Ebay viewing and sales big drop for no reason!

BigDebtBoy

Hi guys

I was hoping someone may be able to help me out with something thats puzzling me.
I opened a new ebay store around this time last month (basic) and febuary went pretty well sales wise..however over the past week or so sales have dropped but the strangest thing is the drop in views (using the omniture traffic site)
Page views have dropped by almost 200% on average
visists by about 70% and strangest of all the storefront views are iregular to say the least last month wildly from 50 views one day to 1 or 0 the next and the last week between 0-3 views.
The thing is I have done nothing different at all apart from their is now around 100 more listsings than when I was getting more views, its the storefront views that strike me as being odd.
My standard was below standard and still is (quite harsh due to late postage with the weather before and after christmas).

any ideas ? cheers

Crowqueen

There are a huge variety of factors, but something important was that this week there was a virus scare, so that will definitely have affected traffic to the site.

Otherwise it is probably dependent on what you sell, how you sell it, what your feedback is like, and so on.

alx2010

I have had a slow week as well if it's any consolation. Did not know the virus scare might be a factor...

lovinituk

Some of my listings in a particular line that have been at or near the top of the listings for months have started going up and down all the over the place recently for no apparent reason. The same appears to be happening to competitors in the same line. Ebay have made some changes recently so who knows if that has anything to do with it.

Crowqueen

lovinituk wrote: »

Some of my listings in a particular line that have been at or near the top of the listings for months have started going up and down all the over the place recently for no apparent reason. The same appears to be happening to competitors in the same line. Ebay have made some changes recently so who knows if that has anything to do with it.

More likely to be a variance in the demand for that particular line if everything else is staying the same.

lovinituk

Crowqueen wrote: »

More likely to be a variance in the demand for that particular line if everything else is staying the same.

I doubt it. Going from position 1 to bottom of page 7 (50 items per page) and back to the top again over a couple of days is more than just natural variance.

mum2one

Also it may be worth taking into account that ebay had free listing weekend in jan, and one last weekend for Feb month, so in theory you may be up against someone having a larger than normal listing, say 1 person would nomally list 5 items, they suddenly find 15, x 100 people thats an extra 1,000 items on.

Also the credit crunch is still biteing people, so it may well be not what you sell is the issue but the economic climate (big word for me!!) and the free listinggs x

soolin

The free listing days are a real PITA for business sellers and as mum above suggests may well alter rankings in Best Match.

I seem to be against trend at the moment, had a brilliant day yesterday, 100% sell through on my business account for my auctions. The very few BINS I have up though are not doing so well.

porto_bello

One thing to add on the subject of free listing days: I'm guessing that like myself, many private sellers take advantage of free listing days and are focusing on selling, rather than buying for the duration of the 7-10 days following.

A week later, when private sellers have made a few quid, they'll probably be looking to spend it and your stats will probably rebound upwards!

Hammyman

Dead here too. I've had five sales this week. Last week it was nearly that per day. I share porto bello's view and have noticed this cycle occurring before.

terra_ferma

If ebay are tweaking best match, in particular the weight given to performance, it could make a huge difference to your listings.
I've heard several times that BM ranking will also depend on the geographic location of the buyer, it's worth checking BM with a different account changing the location, just in case.