Question
I like the reports.
How long have the traffic reports been available?
Any one have a featured store?
If so how do you like the advanced reporting.
I think eBay is feeling the heat from Sellathon's VersionTracker.
Answer
When you have the information, what do you plan to do with it? How do you think it will improve your business? What decisions will you make based on what you see?
Answer
It tells you what keywords the customer was typing to arrive there.
It tells you what search engine is getting the clicks and what one isn't.
eBay related it tells you what your customer searched for to arrive to your store. It also tells you what they searched for while they were there. (right there gives you an idea of what keywords might better help draw you customers.)
It tells you how many visits came direct to your storefront...or me page..or item page. How many unique visitors, projected visitors based on previous months stats.
Answer
The only numbers that really count are profitable sales totals but it is reasonable to expect that more traffic will, over time, generate better sales.(Assuming your products are a fair value in the marketplace.)
It appears that the service started in early April. At this time my reading the reports is mostly entertainment as I can't yet directly relate results to specific efforts but I expect that will improve over time.
I did several things starting about the second week in April including more Store listings, more auction and Fixed Price listings, running a $1.00 w/reserve opening bid listing each week, trying one Featured Plus listing during the half price promotion, adding one or two clickable links in most listings leading to my Store, rewriting some descriptions and replacing some marginal images.
Traffic improved dramatically and sales increased but not in proportion to the traffic increase.
Page view averages doubled in the latter third of the month and Store Front page visits increased an average of 4 times with several peaks of 6 times the early April numbers.
This suggests to me that the extra listings get views (which we all know) but views of listings with clickable links got many more people to visit the Store.
Since I did several things during the same time period I don't know which had the greater positive effect except for the clickable links.
Sales were bunched and a few large sales accounted for the majority of my profit so I see no direct daily relationships between traffic and profit.
Almost all my traffic is coming from eBay. I will have to explore doing a better job of Internet promotion but that will have to wait as I believe increasing my Store inventory and using on site promotion will be my best short term goal.
I'm thinking a written spread sheet might start to give me a useful visual. Day of the week is a better comparison than the same date last month. Beyond day of the week I would add a sales and special promotions column to the numbers available from these reports.
A study group working together to share information would seem to be of value. We might use a weekly thread "Store Reports May xx" and maybe use the chat room occasionally.
While our numbers might vary widely our percentages should have some relationships. For example my Views peaked on Wed. and Thurs., my Visits were highest on Mon. and Fri. and my Store front Views were greatest on Wed,' Thurs. and Fri. Monday April 26 was a real dip in all numbers and Sundays were not a good day at any time.
These reports are just another tool but as we grow to understand them, learn how to test options and see patterns they should be a big help in finding more profitable choices.
Answer
> it is reasonable to expect that more traffic will, over time, generate better sales.
> Traffic improved dramatically and sales increased
> but not in proportion to the traffic increase.
Along with the keywords buyers use to arrive at your web store, another very important element to track is conversion. What keywords and domains lead to successful conversions? You see, I have a keyword that ranks #1 that I receive a lot of traffic for, but I have never received a sale from it. The traffic, in this case, is not quality traffic and what is being presented to the buyer is not what they want.