topic Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment in Selling

Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

digital*ghost — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 11:19:09 GMT

For various reasons I've decided eBay will be the guinea pig for trialling tracked postage only, starting from tomorrow (my shop has been closed over a week, so this will be interesting) - I'm posting about it here because a lot of my items are low value ($4-$7), and just thought there might be some sellers with similar business structures who could be interested in the end results (whether it be a success or failure etc), in which case I'd follow up in a few weeks, and again in a few months.

If there's any specific info or stats someone would be interested in knowing, let me know so I can keep track of it.

A couple of things to note, in case it puts any subsequent info I post in the right perspective, while I do get a lot of single-item purchases, the core of my business is multi-item purchases from repeat customers; which is something I expect would make the higher postage cost a little easier to take (postage is going from a bit over $3 flat rate to a bit over $6 flat rate).

I've also set up a discount for orders of $50+, so this may have an effect on some of the changes in buying patterns (if I still get any sales, anyway ).

Lastly, some of my buyers are quite aware of the other platforms I sell through, and I won't be making any changes on those as yet, so this may result in decreases on eBay, but increases elsewhere (if I detect a significant pattern of that, I'll note it here when I update for anyone interested in that kind of stat).

If no one is interested, all good, and we can carry on as though you din't see nuthin' here.

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

countessalmirena — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 11:36:45 GMT

I'll be awaiting the results of your experiment as an onlooker.

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

lyndal1838 — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 11:56:35 GMT

I am with the Countess....I will be watching with interest.

At least everyone will be reassured that it will be a well run experiment dealing in facts not the usual hysterical rhetoric that is so often seen on these boards.

Go Digi!

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

katistrophik — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 14:54:41 GMT

I have to admit I did a double take when I saw digital*ghost as the OP -

my immediate thought was what in the he!! could ~~any~~ most of us know that digi doesn't

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

glenbankloel — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 20:47:34 GMT

Thanks for being the guinea pig, will watch out for your report back.

Appreciate your time and giving us your results.

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

gec2002 — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 23:01:22 GMT

Just curious, how are you going to evaluated the results? Are you also selling some items priced normally (no tracking) on eBay to use for comparison (control), otherwise how will account for the general variability in ebay sales.

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

digital*ghost — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 00:15:04 GMT

I don't have much variability in my sales on ebay, except for the boom that happened last year, my sales figures have been pretty consistent for a few years, which is one of the reasons ebay is the testing ground - I've been established here the longest, and pricing is a significant factor in most eBay shopper's buying decisions, so significant changes will be pretty easy for me to see. All of my items have been updated to tracked shipping only - having some untracked at lower cost I suspect would just cause confusion, especially since the majority of sales involve multiple items so people would probably choose a mix of $3 and $6 post items and pay $6 post anyway.

The main test is to see whether sales will be drastically affected, to a point where having postage that is up to slightly more than twice that of some of my item prices, is not sustainable - that part will mostly be relevant to me, as what is and isn't sustainable will vary from business to business, and some businesses can transition much more easily (eg if a business has low value items and most customers are one-off and only purchase one item, this kind of change would affect them very differently, so I intend for this to hopefully just be able to offer some general insight into the effect of switching basically overnight, with some short and longer term insight.

My prediction is that sales of single items will slow quite a bit, but sales of multiple items won't slow as much, however I'll be keeping it in place for at least 3 months, because I expect a lot of people will immediately baulk at the initial change and look elsewhere, but I also have confidence in the fact that I do have some niche products and this will help me over that initial resistance.

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

gec2002 — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 01:14:32 GMT

Just my inner statistician bubbling to the surface. Can't resist a good randomized experiment topped off by a quick student t-test. Just be careful adding a confounding variable (multi-sales) may cause a spurious correlation.

Just kidding go for it girl.

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

digital*ghost — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 01:33:05 GMT

I think during last year's peak boom was probably the best time to have tested it, but if I'm being honest I'm kind of hoping this will make my workload a bit more manageable, and maybe even my website a bit more attractive (I have untracked options there, but it's set up so that once the order reaches a set level, only tracked options become available). This does mean for the stat nerds (of which I count myself as one, albeit a dabbling one, so it's a term of endearment ) there's some bias in my experiment.

i.e. eBay is the biggest source of stress for me ATM, so if it reduces certain types of orders, and especially reduces post-sale handholding that so often seems to be required for those orders, I'm personally going to consider it a success, even if I take a hit financially - at the same time, however, there are a lot of similar businesses that charge $9+ for parcel shipping, with items starting from less than $1, who do really well (one of them - not on ebay - was doing so much business last year their handling time shot up to 2 weeks), so only time will tell how this will go down.

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

digital*ghost — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 09:11:13 GMT

Day 2, or approximately 17 hours after re-opening with tracked-only postage options...

Just kidding, this isn't an real kind of update - I just wanted to say it was kinda weird to only have one package being posted going untracked when normally more than half are (the one untracked was placed via the website, all other orders off-eBay selected express or paid for the upgrade voluntarily). For some reason I felt a little bit like Oprah this afternoon, despite it not being through any benevolence of mine lol.

"You get a tracking number, you get a tracking number, everyone gets a tracking number!"

Which is just to say, sales did start trickling in despite the jump in cost, none have been for only one item as yet, per se, though there've been a few that are just 2x 1 product. So yeah.

Lame - I know, I know...

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

katistrophik — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 10:33:58 GMT

Um....

YAY you certainly sound and (look) happy - and yeah totally lame

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

digital*ghost — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:49:04 GMT

@katistrophik wrote:
Um....

😋I was just being silly, this tends to be the most common reaction when I indulge in that, lol 😆

If new posts don't bump threads anymore, I'll have to create a new thread for each update now, so they'll be a little fewer and further between. I can't guarantee no silliness, though. 😁

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

katistrophik — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:27:32 GMT

Hey Digi

The boards are back to bringing last posted on threads to the top

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

digital*ghost — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 08:47:28 GMT

For anyone wondering how this was going a full week later....

If ebay was still my sole source of income, I would have reached the "I've made a huge mistake 😱 " part of the process and reverted back to my original postage costs. 😂

By which I mean sales are extraordinarily low, and the strangest thing is, it seems to have put a halt to almost all multiple-item orders. 😨 Over the weekend, usually my busiest time, I had less than 10 orders and they were nearly all for one $5~ish item (two people bought 2 items, one over 2 orders the other in a single order). Normally by the end of a weekend I have a lot more orders, ranging from 1 - 20+ items.

I can only theorise as to why that is - do people think it's over $6 post per item? Are people only buying because they need that particular item ASAP and they'll look elsewhere in the future? I will need to play with some things to see if I can communicate a bit better that it's a flat rate and see if that helps.

I'm committed to this for the foreseeable future, so I won't be giving in to any knee-jerk panic etc, but I have downgraded to a basic store for now and I will say thank goodness for my other platforms, which are doing quite nicely 😅

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

costumecrazies — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 20:53:36 GMT

Interesting observations, thank you for posting and you are more brave than I to change (just to see what happens)

In my opinion, it is unreasonable for Ebay to expect customers to pay for tracking every time on low cost items between $5 and $10 and also expect this as "free postage".

Adding tracking increases our costs as sellers so unless everyone adopts this buyers will still be attracted by and search for the lowest cost offering

I have taken a different path and offer a tracking option on all listings and for the lowest cost items only about 10% choose to pay the extra

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

digital*ghost — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 23:41:56 GMT

TBH if I could set up postage here the same way I was able to on my website, I would definitely do that.

Every item is assigned a weight value, and when a specific weight is reached, only tracked options become available but until then it's a flat rate of around $3, (and maximum of $8), if something needs to go as a parcel due to size, I just assign a weight over the threshold for the other options. On eBay the closest I can get to that is $X extra per additional item in conjunction with a cap - I did think about taking that route, as it would make the up-front costs look more appealing and at least increase the number of packages being sent via tracked methods, but I don't want someone to pay $1 more or whatever for shipping an extra item if it's not actually paying for anything, nor do I want to spend 20 minutes every day refunding people excesses 😅

It will be an ongoing experiment, anyway - there is a way to make it work, of that I am sure, it's just a matter of whether I can find it and it suits the way I want to operate 🙂

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

countessalmirena — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 10:57:22 GMT

The option to do this (weight option, and different postage options as a result of total weight - and perhaps volume? - results) is logical.

I am striving mightily to let that sentence speak for itself.

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

digital*ghost — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 14:21:34 GMT

Hmm, rate tables are based on this concept, but work in minimum 500g increments, from memory. I might have a play around with them over the weekend, though.

eg If it could be set up so that if I make every item weigh 500g, then have postage increases per 3-5kg (i.e. 6-10 items - some of the more valuable items usually get a double or triple weight, so that it takes fewer to reach the threshold for tracked options ), with a maximum parcel rate assigned for say 10kg+ , it could work (I'm not changing anything so soon, but it's worth looking into, maybe it'd suit someone else, as well 🙂

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

everard6920 — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 07:19:34 GMT

Have been reading this thread with interest but I've been reluctant to post on this new trainwreck community design ...

Anyway, I think you and I have similar business models, except my items are slightly more expensive, on average. I moved to fully tracked postage at the beginning of the pandemic because it was just too stressful for me wondering if items would turn up, and at that point, sales were through the roof because everyone was in lockdown buying up a storm.

As of now, I've basically got four postage tiers: the 3 trackable letter tiers (which are actual cost + fees + a small handling charge) and a parcel rate charge (I only need one because I do free postage over $100 and it rarely occurs that there's an order that requires a higher parcel rate than the one I have)

Basically, my letter tiers are really good value if they combine, and pretty bad if they do not. I still get the odd person buying one item and paying double for the postage than what they paid for the item, but it's not common. When eBay had that $5 discount voucher a week or so ago, I got a flurry of low value orders, because that $5 made such orders more economical for people.

The vast majority of my competitors are based overseas, though, so I may find it more difficult when overseas shipping opens back up properly again. My domestic competitors are all very small in comparison to me.

Thanks for doing this and for keeping us in the loop!

Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

heartfeltinspirations2014 — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 07:33:58 GMT

I'm doing my own experiment also so will keep a look out for your results. I'm about to go back to un tracked as my sales have gone down since I have been uploading tracking not only that but I have had to put the cost up for each item by $1.00.....I am footing the other $1.00 So out of 200 sales this month that I usually send as a letter in am out of pocket $200 as usually they cost me $1.00 to send.

Hate that my buyers have to pay more now and I lose money too.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't