Competitive research is an important tactic for both protecting your business and giving your business the best chance to grow. ShelfTrend offers tools to help you gain a broader perspective on your competitor while you assess the kind of threat they really pose to your business.
First, if you do not already know who your competitor is, run a Top 500 Live Listings Report for your best performing product. From there, identify a seller for which you will want to build some competitive intel. Take note of the name of that competitor.
1. Check out your competitor’s Top 500 product listings
Run a Top 500 Live Listings Report with your competitor’s seller ID. Ensure that you have selected the eBay country that they sell into. If they sell on other country platforms, run this report for those countries as well.
The resulting report will give you a list of your competitor’s top listings as ranked by eBay. From the top of the report in the summary data section, observe:
Their total number of product listings available on that eBay country platform.
The price range of their top ranked listings.
The number of brands they sell.
Explore this seller’s product range.
Go to the category filter to identify which subcategories have the most listings. Either this seller has invested most into this subcategory, or eBay has determined that that subcategory has the most in-demand products for that seller.
Use the filters to focus on top rank. Isolate a price range. Search by keyword.
Get to know the products that are driving your competitor’s business.
2. Get an idea of their sales performance
To move on to the next report, click ‘Edit’ at the top of the report. The same criteria used to run the previous report will be available. In this instance, it should be the seller ID you just used to run the Top 500 report. This time, select the Average Weekly Sales report.
The Average Weekly Sales report offers an assessment of that seller’s weekly sales. Search the data, filter by category or isolate by price range to understand how they could be performing.
At the top of the Average Weekly Sales report, in the summary data section, take note of your competitor’s:
Average weekly items sold (Total #sold/week)
Average weekly sales revenue (Total $sold/week)
Click through to the charts and graphs. If you’re researching a competitor, the first thing you will want to do is change the perspective to Brands or Categories so that you can get a perspective of which brands or categories within your competitor’s product ranges are selling best.
Move around the report between the data tables and the chart view. Use filters to zoom in and out of interest points and price ranges. Click the top of the chart to sort by column. Isolate a price range to compare a more precise set of products.
3. Find out what type of inventory your competitor is investing in
To move on to the next report, click ‘Edit’ at the top of the report. From there, run a New Listings report for that seller ID.
The overview data at the top of the New Listings report will offer you:
The number of new listings your competitor has listed. Glance over to the Time filter to get an idea time period.
The price range of the new listing.
The brands they have listed.
Use the filters to dig deeper into the data. Go to the category filter to identify which subcategories have the most new-listings.
Summary
Get a more rounded point of view of your competitor by running the different ShelfTrend reports together. Learn from your competitor, assess their threat level and get to know their business. This is a great way to benchmark yourself, protect your own business and get ideas for business expansion. Do this regularly.
Like the market, your competitor is dynamic – a lot happens behind the scenes and you could be caught out if you’re not watching.