Ebay: More Bad News on Views
Ebay Page Views Fall 10% in the Year to August
So this week I was pleased to see this UBS Internet Usage Report, based on comScore US Audience data. First the, apparently, good news that unique visitor numbers had grown on eBay by 20% year on year to August 06. A visitor could be either a buyer or seller but, at first glance, you would think this growth should be good news for the auction site.
However, to muddy the waters, the actual number of eBay pages viewed fell by 10% over the same period. So we apparently have more people looking at less pages and this is confirmed later when we see in August 05 the average different page views per visit to eBay was 36 but this had fallen to 30 a year later. Further confirmation that people are doing less when they visit eBay comes in the average time they spend on eBay each day. The average eBay visit in August 05 was 22 minutes. A year later it was just 17 minutes.
Given eBay isn't any smaller as a site, these drops in page views and time spent on the site are dramatic. The conclusion I draw is, while more people are looking at eBay, there is actually substantially less being done on the site.
My major concern is that the fall in visitor page views and time spent on eBay is more likely to represent a reduction in buyer activity. This concern is perhaps supported by eBay's justification for the recent stores fee increases and reduction in search visibility. They expressed the view that it was the imbalance of store inventory listings compared to the traditional auction format items that was damaging the 'magic' of eBay for buyers. While that may confirm my opinion that buyer activity is falling enough to cause concern, I just don't buy eBay's view that stores were to blame.
The eBay Store items were never mixed in to the short duration auction and buy it now listings search. They did show up for a brief period tagged on at the end of a search, but only after all the shorter duration auction listings. In my opinion, the core short duration auction listings were never adversely affected by increased Stores activity.
I believe it is the quality of the shorter duration listings that has turned buyers off from eBay. There are too many scams and the amount of penny eBooks, likely counterfeit items, potential copyright breaches and hiked up shipping charges, to name but a few issues, is staggering to me.
One example is the numerous reports I've seen of copied DVDs and CDs being supplied when the listing offered 'new' or 'genuine'. By the time the bad feedback starts to arrive the seller has vanished, probably behind yet another user ID to run the scam again. How many times does a buyer have to be a victim of rogue sellers before they turn away from eBay altogether?
If my opinion is correct the policing of eBay should be greatly improved to restore the faith and trust of buyers. It is no longer credible for eBay to rely on users alone to report listings before checking them itself. I am also told that, even when reported, bad listings are all too often still allowed to run their course unhindered by eBay. This isn't good news to hear.
There are two things eBay can do immediately, at virtually zero cost, to improve this situation. Firstly, increase the minimum sale price on the site to 50 cents and, secondly, ban eBooks altogether from being sold. All too often these cheap transactions with no shipping cost are simply used to buy and sell feedback ratings. A few dollars can earn a good three figure feedback rating which is, all too often, used to put a trustworthy appearance on a scam listing.
In this writers opinion eBay would do well to make user integrity and the site image a top priority now.
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14 Comments
Post a CommentI guess it would be too easy just to stop buying things you can't see or return (like actual printed books, clothes, tools, craft items) if they didn't meet objective specifications, right? People who put air guitars on their credit cards should be aware that they're paying for air guitars!
I was a seller on Ebay for quite a few years and I dont really agree with banning the Ebooks (well maybe now that its become so ridiculous). I sold ebooks for about a year until realizing that unless you were going to sell them for pennies that it really wasnt profitable. I lost more money than I made for ebooks but I was an honest seller and owned all resale rights (not so much with other sellers now). I think the biggest problem with Ebay is the scammers who get away with it by threatening their buyers with negative feedback. I once had a seller with excellent ratings sell me an item that was of bubble gum machine quality. I would have sent it back but I had to pay the return shipping and it was not worth the price (way over inflated by the way). I left him NEUTRAL feedback for misrepresenting the item and was contacted by him a few days later saying if I didnt remove my feedback he would leave me horrible negative feedback. I responded that I would not remove neurtal feedback
I agree totally. The problem of theft and misrepresentation of music, photos, autographs and scalpers selling tickets at HIGHLY inflated values has been brought up time and time again. I know of someone who recently signed on to find photos SHE took of an entertainer pirated and being sold on ebay - photos she freely shared with other fans. Of course by the time ebay acts on it (24-48 hours) it's sold and gone. I've seen tickets to a concert on the 12th listed on the 13th for $80 + $15 shipping. Tickets to another concert at $160-220+ when there's still PLENTY of $40 seats to that concert available. There's "rare" autographed photos for $20+ that are easily had for $5 if someone knows to shop on the artist's website. Ebay by action does not care about the misrepresentations...nor by the copyright infringements seen every time I do log on - as long as they're making money. The powersellers seem to be the biggest scammers - and the biggest violators of infringements. I've in one
I have written several articles on Ebay myself. I had some great spurts, but overall, it is a waste of time. Either they make big changes soon or go up in smoke
I've identified my source in the opening sentence Ty. If you can tell me where else to look I'd be interested to hear.
Where are you getting these traffic figures? I see eBay traffic down by 20 Million visitors a day over the last 8 months.
Wow! Finally an article that hits the nail on the head. As a shopper, buyer and seller on e-Bay I think this article really analyzes the main questions. As a shopper I have noticed a steep hike in the shipping prices of items, making e-Bay items just not the deal they used to be. I have also had a lot of friends who won't shop on e-Bay b/c they have been victim of scams. E-Bay seems to encourage scams by offerring certain countries known for scammers to list for free. Also by alienating stores, it has alienated a lot of sellers who had to keep their feedback up in order to sell through their stores and used auctions to do so. While upping listing prices another 50 cents, I don't think is the answer(It would alienate scammers for bootleg items, but with current store fees it would alienate the few honest ''Core'' sellers who are staying) I do think saying no to one cent ''e-Books'' and ''recipes'' would help. But the real answer? Cut the Big wigs paychecks and pay
You don't even have to sift thru figures. Ask the sellers and they'll tell you sales have steadily been going down year after year while Ebay makes up the difference by raising fees. This latest fiasco by Ebay to make the stores almost invisible while hiking their fees was merely a ploy to get people disgusted enough to close their stores in put the bulk of their stock into core auctions. What ebay failed to realize is that most sellers (none I know of) can afford to do such a thing. So...they did the next best thing. They are taking their stock to other venues for low or no listing fees and probably more traffic than an Ebay store can get right now. I can tell you as fact that I've installed my own counter in my store and it now gets pitifully few people each day. All this while, Ebay should have been spending its time streamlining the site and making it easier for buyers to come in and browse or search thru listings. Instead they took the lazy way out - doing virtually not
This is a very good article. It would be interesting to know what % of auction listings have resulted in a sale month by month during 2006. My gut instinct is that it the % started falling noticeably in May and is definitely lower for the last few months this year than for the corresponding period last year. I do not believe that having the shop listings at the end of the main auction listings caused any particular problem. Visitor traffic would have only reached the shops listings if there had been nothing to attract the visitor traffic attention in the preceding auction listings. If you find what you need on page 1, would you work your way through all the way to page 10? Rather I think that there are a number of key issues / problems developing with the eBay trading situation and that there might be a few surprises over the 12 months to come in the quarterly financial reporting.
It is now too late to restore the faith of the missing buyers; they have left and they will never return. Sadly, they continue to tell their friends about their experiences and all of e-commerce suffers as a result. Rogue management has engaged in an unspoken conspiracy with Power-Scamsters to allow the complained of practices that Graham cites. The corrupt and incompetent management has now turned its attention to the persecution of honest and legitimate sellers; thousands of legitimate listings are now being cancelled, and hundreds of honest sellers are being driven out of business as the bogus T&S gang goes after imagined and fabricated "violations." Killing honest sellers is safe and leads to the higher body counts that consumers and law-enforcement agencies love. Meg and Bill need the real fraudsters money to meet the outrageous quarterly-demands of the corrupt/lazy analysts and the greed-driven institutional investors. The non-profit site cleanupebay.com continues to bulk-repor