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. 
digital*ghost, in order to make the experiment sound highly scientific and quotable, you are going to need a placebo version... We need control groups; we need blind testing; we need a catchy research/study title, we need a journal and we need it to be peer-reviewed.
We can game this to some extent. (You see how I've neatly segued from "you are going to need" to the barely perceptible "we need", implying that we (the readers of your experiment thread) are somehow involved as other than onlookers?)
Let us invent/create have the study published in the Journal of Online Selling in the Australian Marketplace, known as JOSAM. We'll also require peers. I have it! Create some eBay accounts called peer (or various permutations thereof), or even peer-review. This is competely in line with the approach taken by the Gruen Effect, and it will add gravitas to this trial.
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It is the purpose of the research team to study the effect on consumer spending behaviour for a single business entity in an online commerce environment (otherwise known as ebay, and henforce known as Ecommerce Environment A, or EEA) wherein money is exchanged for goods (in a promissary fashion due to the advent of EEA's Managed Payments system), and said goods are subsequently supplied to the consumer via shipping services, such as those provided by Australia Post, as well as any consequences of increased costs in providing the aforementioned shipping service on a per-order basis, and thus determine if the initial proposed hypthesis is correct - that being consumers will decline to purchase products if:
- the default shipping charge is increased to accommodate tracking services where previously it was offered on an optional basis
- the shipping costs outweigh the perceived or advertised value of the item
During the testing period, we have determined it is permissible to introduce isolated variables in order to observe any potential changes in consumer behaviour that can be correlated to said variables, with a view to increase the instances and / or value of consumer spend in comparison to the initial reduction of said behaviors
To contrast our observations and findings within EEA, we will simultaneously be observing consumer behaviours in two similar ecommerce environments, which operate under similar conditions as to be comparable with EEA prior to the introduction of increased shipping costs.
Data will be collected and related in a most anecdotal fashion on the social interaction pages provided to the members of EEA, where they may be perused and assessed by said members for the purposes of general interest, potential assistance, or object of jest.
The qualifications of the datastician appointed to head these research activities are provided in the attached document file
