eBay, like all markets and marketplaces are dynamic and can be a little unpredictable. With a low barrier to entry and a massive global seller base, there is a constant flow of new products and brands coming in and out of the marketplace that could undercut your prices, take buyer attention away from your listings and steal sales away from you.
Here are some tips on how to use ShelfTrend to get ahead of the game by being more aware of those new listings that are under the radar before they start to strike.
Start by running a New Listings report on your best performing product.
This report gives you a list of newly listed or relisted products over the last 24h and up to the last 7 days. Many of these product listings could undercut your prices and steal sales away from you.
At the top of the New Listings report, in the summary data section, observe:
The number of new listings that have come through.
Glance over to the Time filter to get an idea of how many listings have been listed over that period.
The price range of the new listing.
The number of sellers & brands.
Explore the data. Move around the report via the Seller view, Brand view and Listings view. Click through to seller ids, brands and other values to deep dive into the data. Look through the Categories filter for an overview of the type of products that have been newly listed. For a different point of view, click through to the data visualisation to see the data in charts.
Depending on the type of product you sell, you might want to:
Focus your attention on a particular category.
Extract auctions from the data so that you can compare the listings of serious business sellers.
Use the price filters to identify products that could be comparable to yours.
Search by keyword or brand to isolate the product listings that are the greatest competitive threat to you.
Look for anomalies in listing behaviour and competitor activity.
The emergence of brands you could not get your hands on, may not have heard of or thought you had exclusivity to.
Signs that a new competitor has entered the market, or a known competitor is stocking new products or increasing their investment.
The sudden appearance of new products and innovations with sharp pricing.
Continue to monitor new listings regularly for your key product ranges. These insights could help you anticipate threats that could be coming your way to protect your sales.