eBay Sales Count/History Does Impact Sales

eBay Sales Count/History Does Impact Sales

In this article I’d like to share an observation of my own buying habits and it actually surprised me afterwards once I had analysed my own buying activity and spotted something I had glazed over in the past when purchasing from eBay.

Picking Processes Apart

My online buying experiences are far from the norm, typically I analyse each & every step, work out what processes are being actioned and how they appear to the user. It’s an annoying habit I have, as I’m used to working those processes from the backend to the customer, so I’m always ultra curious on what the “I” as the “customer” sees of them.

I needed some professional lighting for my office, as the lamps were just not cutting it and had decided upon two softboxes as a kit from eBay. You would have thought my first choice would have been a seller that had an ultra clear description, in a professional template with superb product images and all the bell’s & whistles that I have become to expect…

But No!

I ended up buying from one of the worst combinations of font sizes, text colours and from a listing that had only one image. Pretty poor when you consider that the kit had numerous parts and didn’t show them individually, plus was out of the normal “comfort zone” for buying at £50.

A screen shot of the listing is below, I’d smirk, but it was actually effective for one reason which I’ll show you in a moment:

Softboxes-listing-1

And That Reason Was…

Sales history! Simply put, if +300 people had bought this kit and the sellers feedback was not trashed, then it had to be better than just “OK”.

eBay Sales History Affects Buying Decisions

There were 5 different sellers I was considering during the process and the one that won my business was the one that had the highest sales history count on the listing. Yes, there were cheaper options and this option was not the cheapest by any-means and some of the others on offer were described to a superior level, but they just could not compete with a sales history like that.

Yes, the best match is carried over when using 3rd party tools that reference the previous listing or by using the “relist” button at the top of an ended listing, however, if you do end the listing, then you’ll be loosing the visible sales history count on the listing and from my own personal experience, this can make the difference between making and not making a sale.

Stop - Take Action!Have you consciously bought from a listing because of the sales history on the item too?

3 replies
  1. DP
    DP says:

    The eBay layout is different from most eCommerce sites in that the “Buy It Now” button is at the top, before you even get to the fine detail of the item.

    I see that many eBay buyers don’t even scroll down to the description before purchasing, so the more positive signals you can get “above the fold” the more chance you have of closing the sale.

    These factors, such as great photo, sales history, feedback %, free postage, return policy, item condition, TRS, etc., all build into a preference that each person evaluates before buying.

    The very interesting thing is these factors differ in effectiveness when the listing format, duration and category change, as well as the buyers historic buying activity.

    Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. eBay Sales Count/History Does Impact Sales: In this article I’d like to share an observation to m… http://t.co/XzNLRmCx @lastdropofink

  2. eBay Sales Count/History Does Impact Sales: In this article I’d like to share an observation to m… http://t.co/XzNLRmCx @lastdropofink

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *