We recently spent a day with one of our earliest premium plan subscribers lowcostwire.com.au. From the northern beaches of Sydney Australia, Scott and his team are savvy users of intelligence tools like TeraPeak and ShelfTrend. They were happy to share their experiences with our software and the importance of being a data-driven seller in today's e-commerce environment.
How do you use ShelfTrend?
Mainly for competitor research across all of our brands. Keeping track of what's happening in our categories across geographies and who is doing what is time-consuming. We use ShelfTrend first thing in the morning to make sure our competitors did not move their prices or create better offers overnight. If they did we are able to decide quickly whether to develop collections, use promoted listings, promotions manager, run a sale or sit tight and wait for them to sell through.
Are you having success with the tool?
We are running reports for our most important listings. Our products have a very long shelf life and can stay in the eBay ecosystem for a long time. We are seeing less disruption to our sales now that we track new, relisted and revised listings a lot more frequently than in the past.
Does it help you source new products?
Understanding a product and its performance in a category before we even start the sourcing process is important to us. The reporting makes researching products we would like to sell quick and easy. We know what sellers are successful right now, what they sell and strategies they are using to compete for visibility in search ranking. Knowing this earlier helps us manage expectations on what it takes to succeed before we spend any money on bringing new products in.
Do you use ShelfTrend insights to improve your own website?
Yes, we find the shopping behaviour on eBay can extend to decisions we make both on our own website & other related platforms. In terms of product description and presentation as well as pricing and postage options, millions of active buyers on eBay are a great reflection of broader e-commerce behaviour so it makes sense to use this for decisions in our entire e-commerce ecosystem bridging geographies and platforms.
What would you like to see improved?
We like the simplicity and speed of search and data download. Opportunities for improvement might be in more automated reporting that can help us find gaps in categories faster. Graphic presentation of data would also make a situational assessment that much easier. Alerts and notifications could also help us stay on top of activity and gain insights before our competition.
How do you find the traffic and performance insights in eBay Seller Hub?
We do use information from the Seller Hub. The impressions, click through rates and conversion rates help us diagnose where the source of an issue may lie. It is a great start by eBay providing this insight and we hope they will bring in more detailed insights such as the ability to know which keywords are driving our traffic.
What advice do you have for sellers who don't have time to do competitor research?
Start by prioritising your important products (the ones that drive most of your income). Track whether any competitors are trying to undercut you here first. If you don't protect the stock that makes you money then you won't have the capital or confidence to enter new categories. Next start looking at 1 new category or market every day to discover if new opportunities exist and make it a habit.
If you run an online business and would like to share your data story drop us a line at contact@shelftrend.com and get your business featured.
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Happy Selling!
The ShelfTrend Team