POOR SALES = MORE BUYERS NO LONGER USING EBAY?

[candytan67]

So I managed to find some info on yesterday's eBay 2021 Q4 Results.

It came as no suprise to me - after seeing my own declining site sales last year - that again for the third consecutive quarter that the "Number of Active Ebay Buyers" has fallen down to 147million, an overal yearly decline of nearly 10% . 

2021 Q2 = 156million 

2021 Q3 = 152million

2021 Q4 = 147million

2021 Q1 = 163million.......................2021 Q4 = 147million  (-9.8%)

While I am no fan of eBay and the manner it treats it's sellers - I would not like to see the site fail.

Why do buyers appear to be deserting eBay?

We need the answer fast and eBay need to find a solution even faster to help save our businesses.

Is the current "eBay search" (The Sales Prevention Tool) to blame?...........................or is it something else?

Answers on a postcard please!

[Anonymous]

So true the times i gave up searching is astronomical... hundreds possibly thousands by now since 2005. 

[cheekychippy210]

Ha. Is it just the search and buyers, or listing and sellers too?  Too complicated now listing an item. Too undfriendly the whole interface and shopping experience. I know many whos first port of call now are marketplaces on social media sites.

[sam_in_barbate]

Hi,

I agree, listing now is horrible, other than their barmy opening drop down system where you are not able to simply delete & write a new specific, then have to write afresh & if lucky you are able to get it in the right slot, I find it inconceivable that they have so screwed up the delivery options.

I am based over in Spain, for more than 15 years I has my shipping options down to a fine & exact art, where quite clearly it is seen that I am based in Spain, it was a doodle to list, I could list "sell similar" in less than a minute, now it can take 20 minutes or more, & the numpties in charge of delivery options, even though it is clear I am based in Spain, switched almost all my listings over & gave ONLY UK  shipping options...I mean, what kind of fool designed this? Who ever designed this new interface should be sent packing, it is absolutely horrible to use, & can find no way to do bulk re-editing that makes any sense...an absolute disgrace.

[toolboss15]

I have purchase direct as loads of sellers that keep their eBay account but no longer sell on this poor platform,

I contact them using their business details that are on eBay and purchase directly. As they are no longer putting listing on here, I can’t see any issue as they are not selling on this poor platform. And they have set up on other platforms.

[ovleisure]

Well eBays excuses as to the fact they are focusing on High Value buyers who make multiple purchases is entirely at odds, with their definition of an Active Buyer.   E.G. A buyer that has made at least ONE purchase in the last 12 months!

I think its multiple things really.

1. eBay was always initially the "car boot" stuff that people had in their attic, it was interesting and you could always find a bit of treasure if you spent some time searching.  Nowadays most of the pages are filled with Chinese sellers, or large Business sellers and its all "same old, same old".

2. Small sellers who perhaps had interesting products, have been swallowed up by those larger sellers/chinese that have account managers to ensure they get a lions share of visibility.

3. Small sellers are/were also buyers on eBay.   Large/Chinese sellers are NEVER buyers on eBay.

4. By putting everyone on Managed Payments, money bypasses peoples PayPal accounts, those accounts that smaller/private sellers use as "pin money" to buy things on ebay with.  This was eBays one competitive edge over Amazon, which they gave away!

5. eBay trying to force all its buyers to emulate the Amazon shipping (next day) will never work, when they are reliant on third party couriers/royal mail to facilitate this.

Its a shame but eBay really isnt what it used to be.

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

If I start looking for a item with multi options just as I click on a drop down box the screen jumops down about a third of a page ! This is due t oslow ads arriving at top of page.

Multi items lead you in with a 99p item ytet he item you want is £9.99 !

Multi items with a 99p item always come up as cheapest and top of search.

I always skip multi item listings now.

Chinese listings are all over to pof searches and I have to click uk only every time to get local items.

I dont want to wait weeks for an item from China.

Chinese items are often very poor quality. Like scissor s that wont even cut paper !

[somethingsmellsgood]

My sales have gone from 300 to £600 a day down to 40 - £70 per day in less than a year, thought it may get bad but never this bad.

After letting staff go I now find myself looking for a job and as soon as I find one will be colsing my store after 17 years.

[toolboss15]

Use an ad blocker, can get fairly good ones for free, and cuts up majority of ads eBay put on to the platform. Without doing this eBay is even worse experience for the users and it is now a bad platform so I no longer using it to purchase from.

[Anonymous]

To be open and Honest . I find that there are more bad sellers out there that say they have sent items  and  I have had to open INR and them some that just try and scam with pictures and description that do not match the photo etc .. I have opened more cases this year  , than the last 6 years on Ebay .

  These are ALL based in UK , and some have legit businesses..  I just spend more now on reputable online retailers and also get a warranty .. Sorry to be blunt , but that is my opinion of ebay at the moment ( also of another big online competitor A$££$n ) Buy buying habits have changed

[rockgrove-trading]

I have had shops on eBay for many many years now and sales are disastrous at the minute. 90% of my items are sold throught 'Sold Via Promoted Listings' with greedy eBay taking an additional 7% commission (not content with their standard commission plus their £82.50 shop fee every month) so unless you are signed up for 'Promoted Listings' your items have a much lesser chance of being sold.

[nebs9999]

When everyone moves to promoted listings then all the sellers are back to square one, except for paying extra fees, and the only winner is ebay.

[ojewellery]

eBay are a business too and need to revenue generate - I don't resent the fees, if I get the service for them.

I had got in my head my eBay fees were creeping up.  I do promote so this is part of it - promotions work.  It works for me having a low percentage across lots of items.

Back in January I watched one of the latest series of eBay/ small business Britain webinars on business plans.  My plan was scraps of paper, to do/ priority lists, endless spreadsheets and a fair chunk in my head.

I sat down yesterday and looked at some key performance indicators (KPI) and market data for my categories.  I want to really refine who I/ the business am, what I'm doing to expand, why I'm doing it and what I'm gaining from it.

One of the KPI I've put in for my own benefit is quarterly and annual overall fees for each platform.  eBay with all my promotions was 17.2 for the year and 16.1 (with an offer from eBay) for the last three months.  Etsy works out at a fairly even 19.  I use Etsy's promotions too - it works there as well.  With Etsy more skill is required to advertise and you pay whether or not the product sells.  eBays promoted listings standard is to me the best promotional tool around - but I can only speak for it for my products and my categories.

We're in tougher trading times at present, less money to spare, fewer customers, worries about cost of living, everything going up in price from food to fuel, discontent and strikes.  We all need to pull everything out the hat we can. Going all out for outstanding customer service and retaining every customer we can, using hand written notes to repeat buyers, regular newsletters and coupons to bring them back to us a trusted seller, promoting to attract the buyers that are out there, making sure our listings are standing out and selling - doing my big bugbear the dammed end and relist (again annoying and time consuming but it works), investigating new markets and looking at international opportunities, if it fits with your plan diversify. 

My own tolerance and discontent is raised at present.  I think generally I'm pretty good at being resilient so I have to regularly remind myself not to let this spill out when dealing with others from customers through to suppliers.

This is a storm but we've all weathered many - we came through COVID and the market indicators are this isn't going to go on quite as long as initially thought.

[candytan67]

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@rockgrove-trading wrote:

I have had shops on eBay for many many years now and sales are disastrous at the minute. 90% of my items are sold throught 'Sold Via Promoted Listings' with greedy eBay taking an additional 7% commission (not content with their standard commission plus their £82.50 shop fee every month) so unless you are signed up for 'Promoted Listings' your items have a much lesser chance of being sold.

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It's extortion by another name.

[the_book_seekers]

I've seen some thin times on ebay, but this is now beginning to top the lot. 

[jolly-chef]

eBay end-of-year results are out today at 10pm GMT, will make for an interesting read. We'll be able to see for real what the actual sales are or GMV as they call it.

[tothemoonresales]

On the 7th Feb they announced they were laying off 500 stuff from the IE offices, speaks volumes. They arent telling us sellers the whole picture

[bennotbill]

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@tothemoonresales wrote:

On the 7th Feb they announced they were laying off 500 stuff from the IE offices, speaks volumes. They arent telling us sellers the whole picture

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As eBay are never going to say anything until it happens how about a bit of out there speculation.

With the continual Americanisation of eBay UK, item specifics etc and recently the advanced search, maybe someone has said let's stop the pretense as everyone already knows .uk is just an offshoot of .com.

It would save money on pointless duplication. Lay off staff. At least 500 for starters. Should keep our heads above water at least another year. Plenty of time for the sell off. Drinks all round at the eBay bar hurrah.😀

[ett1954]

@jolly-chef 

A brief summary of the figures if you didn't catch them.

GMV down 12% year over year.

Total revenue down 4% in the fourth quarter.

Active buyers down 9% year over year at the end of fourth quarter.

Active buyers down 1 million from the end of the third quarter.

The good news (from eBay's view) advertising revenue (driven in a large part by promoted listings) up 19%.

A continuation of the trend of sellers paying more from a diminishing pot.

[papers-mate-420]

It's like earlier today 1 packet of Rizla papers sold for over £5 and i sell much better quality rare papers at a much cheaper price but selling those are really slow so times so i don't get it come and see my shop and save sum money like but then again most people would think i am expensive lol but then again sum people don't understand ebay fees posting and packaging cost money and all the effert i put in looking 4 cool stuff so we all need to eat like no point working 4 nothing.

[cardhawkuk]

Yesterday I thought I would do a couple of hours of competitor research in terms of prices and sales etc, so took a bunch of cigarette & trade cards and card sets and set about seeing what is going on in the market.

I was absolutely horrified to see the results from my searches - I was looking for very obvious producers and themes, and the products ebay search results were so far from what I was looking for it was unreal - I was shown foil surface birthday cards for husbands, empty pill bottles, and all sorts of other nonsense. I tried changing my search terms to several different variants but it constantly returned items completely unrelated to my search - though I know the exact items I was looking for were there, as I have some of them listed, and I know other sellers do as well.

Added to that, if I toggled between "Sold Items" and "Items for sale", ebay actually changed some of the search terms I had typed in, and if I toggled back the new search terms remained.

If that is what buyers are confronted with when looking for items, I am not surprised they are either deserting ebay full stop, or just giving up looking for that item and go elsewhere. 

I've said it before and I know people will disagree and put forward cases of where businesses are performing well on ebay, but this platform is becoming unfit for purpose and ebay really need to get on and sort it out otherwise I dread to think what the future holds.

As for sellers who rely solely on this platform for their sales, I think that is a huge risk right now as we are undoubtedly losing sales due to systemic flaws in the very basics of what the platform is supposed to do.

Like most of us on here, I want the platform to work for us so we and ebay can be successful, but right now it feels like we as a business and ebay as a selling platform are working in opposite directions, and that has to be rectified and fast. Ebay NEEDS to fully engage with its sellers and its buyers and come up with a priority list of where they should be focussing their energies, but recent history suggests that is not their modus operandi.

Come on ebay, we're all in this together.