Interesting Listing Experiment

[clarry100]

During the past month or so we have one particular listing that has been performing exceptionally well.

We could see that the listing was ranking very high in search results, above lots of the Chinese stuff.

It sold so well in fact that we ran out of stock. We have stock control ON so the listing did not end just went invisible.

So anyway rather than end what looked like a good seller we decided to change the listing in the hope that it would keep its search ranking.

So we changed the pics, price, description and title etc to a different item. Still baby headbands but a quite different item.

I didn't think it would work. I thought the listing would drop off into oblivion and never sell any more.

But to our surprise not so....

The revised listing is continuing to maintain its high search ranking and is still selling like hotcakes.

Very strange phenomenon indeed. Just a very interesting experiment.

Good for us tho of course.

It just confirms to us that in our particular category search ranking is everything.

[ausbargainbasement]

That is a great idea, can be done now with stock control turned on, rather than waiting for a new item to climb up the search rankings.

[clarry100]

The trick of course is to get a listing that is doing well then try to keep it up there by selling well.

It certainly does appear that if a listing sells well/often that its serach ranking stays high.

That seems to be exactly what this one has done even when we changed it to another item.

[saarzi]

But if it only stays up there if it sells well, then the item you change it to has to sell well too, or it will drop...?

Did you change the category?

[clarry100]

True saarzi.
No the category remained the same as the new item is still a baby headband. Just s different one.

[englishrosegardens]

I didn't think you could change the title on a listing that you've already sold some of, or had it rolled over to a new month or something like that? 

[clarry100]

Didn't know about that one.

We used to have trouble editing titles but thought they must have fixed what we thought was a bug/glitch as we now have no trouble editing titles any time we want to.

[englishrosegardens]

It's never been a bug, it's meant to be that way. Any time I edit a listing that I've sold some of I get a message saying certain things can't be edited and the title is one of them. I read somewhere that when I edit a listing any previous buyers will see the same listing they bought from but they didn't make it really clear that they would see it as it was before the edits.

[ausbargainbasement]

Yes you could never change a title of a existing listing before but that must have changed now as was able to alter a title on a listing which had a lot of sales on it.

[saarzi]

Thats strange, Ive never ever had an issue changing the titles of my existing GTC listings that Ive sold some of (some Ive sold hundreds of).  Never received any message either.

Of course previous buyers would see a listing as it was when they purchased - you cant change a contract AFTER someone signs it. i.e. you cant change a listing after a sale is made, for the person who made the purchase. You can only amend for the others who are yet to buy.