eBay began rolling out a new Seller Hub this week for those who had opted in to test the beta version. One key feature is the addition of Traffic reports, which sellers hadn’t had access to since June 30th when it ended its relationship with Omniture, the third-party company that had powered the analytics reports.
However, a seller who has been reviewing the new Seller Hub told EcommerceBytes the traffic reports are just that – there appear to be no detailed analytics such as data on what search terms people clicked on to find their listings.
eBay sellers can view traffic data in the new Seller Hub under the Performance tab. Sellers can view the number of impressions, click through rate, page views, and conversion rates as a whole for a particular period of time. They can also view details that let them compare the performance of their individual products.
However, international sellers are out of luck – eBay is only rolling out Seller Hub to US sellers this month; it plans to roll them out internationally next year.
The Performance tab also provides data such as Seller Level performance data (TRS status, percentage of transactions with defects, percentage of goods shipped within stated handling time); Sales data; and Selling costs – including listing fees, subscriptions, shipping costs, final value fees, PayPal fees, fee discounts and discounts.
The data goes back to January 2013, and sellers can compare their current sales with their past performance.
An area that eBay is hoping will be helpful is the recommendations feature under the Growth tab that provides suggestions to sellers on areas such as pricing – for example, eBay may show your price has a higher average selling price than other sellers offer and advise you to lower your price.
It also provides a Marketing tab where sellers can manage their sales and opt in to Promoted Listings, eBay’s paid advertising program for sellers.
Some of the feedback sellers provided on the eBay discussion boards include:
“The analytics are nice but not really useful enough to make up for the completely, and poorly, redesigned Sold and Active listing pages.”
“This is why I want to know if this seller hub is going to REPLACE SMP (Seller Manager Pro)… I don’t WANT all the “new toys,” but I really want to know if I am going to be able to keep what I have now.”
And readers provided feedback on the EcommerceBytes Blog:
“I actually don’t mind it at all… The amount of data (traffic, impressions, etc) available to us and the format it’s presented in is much nicer than it used to be. These are the things that matter to me. I will admit though… it’d be really nice if there an export feature for this data to get it into excel.”
And this excerpt from a more detailed comment:
“Tried the new SellerHub… opted out about 30 minutes later.
- Packslips were printing wrong – font was off, multiple packslips were printing on a single page.
- No way to contact a buyer on an order waiting for payment. Buyer (based on delivery address) had used two different IDs to purchase the same product (over $100 each). Second was paid for, first was not. Second was male (by name), first was female (by name), product was automotive lubricant. Took multiple clicks back to the listing > purchase history > contact buyer….but that page doesn’t share enough data about you or the sale and the buyer may think it’s some kind of scam.
- We also have a big problem in that we cannot control who sees what – there’s a lot of that data that we’d like to keep to the managers only. No need for everyone to see our daily sales figures, after all. Or how much our eBay bill is every month.
- Product comparison was interesting… looked at one item and it found two “competitors”. One actually was…but the other was just another of our own listings! Different condition, same item.
There’s no cost to use the Seller Hub, and eBay is pitching it as a way for sellers to complete all their selling tasks in one place, manage promotions and advertising, and get insight and recommendations to improve sales going forward.
Opting in to the beta version of the Seller Hub is optional for US sellers for now, more information is available on the eBay website.
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