Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

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 Smiley LOL ).

 

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. Smiley Very Happy

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Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

I think I would have been better off doing similar and changing a year ago, but alas...hindsight is literally 2020 (and I'm sure I'm the millionth person to make that joke, at a minimum 🤣 ).

 

I bought a bunch of the small tracked letters, but I've used one over the course of the last several months, I have a few items that would suit them, but no one ever buys those alone, so it'll be quite a while before the rest of those get used, lol. Plus, one of my strategies will be to (hopefully) introduce some pricier items, as well as a few more things that will require parcel postage regardless - variety is the spice of good for this model, I think, though I'll be trying to keep new stock as related to my niche as possible. 

 

Here's a very quick - albeit vague - glimpse into how things are going - just to put this in context, I was closed for a bit over a week so that's the white space in the middle. Before that, I had the normal letter rate, and upon re-opening, I had the higher tracked package rate. 

 

That noticable dip was the week prior to Easter, when I made my last update and things were not looking so crash hot, the last few days have been a bit more encouraging, with more higher value orders coming in, thankfully. Still, I won't be assessing things fully until I have at least a couple month's worth of history to look at. 

 

chugging along.PNG

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Sorry to hear it's had a very negative affect on sales - it's weird how the smallest difference can be so impactful sometimes. 

 

I don't know if this will help, but I charge postage separately to my items, and I genuinely think that can make a lot of difference for low value items, because people still place a separate value on items and postage. It's a perception thing, a lot of the time, but I found (after also experimenting with free post a long time ago), people will pay $5 for a $5 item, and $5 to have it shipped to them, but fewer people will pay $10 for a $5 item and have it shipped for free.

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WOW!

I haven't been here in such a long time and when I do venture in the first thing I see is digital*ghost posting a problem in Selling.
I am so relieved that digital*ghost was not seeking help.

It really did give me a fright because the changes are many.

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Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

 I just want to take this opportunity to put it out there that I definitely do have to seek help  🤣 (if but sometimes, it's just mostly done in the privacy of my own google, lol). 

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The results are best seen in the context of an overall trend, which does take time. I truly commend you for doing this, digital*ghost.

 

(And I had a chuckle with your 2020 joke, too. Maybe it's the effect of a lot of Easter egg consumption, but I was genuinely chuckling.)

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Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

I wasn't going to post another update so soon, but I just wanted to share a couple of things I've adjusted since making this change.

 

I noticed some people were still making separate orders, and others were being charged a higher amount than they should have been (my parcel price, which I've also set as a cap through promotional postage rules so that items with different postage services will still automatically combine to a flat rate). 

 

This was confusing me quite a bit, but I dismissed it as people just selecting "promotional postage" in the cart because they were confused and thought it was cheaper than the flat letter rate I have due to how eBay display the discount.

 

Until I got a message from a buyer yesterday, anyway, who said they couldn't figure out what postage service was going to be used (and explained why). Turns out what I had done when bulk editing the postage was keep some of them (around 20-25%) at "untracked letter" while the rest were set correctly at "tracked letter". If you know how the cart works, then you already know the problems this can cause with auto-postage discounts. 

 

I wasn't using business policies, so this was a nightmare to fix at first 😭 I've given them another go now, though, and fingers crossed they don't mess things up like last time, because I switched a little way through and things were just so much easier (rather than open every listing, I just had to tick some boxes and migrate the ones with the untracked service over to the policy with tracked service).

 

Anyway, all this is to say I suspect this may have had something to do with why my multi-item orders were a lot lower than I expected, because some buyers would have basically been seeing large satchel prices in the cart, and also I had a flurry of sales come through this morning. 

 

While I was at it, I figured since everything is going tracked and eBay is (theoretically 😆 ) covering INRs if there's at least a lodged scan, I may as well return my handling time to normal - only 1 day difference, set it back to 2 business days instead of 3 business days.... and in typical ebay logic, 1 extra day was added to all of my ETAs. 🤣

 

Sales-wise, BTW, things are still slower overall and while total sales figures are ok, they include postage and that's a bigger percentage of revenue than it used to be - at this stage it's roughly 60% lower than my average for last year, but last year was both huge and an anomaly, so while dramatic in comparison, it's not too bad compared to previous years. 

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Re: Tracked Postage on Low Value Items - Experiment

This highlights something that is unnecessarily complicated for a seller, I think. In an ideal world, your seller account on eBay would know what you wanted to do, and do it. It wouldn't take much rethinking of the coding for the changes to be swept through your entire inventory, so that the different-postage-method-nightmare would not happen.

 

I will metaphorically keep my fingers crossed that you'll see an increase in the bulk orders that were dragging their tails...

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I like to read your updates, even though they are not relevant to me really, but as a mere mortal, the fact that you made a little boo boo  is strangely reassuring LOL

 

This bit though....

eBay...........Logic.......... [in the same sentence???]

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Digi, Digi, Digi

I warned you earlier about adding a confounding variable that may cause a spurious correlation, and now you go and change the Handling Time.  You know better than to change variables half way thru an experiment.

 

Since you are changing variables, and since eBay no longer cares if its not free post could also make half your sales Free Post and the rest with Post at cost.  I notice more sellers are moving back to this and would love to see the results.

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Profanity is no substitute for wit.
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I haven't read all your replies yet (only the first page) but I am interested as an onlooker.

 

No idea what you sell, but coming at it as a buyer, if I saw your postage prices had risen, I would probably be inclined to buy a couple of things instead of just one thing, to make the postage charge even out, if that makes sense. I am assuming combined postage of some sort.

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