I asked Ebay what new changes have damaged my sales...and they responded...

[Anonymous]

I just opened a chat with an Ebay representative and asked them "what changes have recently been made that has seen my sales drop by 95-100% this month?" I received the following response

Jean Su. "We have done nothing to destroy any seller's account. It is up to the buyers to buy items and some items are seasonal. Also, there are many sellers nowadays that the competition is very stiff."

....I then mentioned that the drop in sales happened instantly which is neither seasonal nor due to competition being "very stiff" and the response I received was ...dead silence... It appears that rather than tell the truth o a lie Ebay will just go silent and wait for you to go away. So after years of advertising and telling us all to build our own Ebay business and encouraging us to rely on it for our living this is the response we get when they decide we are no longer of any use. I would have some more to say but i have already received 4 warnings from the Ebay moderation team today for speaking out of line. I guess they will shortly send me another dozen or so.....because i know I have been speaking my mind a lot lately. Shame on me.

[lane-ends]

To be honest I dont know what the answer is. When I do searches I can still find my items and they are not all buried down the list. Sales did not peter out they just stopped dead.

In all the time I have been here there has been policy changes and things hit a wall, sellers scream blue murder, talk of going elsewhere, then things settle down. Maybe some changes wind back, some selling methods change, sales pick up untill next drama.

Regular status quo of income cannot be guaranteed, things can and do slow down without warning. This is probably only second next to when stores where made popular then withdrawn from search results about 6 years ago which started the first evacuation to QS.

[ejholden1963]

G'day Ends ... 'Owyagoin'mate ...?

ebay gave casual seller IDs 2 weekends with 100 free listings (market protective move after the QS free announcement?) about the time that members reported their sales "stopped".

Made me think ebay tweaked the search algorithm to keep these listings prominent to encourage sales for these IDs & suck them in to staying on the site ....

I find search results vary between a cold search (not logged in) & searching for your own items when signed in, which is quite interesting ... ?:|

[lane-ends]

I was thinking along the lines of the free listing promos having an affect of swamping listings with junk, usually does, but not usually this extreme. maybe you have a point if they are linking that with perceptive manipulation of search results.

buyers often browse without being logged in, then log in when they want to buy or put something on their list.

Whatever it is, if its affecting buyer habits badly Ebay may rethink it.

recently i did a search for a brand product and on the first page were items that not only were not that brand but the listings didn't have any of the search words in them. Lowest price + postage was giving international listings that were not even lowest total price. looked like a complete glitch to me.

[digital*ghost]

recently i did a search for a brand product and on the first page were items that not only were not that brand but the listings didn't have any of the search words in them. Lowest price + postage was giving international listings that were not even lowest total price. looked like a complete glitch to me.

That's Cassini at work - or rather, making a poor attempt at learning to work. :_| It's supposed to take buyer-specific behaviour on and off-site to pull search results relevant to their searches / interests, with the results "refined" the more it's used (the Best Match sales to impressions thing, I guess) - a completely unnecessary function when the simple fact is people want to see what they're looking for at the time they're looking for it.

That means, even if I had the faintest interest in such items, I would look for wigs by typing "wigs" not "beads", and I would look for g-strings by typing that and not "charms". I dunno, maybe eBay's trying to tell me something... :^O

[full-screen-ahead]

my store has also experienced a dramatic drop in sales since May 1st ( rough estimate 80%) when I changed my store subscription from Featured to Basic. I rang eBay support 4 days ago and blamed the sales drop on te change and that must have somehow reset my ranking on the my items.

Support said they would elevate my complaint and I have heard nothing more and sales have not gone back to normal levels. I do not think you can blame the economy on this one. It has something to do with search ranking.

[lane-ends]

So what you are saying basically is that if you and I perform the same search we would get different results. This would explain difference between a guest search and member search. May try a comparison with my daughters id. 

I know it annoys me when even on the home page it keeps suggesting what I may want to look at based on a recent casual search, hate to think it also skews current searches

[gec2002]

I think Digital is right and in fact it is worse than what he has stated.  I have read that old ads perform poorly in the new search engine it looks for, new photos, new listings, new additions and inputs of manufacturer sku, etc.  Store listings are virtually invisible If older than 90 days.   Apparantly high quality picture are important ( note the future change to 500px min edge)  Also eBay is pushing mobile Apps so your ads need to be mobile friendly.

My listing ID has 2000+ items and over the last 2 months I have been updating them and making mobile friendly.  Sales are still slow but i must admit they are starting to pick up only time will tell.  ( I guess they could not jhave got any worse can't go lower than zero)

[sueken4812]

So how do we make sure our listings are mobile app friendly?

[lane-ends]

So how do we make sure our listings are mobile app friendly?

I do know with this in mind use the gallery pics rather than rely embedded pics,. Also fill out description details as these two things are the main things buyers read before opening full description if at all. Keep in mind mobile apps open listings as several pages not one big page as per computer screen.

[gec2002]

First up have a look at your ads on a phone and see if there any problems, and have a look at orher stores, see what works and what doesn't.

Stick to basic HTML tags, simple tables and avoid frames, and imagemaps.  Keep your layout simple don't use images or only small ones and keep as clean as possible.  Check on a PDA as well as a smartphone (iphone).  If you have Dreamweaver you can check it with Adobe Device Central.  If it looks OK on Chrome it should be OK on a smartphone (Android)