SALES dead in the water !!!!

[rosiegrinsel]

My Ebay sales are gradually GRINDING TO A HALT !!

I am a Top Rated seller with around 20 items rolling over every 30 days

* All with Free Postage

* All with big watch counts

* 100% feedback score

Since the beginning of May.

1st to 16th May...............      56 sales (around my normal figure)

17th to 31st May  ...........       28 sales (NO sales at all 17th - 19th May)

1st June to 16th June......      27 sales

17th June to 20th (today) ... 4 sales

EBay please tell me please WHAT IS GOING ON   ?????

[pinktoedannie]

The thing to remember with Best Match is that it is also designed to give everyone a fair go. It is designed to shuffle listings around into different orders so that the same listings are not always at the top. This is in combination with delivering the buyers' supposed 'best match' for what they are searching for (based on the words they enter and their past buying history). If different listings/sellers show at the top of searches on different occassions then it is working. The problem is that there are so many listings for the exact same thing that they can't all be on the first page of a search, so Ebay have come up with this BM as a way to supposedly give all sellers a fair go. But if there are 50 pages of listings for your item, then it is impossible to get a fair go.

True - It was much fairer when there was no best match and the default search was time ending soonest.  Then at least everyone really did get a turn at the top of the page.  Now it's like a scrum, with thousands of people and a ping pong ball. 

[nirv_australia]

bw_bargain and rosiegrinsel

You are correct. There is definitely something strange going on with best match. I normally have several items in the first 10 listings on the first page (which has been the case for yonks)  when I search certain words. As of yesterday, I have NO listings on the first 5 pages ( I stopped checking after 5 pages). The thing is, the big sellers listings are still appearing at the top where they always appear (along with my listings). They are not new listings, just the same listings which have been listed for ages. I wish I knew what was going on. I have had zero sales in the past couple of days. Not good. Anyone else who is experience low or no sales, search using keywords but search whilst NOT logged in under your normal seller account. If you search whilst signed in your listings will appear as usual in great position. This is probably another sneaky ebay ploy to put people off the scent of what's going on.

[belindabargainhunter]

I think that the reason some peoples selling is going down is a lot of people like myself do use other online shops that we were not always aware of and as they have a set postage it makes the option much cheaper. As when I need to buy new clothes for my child I use to buy from several sellers paying several lots of postage where now I can go to the  store page get the several items and pay a fixed amount.  There is also a lot of discounted and clearance items that I would say would be hard for a ebay seller to match.

I also believe that say I want a dog collar and lead I can get the product and have it posted for less than the price Australia post charges for an item to be sent. 

[rosiegrinsel]

Yes, I get all of that 'belindabargainhunter" and I thankyou for your input. You are making a very valid comment.

I grant you that many people are now becoming more savvy with buying online, but wouldn't that then affect sales on ebay far more gradually?

My original statement was commenting that in the past few weeks....

" Ebay sales were grinding to a halt "

NEWSFLASH..!!!! in the last few days

they have now  "Ground to a halt" 

[belindabargainhunter]

I guess it would depend what people are selling. I use to buy all my childs xmas presents (new dolls and dolls clothes princess stuff) on ebay last year I moved to catch of the day due to fixed postage.

I also use to buy all her clothes here hello kitty, Disney's lastest movie stuff like high school musical now its one direction but have not done so in the last year as I now shop target clearance one fixed rate postage again.

I have also been buying a lot of dog supplies clothes, beds, toys etc and have found very cheap items from china.

I also use to buy name meanings, invitations, posters etc but have found lots of these online to download for free so I have stopped this all together.

From aussie sellers I have continued to buy things like playpens, booster seats etc but I know that my buying patterns have changed the more I find out about and the more things available.

I don't know if this answers the question because I don't know the answer but it does give some insite into a buyers habbits changing.

[retrogeekaustralia]

nirv_australia - there is indeed issues with best match at the moment. It's been like it nearly 2 months now. If you do a search for one of your items that is normally high up in the results, you may now find it is missing. Now what you can do is select the page view to display 200 listings per page. If this brings back a single page of results (obviously this will depend on how many items come up in the search results) then it will show your listings correctly in their right full position, switch it back to 25 listings per page spanning over multiple pages and it now disappears again.

I have been harassing eBay for months now trying to get them to fix it, and keep having the exact same result. The customer support agent on the phone will agree with me when using my search examples and accept that there is definitely a glitch. Then it gets passed on to the technical team and they contact me days later explaining there is no issue and then rattles of the usual garbage that listing position is affected by sales performance, feedback etc. All of which i already know and understand but it comes down to the fact there is a glitch.

I have contacted eBay about 20 times now in the last 2 months, saying the exact same issue and getting the exact same result. Nothing will be done about it because they simply will not acknowledge it. The fact is, best match should be in the same order no matter how many listings per page you have selected (the only thing that should change is how many pages the results spans over), however it does not which makes it obvious to me there is a bug.

People simply think that their listings are falling in position and so they are not complaining to ebay, where in fact their listings are more than likely still it the same position they were before except now they are invisible on the default search view.

[bw_bargain]

senicaustralia, nirv_australia, rosiegrinsel

i can confirm that there is 2 versions of best match results at the moment

i have been trying all day today

most of the times it shows the current messed up ranking

however some times when i refresh, it brings back the old listing

i have also contact ebay customer support and they have agreed to pass onto technical team, of which i will not be notified about any updates. so i guess just keep on monitoring and hopefully they will fix the bug

[nicole-n-daz]

best match is rubbish,and should never have been introduced.

An Ebay rep told me that it was introduced to weed out the bad sellers.

But bad luck to the good sellers who get punished as well by this totally flawed unfair system.

[retrogeekaustralia]

I don't necessarily think best match is a bad thing, but when it's riddled with bugs then that's when it becomes a problem

[digital*ghost]

eBay are still playing with Cassini - the search engine that shows you what it wants you to want, not what you looked for. (I've mentioned previously how completely random items that are unrelated to my search show up - eg (silver charms and I get shown fluffy g-strings).

It isn't just unfair to sellers, it makes the site very frustrating to use as a buyer.