One-Year Anniversary of eBay’s SIS (Stores in Search)
I just realized we had recently passed the one-year Anniversary of the introduction of SIS, on Feb 13th 2006, and it got me thinking. If, as eBay stated, the reason management chose to remove Stores from Search in late March of 2006, was due to the effect it had on the buying experience, then the Year over Year CORE listing numbers should be fairly consistent. If, as Store Sellers believe, eBay removed Stores from Search because CORE listings dropped like a rock then we should see a huge Year over Year gain in CORE listings. Of course eBay ran 2 listings sales in March (One was actually started on Feb 28th) so that might mask some of the gains.
Here is the timeline:
Feb 13th, 2006 eBay launches SIS
Feb 28th - 10 cent Core listing sale.
March 15th - 10 cent Core listing sale.
March 28th, 2006 Chris Tsakalakis announces the plan to remove Stores from Search
April 6th, 2006 eBay begins to remove Stores from Search
It will be interesting to see the numbers. According to Bob Peck of Bear Stearns “In the eighth week of 1Q07 . . . U.S. Listings [were] Down 16% Wk/Wk Post-Promotion. We estimate that sellers listed 13.1 mn core items on the U.S. site last week, down 16% from the previous week, as the previous week’s listings were boosted by the 50% off listings promotion. Listings were down 27% Q/Q but flat YoY.”
The key will be to watch these numbers over the next 6 weeks. I’m sure it took a couple of weeks for sellers to realize the increase in store sales was related to SIS. In fact as I mentioned in the timeline above, eBay had a 10 cent Core listings sale on Feb 28th of 2006. (They don't do discounted listing days unless the metrics show there is a need) and then again on March 15th.
Here is my analysis: eBay started to notice the drop in CORE listings around the end of February, that is why they had to be propped up by the listing sale on the 28th then because the listings did not recover they had to have another sale; not more than a week after the items from the Feb 28th sale had closed. The items from the March 15th sale closed on March 22nd and I'm assuming the CORE listings did not recover so they had to make the announcement on March 28th that they were removing Stores from Search.
I’m looking forward to the next 6 weeks. The weeks they did not run listings sales should indicate the impact of SIS.
3 comments:
SIS for six weeks? Was that all. Geech. No wonder it seemed so short. Part of ebay's flip flopping from 2006. Anyway, great new blog!
Well, it was six weeks before they made the announcement they were rolling it back. To this day they still try and make the case that SIS was degrading the buyer experience -- when in reality it was degrading their bottom line.
eBay seller fee issue. It costs proportionately much more money to sell a product that has a lower price than it does to sell a product with a high price to both your fees and final value fee. In reality, the minimum fee for the insertion of an element of 99 percent but is 10 cents (10%), the maximum amount you can pay for admission is $ 4.00 (if you have a paper $ 1000, you will have to pay only 4%). Similarly, when you sell a product, the high costs that descends over your value, which means that everything you earn less than $ 25 fees of 8.75%, while all the money earned over $ 1000 going to just 1.5%, a huge difference in cost.
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