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Learning from eBay Research
by Brian McGregor

Some highly useful research has just been published. The information comes from Sellathon, the company who produce the new auction tracking and analysis software called ViewTracker.

They used ViewTracker on 100,000 eBay auctions to come up with the findings. So it's a pretty good sample.

I believe some of the results raise important questions if you're a serious seller on eBay.

Here are a few of the key findings from their analysis of these 100,000 auctions:

a) Hardly any eBayers search auction descriptions.

It was found that around 92% of eBay searches were conducted on titles only. Indeed, overwhelmingly, searches were for titles only in all categories. Only a small number select a category first to browse through.

This research confirms how fundamental the title is to your auction success. Regular readers will know I bang on about how critical your auction title is. Indeed, effective auction title creation was comprehensively covered in last the last newsletter http://www.workwinners.com/newsletter/041025.htm

What the research also indicated was that plurals were important too. About 25% of searchers used the plural version of words. So, of the people searching for "walnut cabinet", around one quarter of them will search on "walnut cabinets". If you put cabinet in your auction title, around 25% of searchers won't find your auction. (Incidentally, I notice that eBay are working on extending their search software to enable it to bring back selected plurals on singular searches, and vice versa. But they haven't announced yet when this will be live.)

Also, the research showed that people NEVER search on superlatives. These are words such as beautiful, stunning or amazing.

b) eBayers tend to search all of eBay, not by category.

The majority of eBay users who search for items do so from eBay's home page or eBay's main Search page. This means they are including items from any category. While some people DO search within a specific category, it's far more common for them to search the entire eBay site.

This raises the question as to the value of placing your auction in more than one category. You need to decide how likely it is that your buyers will search for your item by a standard search, compared to selecting a category to browse and then search on.

c) Searchers rarely view more than 2 pages of results.

The research found that viewers rarely go beyond page one or two in the auction listings. Some people will browse a category listing all the way to the end. But the vast majority either find what they're looking for on the first 2 pages, or they move on to something else.

This means that it would be helpful if you thought of eBay as a search engine. Like all search engines, you need to optimise your items so they stand the best chance of appearing on the first two pages.

Once a viewer gets a results page of auction listings, it is presented by default in the sequence of time remaining. But they can also sort it in a variety of ways. These include newly listed, lowest price, highest price etc. Price and date sorting by viewers is extremely common. On pricing, 4 times as many people sort high price to low, than low price to high.

d) Minimum bid auctions are better than Reserve auctions.

The sample showed that Reserve auctions are unpopular. It seems it is almost always better to have a high minimum bid, than have a low minimum bid with a secret Reserve Price.

eBay knows this, and actively try to discourage sellers from using Reserve Prices. In eBay Australia, they've gone one step further. They have just removed the Reserve Pricing feature altogether.

So, not only would it seem prudent to avoid using Reserve Prices on your auctions, they may be for the chop at some point anyway!

e) Auctions with bids get 1,000% more clicks.

The research confirms that there really is a "snowball effect" when it comes to bids. The more bids an item has, the more likely is the viewer to click through to the auction. And the more people that click through to the auction, the more bids it attracts.

The best known way to encourage bidders is to run auctions which have very low a starting price. So, if you can take the risk, it could well be worth testing out the theory.

f) Negative feedback has a substantial impact on bids.

The research showed that sellers' positive feedback record was far less important to buyers than their negative feedback record.

The researchers took similar items and correlated the final price with the seller's feedback. For every 1% increase in positive feedback, the final price of the item went up by 0.03%. Let's assume seller A has 50 positive feedbacks, and seller B has 5,000 positive feedbacks. The final price seller B would realise is just 3% more than seller A. In money terms, an item of approximately £100 value would only realise £3 more for seller B than seller A. This is despite the fact that seller B's positive feedback record is 100 times greater than that of seller A. This is probably due to the fact that people expect eBayers to generally have positive feedback ratings. So the impact of having a huge positive feedback rating is minimal. (This is another reason to have more than one eBay User ID, which I have always advocated)

Let's turn now to the evidence in relation to negative feedback. For every 1% increase in negative feedback, the final price of the item was seen to go down by 0.11%.

If we take our previous sellers, let's say seller A has one negative feedback, and seller B has 100 negative feedbacks. Seller 2 will experience an 11% decrease in the final price of each item. In money terms, an item of approximately £100 in value will only realise £89 for seller B. Plus, this negative feedback effect will reduce every final price on every auction which seller B runs.

What we take away from this part of the research is that it pays to work extremely hard to avoid negative feedback!

I hope this has proved useful. Remember it's all based on data collected from 100,000 eBay auctions analysed by ViewTracker. It may or may not reflect your auction business.

The acid test is to apply ViewTracker to your own auctions. You can try ViewTracker without charge today. Once you register, all you have to do is to add the single line of coding they give you to the bottom of each auction.

If you're interested in trying ViewTracker for yourself, click here: http://www.workwinners.com/nlr1101.htm

About the Author

Brian McGregor is an internet business creator, consultant and author. He is the author of several books including 'The eBay Formula', an essential guide to selling successfully on eBay. He has also written many articles and is published on the internet and in the printed media. He is also editor of the eBay Auction Newsletter, which you can subscribe to free. For a free ebook on how to use the leverage of eBay to help your business grow, go to http://www.leads-generation.co.uk/lgdl. For full information about Brian, go to his main website http://www.workwinners.com


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