Question
I continue to add items to my Store, painfully slowly due to my habits, and remain very positive about the potential of Stores being the most productive opportunity for the foreseeable future.
I maintain auction and Fixed Price listings for both general sales and, primarily, to create Store traffic.
I made use of the recent 10 cent Fixed Price listing promotion for any category.
I selected about 40 items from the Store, starting with the higher priced listings, and listed each of them for 3, 5 and 7 days.
So I had about 120 listings (I usually run about 20 or 25) without any extra features. I didn't even use gallery which I usually add to most items and always use with items above $25.00.
Listings were heavy on Waterford Crystal because the listings started with the highest priced items first but included about 40% of the total for Irish items and pipes which are consistent sellers for me.
I was going to add a set of identical listings with gallery but I ran out of time. I would have liked to see if adding gallery caused a significantly different result but maybe next time.
The Store traffic increase was dramatic. Store reports show page views and Store visits tripled during the promotion period.
My fees were less than usual as the total cost for about 120 promotion listings was near $12.00 which is below my usual weekly average for the 20 or 25 listings with regular fees and features like gallery.
OK, everything is fine up to this point. More listings, more Store traffic and lower listing fees.
One problem, sales during the promotion period were pathetic. Well below average.
I sell mostly new or NOS so the inventory remains the same.
More listings, more traffic but fewer sales. What gives?
Now, to further confuse the discussion, I'll add another important factor.
I had an increase in "Ask seller a question" emails. I was around the computer a lot during that week and responded quickly and with both details and a request to respond if I could be of further assistance.
End result was a very significant amount of direct sales. (A few large sales)
Listing and Store sales were poor but total sales were great. I'll take that every time.
Can I duplicate it? Can I count on a few large sales and my connecting with them via email?
An example is a friend of a customer doing the actual buying for someone who wanted to get crystal for their son and his new bride.
I was sending and responding to emails from everybody and went through an order process that ended with items I don't list but could provide (variations of patterns and styles).
Hey, no real complaint as I had a very good week but it was so outside of a norm (I list, they buy and pay, I ship) that I don't know how to duplicate or repeat the pattern.
Will it be worth that many listings at full price? Will a few large purchase customers show up and I connect with them each week?
I'm more use to working the basic averages of making Y listings and getting X direct sales. The week I'm discussing has me completely confused.
If I missed a timely response and/or connection with a customer, the results could have been much different.
eBay is never dull and sometimes you just show up and deal with what happens but I sure would like some greater sense of an orderly pattern and better control over what is happening.
I consider the direct sales a bonus and I am concerned that five times my usual number of auction side listings showed such poor totals for listing and Store sales.
I know the "summer slump" is starting to appear and I'm not so much discouraged as I am confused.
Overall things are fine I just don't know what is happening or why.
A factor I under considered may be in play.
When you list a specific item people generally either buy or pass.
When you establish a Store with a range of similar items, some people may start to view you as a dealer or source in that general category.
If I see an item listed in red I might look at the seller's other listings to see if it is also listed in my preference of blue but I seldom send an email asking that question.
Maybe people see Store owners as being a more general source for item categories they feature and are more likely to inquire.
The "You have it in red small can you provide it in blue XL" type of expectation.
I realized this to some extent and have encouraged it with specific products but I may need to review my approach and encourage it in a more general way through out my Store.
eBay is rather strict about offering choices but I guess you can always suggest alternatives are available and they will be listed upon request.
The whole process is an invigorating challenge.
Some days I just seem to be less ready and willing than is needed for all of the available invigoration.
Answer
One of the things that I am really concerned about is that eBay has still not implemented any way to put all your store listings on Vacation or given us the ability to "Suspend" select store listings. This could be vital for sellers that have hundreds of items in their stores.
For example, I would have liked to take advantage of the 10 cent listing day for some of my higher dollar items currently in the store. I didn't do it because it would have meant that I would have had to go into the store and delete selected items (all mine are set up as GTC), then list them as fixed price, then what didn't sell relist them in the store. The money to relist in stores is not the big factor at all, it's the time to do all that when it would have been so easy to either put the whole store on vacation or suspend the items I wanted to list as Fixed Price.
What this really does is to limit our being able to easily use the special features that eBay runs from time to time. It is also NOT good for eBay as they will not get the extra fees if it's too much trouble to put items in and out and then back in the stores. I just can't believe it could be that hard to implement that feature since it was already being done at HALF. The coding just shouldn't be that difficult. I speak from the point of view of an old programmer/system designer. It would be a win for sellers and eBay both.
If anyone has ANY input ability to the right ears please press this point. If anyone gets the chance to press it at the eBay convention, please, please do.
Answer
loveofpast - there is a more timely way of accomplishing what you described as the reason you didn't participate in the last promotion, assuming you use a listing program like Turbo Lister that you have items stored in after listing.
www.vrane.com has a tool called Power Bomber which lets you close items in groups or in total.... You can use that to close multiple store items if you want to use them in a FP promotion.
Then in Turbo Lister, you can easily pull those listings, convert them to FP format, and launch.
Fortunately the items I list in these promotion I don't have fixed quantities of, so I can just launch my FP discount listings. I have several hundred listings in Turbo LIster in various folders for various listing discounts or FLD events (UK, CA, FIxed priced, etc).
Answer
loveofpast,
I use auctionsage and you can do this in it also. Highlight all the items you want to end and click and it ends them. You can then go to inventory and highlight and click and convert them to auction or fixed price and post with a click. Then can convert back if they don't sell with one click. It's taking me some time to get used to the inventory section but it does show you how many you have and how many you have up at auction so you can tell what you don't presently have listed but have items of at the time.
Mel
ray, I sell only vintage/used collectibles and don't know if I can contribute to your thread from that standpoint at all. I haven't tried anything really similar to what you did. I have found I need to list auctions and/or have auctions end every day to get decent store traffic.
Answer
Katiyana and Mel...
Thanks. Since I do have them in TL. I may give some of that a try. The having to close them one at a time in eBay is a pain. Also, in TL having to convert them one at a time is a pain. Then having to repick them out to relist. However, since there is a way to group end I may try it. I still just wish they would get the suspend/vacation thing in place. And when they do let us "group" suspend and implement a "group" end function.
Thanks ladies for your help. When we get back from vacation I'll try your suggestions out.
Answer
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> When you establish a Store with a range of similar items, some people may start to view you as a dealer or source in that general category. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I do think this is part of it....the last couple of weeks I have been listing some used dresses that would be suitable for members of a wedding party. I got a couple of questions noting that I had several styles available and asking if I had others. I didn't. But if I had, I feel they would have translated into sales.
Answer
I was browsing through threads on the eBay Stores discussion board this morning and read an post where someone said that eBay has plans to impliment a vacation feature before the end of this year. I hope that's true.
Answer
Originally Posted by Irene
I was browsing through threads on the eBay Stores discussion board this morning and read an post where someone said that eBay has plans to impliment a vacation feature before the end of this year. I hope that's true.
Oh, hurrah! Do we dare hope ---