the whole picture at any given time? Too bad eBay doesn't make up a handy chart for sellers to refer to for features like this. We just have to discover them on our own, by default.

rose-dee · ‎09-11-2015

Here's a case in point. I just noticed these display differences the other day. The first screen shot is my item viewed (by me) on eBay.ca. I seem to have passed some sort of milestone, as I see I've finally received the coveted "Longtime Member" designation -- wow, that means almost more to me than a TRS seal!

However, see Screen Shot #2 -- this is the same item viewed on eBay.com. Notice the "Longtime Member" is gone, I presume because the requirements for such are different on .com?

This is important to me, because it appears my U.S. (.com) buyers won't see the same highlighted points. On one view of this item (not shown here), "Located in Canada" is in red. Why it was a different set of highlighted points on that particular occasion today, I don't know -- does eBay rotate these featured points randomly? Whatever the case may be, like 'mj', I would have preferred a colour other than red, which looks more like a warning than a feature.

I also note that Free Shipping is highlighted on .com but not on .ca, even though the free shipping on this item is domestic shipping only. Which to me means that the very people I am trying to target with free shipping may not notice it as easily (unless eBay knows that most Canadians shop on .com, which may be true).

Oh well, carry on Canada.

1) Viewed on .ca: