Question
G'day,
I logged on for the free 30 day trial of View Tracker 2.0 yesterday. Found at http://www.sellathon2.com (although if you go through a link on the Google ad's at the top of an here page when you intend to sign up, Crystal and Jim should get a remuneration of some type, I guess)
Overall I am impressed, and I do intend to subscribe when my trial period nears it's end. As an auction junkie, and someone who can be fascinated by statistics, I love it. However, there have been a couple of concerns, and I would like to hear from long term users what their thoughts are. For some reason View Tracker missed the hit that my fourth bid was received on.... it caught the other bids on two different auctions by the same bidder, but it did not acknowledge that a bid had been received on the third auction until I went into the auction (thus the next hit made it notice the bid, but still not acknowledge the nature of who placed it). This raises the question of how many hits are actually missed.... and so far this is the most important question, given the nature of the product and where it's real value lies.
The only other "nuisance" I find so far has been that whilst I may leave the page open, if I do so for a while, I have to sign back in just to refresh the page. A minor thing, but Ebay only does this in critical business areas such as the listing page.
So, 24 hours in:
* I have added it to a couple of auctions that I already had running where I had substantial offers earlier in the week (and no bids yet, at less than 20% of the offer http://community.here.com/infopop/em...s/icon_eek.gif ), and, being mid auction, they have not had enough hits since to give me any real information.
* I have set up seperate folders to keep my Australian dollar auctions seperate from my US dollar auctions, while selling both under the same ID. I can not do this with My Ebay, and it allows me to know total values for each currency, and keep the analysis of different sites seperate.
* I have listed a couple of lacklustre runs of items where the info can't be expected to be critical (Australian Postcards and 1970's & 1980's agricultural brochures - too modern to attract great attention).
That said, I can already pick up information on where hits are coming from on Ag brochures listed in two categories, and it is clear that I am getting fairly even hits from both categories, thus confirming that listing in two categories does work (where appropriate).
I have been both surprised and amused by some of the search terms that have been revealed. Whilst the obvious are more numerous, there are less obvious searches that are incredibly convoluted by people that have steadily refined their searches to find very specific items, even though they are not the items that I have. Alternatively, a search from an American user that found one of my Australian Postcards tonight, revealed a subject for postcards that I assume this person collects, which I may have overlooked in the past - and a search of completed auctions reveals that there is reasonable competitive bidding on the subject. This type of information is useful if not valuable when buying stock in the future.
I also can note already that on the run of ag brochures, that so far the numbers coming from both browsing the category (24% ) plus searching the category (7% ) are about equal to the numbers who are doing a broad search of the Ebay site (30% ). This reflects the importance of the existing category structure, and just how much the replacement of the categories with item specifics must interfere with the comfort of buyers who are using Ebay. I have not yet listed any items with Item Specifics, since utilising View Tracker.
I have NOT worked out, though, how some auctions are viewed from a "direct link", as I have had a couple of hits of this nature, but can think of no reason why there would be a direct link anywhere to these auctions (and it is not a link from a chat board, as that has a seperate tally).
These are just a few preliminary thoughts. The service has value, and so far (fresh in) I recommend it, although I do query just how much activity is being missed. Certainly there is information available that can be used to research, even if it does not result in bids from those people when they open your auctions. Plus it just caters to my curiosity, and I am easily amused ...
If you have used it, let us know what you think, or make any recommendations or comments on how you use it or where you think it's value lie. If you have not used it, feel welcome to ask questions, there are people here with much more experience than me who will most likely be able to answer with much more accuracy than I can at this stage.
Kind Regards, Kevin
Answer
Hi Kevin, I used them for the trial period but did not opt to continue.
I found some things VERY helpful - for example in my clothing auctions close roughly the same percentage of people use NWT in search as use NEW. I generally had been using one term or the other, but did determine that I get more hits if I fit both into the title (which I usually can)
But, I also had many missed bids in the trial period and the numbers were quite different from the number of hits via Channeladvisor (which is the management tool I use) Sometimes higher, sometimes lower
With everything costing more these days, I just couldn't justify the ongoing cost of this system. Perhaps when things pick up, but not now. I did enjoy looking at the info and learned some helpful things.
Answer
I've read that Sellathon was down a time or two this week. If so then the numbers would be off because it failed to pick data up while it was down.
I liked Sellathon but not well enough to subscribe. After 30 days you realize that there are only one or two things you are actually checking for, mainly in my case, the watchers and the search terms. Now ebay Stores has the same features, just more difficult to drill down the data.
I also liked watching the search methods during the big book category fiasco. My Sellathon showed 11% of people searched by category while eBay was saying it wasn't so.
Direct link could be people who saved it before you started using Sellathon, eBay automatic email notification or a friend forwarded to them. I think.
Answer
Hi Kevin. It's possible that the missing hits were caused by people not enabling JavaScript and/or using programs to block tracking. I use WebWasher which will block Sellathon from accessing any information regarding my presence - it also removes the URL referrer so you can't tell where I came from which may explain the direct links you're seeing. Proxomitron is another blocking program which has the same capabilities as WebWasher. Actually, there are a number of ways one can block Sellathon's tracking - you don't really need a program to do so.
Blanche
Answer
My problem is how much time can one devote to research. If you have hundreds of similar items, it may be worthwhile. But for those few listings, it seems like a lot of time spent for meager rewards.
Also, if you are selling similar items over and over again, do you really need to continue the service.
Answer
Hmmm, it is definitely missing information it should not be missing.....
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>It's possible that the missing hits were caused by people not enabling JavaScript and/or using programs to block tracking. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
G'day Blanche,
I appreciate that people surf anonamously, and I guess by stealth, so I have no problem with that being an example of a type of bidder, and their information will be missed.
However, in the case quoted above the same bidder bid on three items at about the same time. Two of those visits/bids were logged as such, and the third was not noticed by View Tracker.
I have gotten up today, to having two cricket items bid on by one bidder, only to have one of those bids acknowledged by View Tracker, along with the actual hit that made the acknowledged bid. I doubt that someone is going to change into a "stealth" mode during bidding, so I am assuming that a fair bit of info is actually being missed. I also have two postcard bids by one bidder over the same period that are not acknowledged at all, so that bidder may have been in a stealth type mode.
In any case, this means that I can not use View Tracker for keeping a tally of current bids - "My Ebay" does keep the bid totals accurately, although the new version has removed the starting price total so I can not "glance" at how much "competitive" bidding I have anymore.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>My problem is how much time can one devote to research. If you have hundreds of similar items, it may be worthwhile. But for those few listings, it seems like a lot of time spent for meager rewards.
Also, if you are selling similar items over and over again, do you really need to continue the service. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
G'day Commentary,
Like any tool it's use will vary from person to person. Whilst I list in runs, I do list a very mixed bag of items (although my percentage of "paper" listings has definitely increased this year - I am currently handling much less "3 dimensional" stuff than previously).
Research wise there are two aspects that currently appeal to me for my own purposes. Firstly, the search terms used by buyers can be checked. It then takes two minutes to pull up a completed auctions search sorted by price, and that can give me information I may have otherwise over looked (one example within 36 hours of using this product) - that is quick, easy and only requires further research if I personally consider it justifiable - thus it targets the time spent on research, and can teach me where I can buy additional stock when I am browsing, say, at an antique fair.
The second area of research value is knowing where my bidders are coming from. It should not be necessary, but at this stage I want to know how effective "Item Specifics" is or isn't - I can not do anything to change Ebay's faulty policies, but I want to be aware of how they are affecting me and others. On a better business level, being able to identify which categories buyers are using is important - I personally utilise double categories quite a bit, this tool enables me to refine the useage, understand where it may be of value, or even determine within a run, which two out of three categories are attracting more browsing bidders. For a person listing very similar items this information could be garnered easily within the trial period of the product, for someone listing a fairly eclectic range of junk, this can be an effective ongoing tool.
All of that said, I now need to weigh up just how effective this tool is with missing information. I can not use it to keep ongoing tallies of my sales because I do not know from it alone whether the information is even close to being accurate (it currently only acknowledges 5 out of the 8 bids on the items that it is covering), but the search word uses are very useful for me personally, while category coverage is only effective if I know that more than 5/8 of hits are actually being registered.
Kind Regards, Kevin
Answer
Hey Kevin,
Good to see you again.
I tried sellathon version 1? This was a few months ago, the current version does have some upgrades, but I did not follow what they all are. I received a email from sellathon announcing this, but never really checked out what upgrades this consisted of.
I did not find any sales that were not listed at that time. I did not compare hits to another auction counter as I don't use counters anymore on a regular basis. So I cannot help you there.
I liked the information that it gave, my wish? Give the option to Group it all together in one big list. I am aware that you can export the information which I did do, but was not impressed with the results.
As commetary stated too much time for me to really go through it on a regular basis. If it would have given me a list os search words, without visiting each auction, I might have signed up. Since most of my items are one of a kind, that may diminish the value somewhat in my opinion to me. I cannot make slight revisions to the auction, and evaluate how that effected the information received for multiple auctions.
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> there are less obvious searches that are incredibly convoluted by people that have steadily refined their searches to find very specific items <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I also was amazed at how refined some bidders searches are. I spent some time looking at these during my evaluation period, and changed some of my search techniques because of it.
In our sales areas, about 80% search all of ebay, not categories. This is something that I suspected, but was never able to proove until using this software. Item specifics is not a issue for me yet.
I liked the concept and thought very seriously about subscribing but did not.
Answer
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>If it would have given me a list os search words, without visiting each auction, I might have signed up. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
G'day DDub / DW,
You can now group together runs of auctions or all of your auctions (within one folder) by ticking them and get a "combined data summary" - the bottom box of this shows all the search words that have been used sorted by how often they have been used (that number can be skewed by one person opening, say, ten auctions from his one search).
I have found I am getting about a third of my hits from "View Sellers Other Auctions", but I think that is an advantage of listing in runs.
Interestingly, almost all the Agricultural searches are title only, while the half-doll I have on currently is getting about half the searches through title and description. I don't know how this helps, but it does show that different types of buyers use Ebay differently.
Cheers, Kevin
Answer
All in all I rather like it. The support people are quick and friendly.
I really don't care if it misses something here and there as long as the aggregate data shows fairly accurate trending. We're not plotting the approach vectors of the space shuttle here. It does show me search terms and helps me to refine my keywords, and I think that's worth the cost. It's also enlightened me on some times of the day when I was getting good hits that I didn't suspect.
Also, when I get a hit from someone surfing anon it says so.
Answer
I think one also needs to analyze what impact the number of auctions one is listing at one time have on the sales data. If one is running hundreds of similar items, one can possibly flood a category or keyword. Thus improve visibility and hits. So you may get one hit with a keyword and numerous hits from viewing seller's other items. Not sure how that affects the stats.
I just think that stats are great. However, to determine true correlation is much harder since seasonal factors, as well as eBay site changes, as well as number of items available, war, etc, etc, etc... just makes it difficult to have definite conclusions.