Something weird going on last few weeks on Ebay with views and sales

[eskays15]

Has anyone else seen a weird unusual decline in views and sales last few weeks ? 

January was quite solid but i've noticed hardly any activity on my store past few weeks.

I still upload a 2/3 new items every day as normal but have had hardly any activity which seems out of place for my usual activity. 

Anyone else feel the same ?

[kerryn1979]

Yes I’ve experienced exactly the same thing! I even phone eBay help yesterday to check everything was ok on my account. I was told other sellers had enquired about the same. It just seems very weird as sales have been very high during January and dropped off a cliff about 10 days ago. I usually sell at least, and I’m lucky to sell even 1, several days in last couple of weeks have sold none at all. Something that hasn’t happened in probably years. Also the number of watchers is right down as well. So far I’ve not been able to find out any reason why this is the case.

[eskays15]

Yeh its very strange. Just don't understand the sudden shift.

It's quite depressing to be honest 

[p9games]

Year to date (Jan to current) our Ebay sales are up 27% on last year.   sales conversion up 0.5%.  Hard to get YoY figures for views and impressions.  but overall Ebay appears healthy from my POV

[cinemascope2014]

Yes, January was a solid month of activity, but views and sales have declined rapidly, especially from overseas, since early Feb. This past week has been the worst in memory.

Back to school, cost-of-living, upcoming elections always are a factor, but I think you can pin-point it to the day to when Trump and Musk started up the chainsaws, and there's a very good chance tarriffs will be added at some point this year to sales to the US. With such doubt and uncertainty, people close their wallets. 

The local post office is also reporting the same thing - overall packages have declined each and every week, both incoming and outgoing, since early Feb.

Sadly, this feels like the new normal for quite some time.

[little.ripple]

yes, exactly the same happening here. This week no sales, only a couple of sales each week for the last few weeks. wonder if Amazon is taking over all the customers or eBay is not doing enough promotions/marketing.

[cinemascope2014]

This downturn isn't just an eBay situation - it seems to be the whole retail economy. When I popped into the post yesterday afternoon, they had just 8 larger parcels to be collected and the two big bags of envelopes. There's usually 40-50 boxes and 5-6 bags. That's a huge drop, and it's happened relatively quickly, keeping in mind that when people don't buy, they also don't return.

Look at the shops - most are empty of customers; and those shops that have been up for lease for over a year or more? They're not getting tenants anytime soon. The stock-market has faulted now, too, losing all gains since Trump and Musk started up and going backwards.

We won't see the official retail figures for February until Apirl 1st, but you get the sense they will be ugly and the March figures will be worse when we add the Queensland storms.  That's very close to a recession, for retail at least, leading into an election. 

[4476.iveco]

I have been selling with physical shops since 1970 for 38 years & now since 2008 only online & whenever an election is near, sales drop off the cliff, but in saying that it depends on your product.  After the elections no matter what the result sales begin to pickup again.

[springyzone]

Quite a few other people have come to this board asking the same or similar thing, so it must be affecting a lot of sellers, I would think. 

[cinemascope2014]

'Something weird going on'...

Yeah, this is getting ridiculous now - apart from everything else, since yesterday, numerous storefronts (including my own) are having trouble loading. It seems to be across the whole platform, on all devices, and the glitches could be reason why listing views and sales have been way down for weeks, with reports of people having trouble with search engines, etc. So the normal traffic just isn't happening.

Typically, eBay have said bugger all about it - just the usual 'we'll elevate the issue to the relevant team'.