eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

Subscribe to our 2 FREE Newsletters!

Web AuctionBytes

Home

Subscribe

Blog

Letters to Editor

Podcasts

Forums

AuctionBytes TV

ABU Back Issues

Sponsor

COOL TOOLS

Calendar

eBay Fee Calculator

Collectors' Links

eBay Promo History

Bookshelf

Fraud Resources

Auction Site Fees

Auction Management

Payment Services

Storefronts Chart

Sniping Chart

Consignment Services

Drop-Off Store Laws

Ecommerce Resources

Photo Tips

Marketing Inserts

Yellow Pages

Classifieds

AUCTIONBYTES

Our Writers

Write For Us

Partners

Press

Advertising

About Us

Link To Us

AuctionBytes Blog
News and insight focusing on
ecommerce and the online auction industry
by Ina Steiner, Editor of AuctionBytes.com

July 02, 2007

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

By: David Steiner

Mon July 2 2007 15:37:49

A check of Nielsen/NetRatings shows that eBay users are spending less time on the site than in previous years. In 2006, eBay trumpeted in a Seller Central Report on how buyers use eBay that visitors spend more time on eBay than on other sites, and that time spent on the site is increasing year-over-year. It used data from December 2003 to March 2005 to prove its point. A look at more recent data, however, shows the time spent has gone down.

I was looking at the Nielsen/NetRatings report along with other data to see if anecdotal reports had any merit - you can see my musings in today's AuctionBytes Newsflash article here.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m07/i02/s00

There's tons of data, I'm interested in hearing what readers have to say, please leave a comment below.

Comments (227) | Leave Comment | Permalink

Readers Comments

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Bill

Tue Jul 3 15:32:35 2007

And one other thing I haven't seen mentioned here much. How about the entire Blackthorne fiasco? Shifting a Beta version onto sellers and still expecting us to pay for it, As soon as one problem was corrected, another would arise

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Blake

Tue Jul 3 16:25:20 2007

Barbara, I agree with Duane that most if not all of the sellers who have posted are not junk sellers. I sell high end vintage, myself.

The trend I have been seeing is MORE junk sellers on eBay, and the quality, experienced sellers leaving. Either for their own web sites, and/or starting B&Ms. Interesting on the latter, as 5 or so years ago eBay put the B&Ms around here out of business. Now there's a reversal.

There are many more inexperienced sellers now, and without question they are going to further erode the "buyer experience" eBay is suddenly so concerned about. Lots of new sellers selling drop-shipped junk, and the same drop-shipped junk.

Good, experienced sellers have seen the writing on the wall. eBay isn't budging. That's clear. No amount of anger or pleading is going to change anything. Hence the change to indifference towards eBay.

A company can only alienate and infuriate their customer base for so long before it come back to bite them in the arse. That's what's happening now.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Larry Deming

Tue Jul 3 17:06:33 2007

This article really focuses on eBay's current problems. I am featured in a recent German documentary that further shows how far eBay goes to lead you believe that you can easily make real money on their site...They are killing me and my products with Live Auctions and continuing raise fees. I may leave eBay soon for a web store...Larry

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Larry Deming

Tue Jul 3 17:08:03 2007

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Melissa

Tue Jul 3 17:38:28 2007

Your article had excellent stats and information, but you failed to include a major reason for decreased ebay traffic: scammers. They come in the form of Nigerian scammers, bad sellers, and those who send the phishing emails. The aforementioned has been getting alot of nationwide news expsosure, and I firmly believe that is keeping buyers AND sellers from using ebay.

Also, ebay frequently experiences billing glitches which results in sellers being overcharged by hundreds of dollars. That is another reason sellers got fed up with ebay.

Ebay constantly makes buyer-friendly policies that stick it to the seller, and ebay wonders why sellers are leaving.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Justonce

Wed Jul 4 02:29:08 2007

I am David's friend who keeps telling him that eBay is broken...and it is for all the reasons set out so carefully and clearly in the posts above.

...and I know when it broke. The day that eBay announced Check Out and made it mandatory. After about three weeks they relented on the mandatory part, but Check Out was the first time that eBay said to its seller's "We are going to take control of a very important part of your business...and there's nothing you can do about it." Despite eBay touting Check Out many seller didn't use the system...I didn't for years....but eventually eBay completely abandoned their position that eBay was "just a venue" and began to creep further and further into the daily methods and activities of sellers.

eBay has become Big Brother.....

While there is plenty to be said for rolling with the punches, it is very difficult to take a hit from someone who purports to be on your side and an important part of one's "community".

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Ebayer

Wed Jul 4 03:58:59 2007

consider me an ''eBay insider''. the new eBay is pretty amazing. You'll see some amazing features. And the announcement of no fee hikes should be welcomed.
eBay ''gets it'' and the new ebay will bring back the community and fun that many are used to.
Be patient, good things are coming...

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Ron

Wed Jul 4 06:36:02 2007

I hope they don't make us bow our heads and flipper clap madly when the messiahs take the stage.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: dimes

Wed Jul 4 08:01:31 2007

Until I'm no longer afraid of getting my account hijacked or something bad downloaded to my PC because I happened to click on the wrong picture, I won't be logging into eBay. Which means I won't be using paypal, either.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: RAmy

Wed Jul 4 08:42:11 2007

Hi
I think one of the big mistakes eBay did is that they don't give any price break down for power sellers who list and pay lots of expenses compared to a home seller selling his owen used PC who the fees doesn't make a difference for him as he only wants to get back any money from his old PC.
I would suggest that they would make discount based on the seller total monthly volume fees. Something like if you fees is more than $500 we will take off $100 something like this.
I think this a natural way to make discounts in life.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: jim

Wed Jul 4 08:51:13 2007

When I registered with ebay for online selling I also checked other sites. I think Yahoo! was a close runnerup so I checked their site but didt'n like the carnival atmosphere. The colors hurt my eyes. The multiple subject pages hurt my brain. I never tried to sell one item becasue I liked the fast uncluttered pages at ebay.

Ebay would add more and more clutter to their pages a little at the time. The colors were first to really make me sorry I loaded pages. Then the confusion of cluttered listing pages trying to sell me options by forcing them into my eyesight created more negative feelings.

The straw that broke the camels back was, for me, when I noticed I was paying for items that didn't show in search. I wasn't alone. There were thousands of posts at Community Chats of people wanting ebay to fix search. Ebay hired help would find missing auctions and reset them into search but the problem was never fixed. Still isn't even if the search problems seem different.

I stopped listing under any ID over two years ago and haven't missed ebay's site for any reason other than the friendships of the community.

One day I think ebay will be like Yahoo! and need another site with more activity to take them out of the dumps.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: glitterati

Wed Jul 4 11:20:06 2007

i have definitely witnessed ebay going down hill and there are several reasons:
1. ebay started as a collectors market, they now dilute that market by starting a new ebay for new stuff. people dont know the difference.
2 they are allowing gazillions of listings from China with cheap copies of vintage goods that fall apart. people dont understand the difference
3. they have the worst customer service and can never help the sellers ~ and their billing is a nightmare, and their fees are impossible to figure out
4. they have allowed paypal to become too powerful and they deduct money from you acct no questions asked. customers con paypal and paypal always sides with customers because of chargebacks. they never ever back the seller! i have had at least 5 seller friends quit ebay because they were totally fed up.
5. they distract and steal our customers, when they log on they get adds that tell them to enter competitions, games and other stuff having nothign to do with their shopping. they get burned out and have less time for shopping
6, they put adds in our auctions directly for promos and paypal credit etc and customers have to log out and go into their other sites.. they dont come back into our auctions!!

i have written them repeatedly about these problems, but they are too greedy and dont give a damn about the sellers ~
none of the other sites you list get enough business though so the ebay monopoly continues

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Erik Kafrissen

Wed Jul 4 11:56:43 2007

Hi David and all posters.

Great article and fantastic follow up comments.

I have also been selling on eBay since 1998 and have seen the tremendous rise in sales and consequent drop over the past few years.

I also run a business that although not tremendously affected by eBay, sees a fair bit of crossover traffic between our websites.

We have had booths at the past 5 eBay Live shows and have worked directly with eBay execs and employees during the 7 years that our business has been online. Some of these people have been very supportive and helpful, and others have seemed less than accommodating at times. But this is not unique to eBay’s staff, it is this way within any large organization.

I agree with the posts which point out that one of the biggest challenges to eBay today, is the fraud aspect. We are seeing more and more items come through our website (http://www.wiw2u.com) for an Opinion of Authenticity and the vast majority of them are fakes and forgeries. eBay has been treading a thin line in regards to this issue and has maintained the stance that they are not in the business of ensuring that items are real or fake, but simply in the business of providing a venue to sell items through. This is all fine and dandy except when it starts to affect your business model and you have shareholders demanding that you ‘fix the problems’.
That is exactly what is happening right now.

People don’t like to get burned. It has happened to me on eBay, and I’ll bet it has happened to most people who regularly buy on eBay. Being burned once is almost acceptable, especially if it is a .01 DVD or something like that, but being duped into buying a fake is enough to put you off buying online for good.

As we all know, word of mouth can be the best advertisement or a company’s worst nightmare. Since eBay has been growing so large so quickly, the negative word of mouth has not seen a significant impact until recently. With national press coverage marrying the words ‘scam’ and ‘forgery’ with the name eBay, it is no wonder that buyers are looking elsewhere. Where the buyers go, the sellers must also go.

In my opinion, eBay will need to make a concerted effort to pro-actively ensure that items being sold on their site are not fakes or forgeries and not simply give lip service to these policies. They will also need to ensure that there is a quick and easy way for buyers to get their money back without having to jump through 15 hoops in the process.

On a positive note, we have seen this trend developing over the past while and have been aggressively developing products to help ensure stability and security in the marketplace. In addition to our online appraisals we have added the Opinion of Authenticity which allows a seller to get a very inexpensive 3rd party unbiased opinion and attach this opinion to an eBay auction. At the suggestion of Jim from OTWA, we are also building an API right now which will allow us to interface with a seller’s auction listing and automatically attach the Opinion of Authenticity right to the listing. It’s a step in the right direction!

For its part, eBay needs to get off of its high horse and get down and dirty in the trenches. They need to take action to create a safer marketplace and then, and only then, will the ‘fun’ come back into the picture. They need buyers to attract the sellers and buyers will only come if they feel safe and protected.

I look forward to hearing everyone’s comments and please don’t hesitate to contact me should you have any questions about our site and services. Unlike eBay, we publish our phone numbers, email addresses and hours of operation on our website for all to see.

Erik Kafrissen
President
WIW2U Group

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: BeadHappy

Wed Jul 4 12:27:16 2007

I think all the junk (Blogs, Wiki, MyWorld, Express, Matchups, Rent.com, StubHub, ProStores, Shopping.com, Skype, StumbleUpon) just clutters the site and makes it look cheap. eBay should stick to, and make work, their core business.

Search has been broken in many ways for years, and the junk just keeps getting listed over and over and over (think gold rings from China that are really brass, the diet pills or get rich quick schemes on the home page, etc).

And the ''230 million'' users? How many of those are posting IDs? A seller's buying ID? Until eBay only counts actual people and not IDs, the number is going to have no valid meaning. (I had six IDs, each for something different. And no, none of them sell, it's not worth it.)

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: duane

Wed Jul 4 12:53:55 2007

I have a feeling that this thread is going to be or has been read by Ebay eyes. Which is good. Since they probably are, I thought I would mention a couple of other slaps in the face. One is the initial stock offering. The very people that were on here from the beginning were not given the opportunity to buy in on the ground floor. The other is the phony health insurance offering that amounted to nothing more than what anyone can get on their own. I agree with the concerns on the fraud issue. But I disagree with the way that Ebay deals with it currently. Their current methods are rude and very disruptive. And why are they disruptive, because the bottom line is too low and EVERYTHING I list needs to sell in order to try, and I mean try, to keep the ship afloat. And their arrogance on this issue doesnt make much sense to me as a lost listing is lost revenue for them.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Tony P.

Wed Jul 4 13:08:15 2007

I would add my personal theory to all of the excellent, and absolutely correct, posts above.

David's friend, Justonce, states that he knows when ebay was broken and provides the time period. I fully agree - ebay's corporate mindset believed it could dictate, without repercussion.

Besides, IT had done so in the past, suffered through a bit of seller anger and then settled into getting whatever it was that it wanted.

When they did that same thing, Big-Time, in 2004 is where my theory comes in. Mid-summer 2004 they shoved Item Specifics down seller's throats and rolled-up categories.

Look at those charts. See the "summer lows" for all of the years? See how the summer low for 2004 began a Flat Period, from which ebay has never recovered?

Ebay tinkered with some of the major categories and that caused more Buyer Confusion than anything else they have ever done - before or since.

If you look at that Summer of 2004 - REALLY look at those stats - you can see where that constantly-upward progression, stops!

That is when they glued the "Broke" ebay pieces together, backwards. Just like in the Mandatory Checkout decree, ebay relented on the P&G category (and possibly other Cats), but the damage was done.

The true damage can only be understood once you come to the realization that ebay thought that those plans were actually good ideas.

"Buyers don't like to browse" ~ Michael Dearing, VP ebay

He may be gone, but whoever signed off on such DUMBASS ideas still works there. I would use the phrase "manages there", but that's an insult to managers everywhere.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: B. Robert

Wed Jul 4 15:20:49 2007

Why do I spend less time on eBay? Because eBay's sponsored links take me to outside sources to make my purchases.

eBay has lost their way.. Sellers pay high fees to allow the buyer to be sent elsewhere to make purchases..

From a sellers' point of view.. eBay abuses the seller's. From a buyer's view point they are offering more options for sales, however.. as a buyer I searched for my item originally on eBay... why are you sending me to outside vendors?

Why for the money of course.. eBay really is interested (IMHO) in advert fees and not sellers fees. It is secondary to how much they will earn from the sponsored link advertisers.

And, soon eBay will try to compete with YouTube, Google, Yahoo, MetaCafe video sites for advertising fees with their own video community..

How long do you think eBay will continue to send their traffic to other sites with the embedded videos?

eBay.. What is eBay anymore anyway? An auction site? A merchant site? A shopping community? An advertiser of products for sale? You got me.. However, I would bet on saying they are no longer an auction site..

How often do you click on the sponsored links and buy your product outside of eBay?

Another factor that blew me away..
I would write blogs and reviews and guides until I looked at my home page where those reviews and guides are available to read.

What did I see.. The blatant abuse of eBay to advertise others sellers similar products to my items on my reviews and guides..

I as many others have backed off and applying my efforts elsewhere as eBay abuses the hand that feeds them...

eBay lacks quality performance as a company and for the services they offer.. Their intent appears to strike down a seller in the same way a hit and run driver strikes down a pedestrian and then continues their merry way. The seller is disadvantaged, abused and experiences bruising or worse.

B. Robert.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Lewis Simmons

Wed Jul 4 16:36:17 2007

By a collector,

Thanks to all, this has really helped put everything that has happened to my attempts to sell on eBay in perspective!

I first tried eBay as a seller in 1999 and found that it was to hard to list each item at that time. In 2003 I tried again and the changes that had been made over the last 4 years made it possible to list a large amount of items and make money on them, in late 2005, after eBay had solicited me repeatedly, I opened a store and started a new business making mouse pads for collectors. I obtained the press, printers and supplies I needed and by Jan. of 2006 I had about 25 mouse pad designs in the new store and they started to sell the first week, then came Feb and Mar 2006 with about 50 pads and my sales per week where up four fold. I decided to add mugs and framed prints at the end of March and upgraded the store. I started, in April, to buy the press, printer, and mug stock when the bottom fell out, and I did not now why! After I had acquired the mug press, one printer and most of the supplies I put the mugs and frames on hold in July 2006. A LOSS TO ANY COLLECTOR THAT MAY HAVE WANTED TO BUY THE MUGS! I have created over 500 mouse pad designs now and was going to add the mugs in August 2007 to try to get the store going again I have created well over 100 mug designs over the last 2 months.

Over the last year I have tried many deferent ways of listing my items and a few months sales would come up a little but then went right back down, I though that it was something that I was doing wrong or if I could make it work again sales would go up the way they had the 1st quarter of 2006 but I can now see that there isn't anything I did or could do, it’s all eBay's game and they keep changing the rules in the middle of the play!

From what I have read today I can see that adding mugs will not help my eBay store, but will only cost me more time and money to design the auctions for the store and add them!

Thank you again for making this so clear! After a lot of thought I guess the only answer is to close my store over time and find a new, hopefully better, venue!

P.S.
This is the first time that I have posted to anything but you all where so right on that I had to.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: Sheila

Wed Jul 4 17:34:02 2007

I just read something on CNet that turns my stomach, one more reason to believe that eBay is nothing but sneaky, sleazy, slime. In 2004 eBay bought a 25% share of Craigslist. They promised to not tinker with the admirable business model that has made Craigslist so wonderful and admired. And they kept their promise. Why? Because they had bigger plans.

Says CNet: ''On Friday, eBay's online classified service, Kijiji, made its U.S. debut. For the past two years, Kijiji has operated overseas but is now available in about 220 U.S. cities, said eBay spokesman Hani Durzy...

...But eBay enjoys an unusual advantage. For three years, executives at eBay have been allowed to peer deep into Craigslist's operations...

...Newmark, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar once made up the three-person board. Another eBay representative has replaced Omidyar, according to Durzy.

'We've learned a lot from Craigslist,' Durzy said. 'We think this market has room for several classified services.'''

IMHO, it speaks for itself. I do own a very small amount of EBay stock, mistakenly bought after its glory days. I intend to sell it - at a loss - tomorrow.

eBay Users Spending Less Time on Site

by: FedUp

Wed Jul 4 21:06:04 2007

To the "eBay insider" who says that "amazing" things are coming, I say but one word - YAWN!
Been there, heard that.
They simply don't get it.
It's not about fun. It's not about features. It's about every other person getting ripped off on the site. Until this is addressed, forget about the rest.
How can I be sure that eBay doesn't get it? For one, they spout that .01% fraud malarky. For another, T&S keeps bankers hours. Why is it that account take-overs are most prevalent on the weekend? Because there's a skeleton crew at T&S then! Let's not mention the skill level of the average employee - T&S or elsewhere - their previous employment consisted of flipping burgers at Mickey D's. Until they change these, they don't get it. Until they institute REAL change, not lip-service to mollify the stock analysts, and until they reassure potential buyers that they are truly safe on their site, customers will continue to shop elsewhere.

Click to view more comments
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 [Next Page]

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives


Site Index Copyright 1999-2009. Steiner Associates LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy.