A guide to eBay listing analytics and sales metrics

eBay provides sellers with a range of listing analytics and sales reports for individual listings, categories, and overall sales that breakdown the performance of your eBay shop. We’ve taken a look at the different eBay business metrics and explained what they mean and which ones you can use to improve and grow your eBay business.

eBay Listing Analytics

For each of your eBay listings, there are a number of important metrics to keep an eye that can tell you how successful your listings are and how they need to be improved. You can find these by subscribing to eBay Listing Analytics for free. Using eBay’s analytics you can search for specific listings by using keywords or item number, or you can view how all of your listings are performing and narrow them down by category.

Page views (clicks)

What is it? How many times a potential buyer has clicked on to your listing from the search results.

Click through rate

What is it? The percentage of times that your listings have been seen in results and clicked through to. The number of times someone has clicked on to your listing (Clicks), divided by the number of times potential buyers have seen your listing in their search results (Impressions).

(Clicks  ÷ Impressions) * 100 = Click through rate (%)

Why is it important? Click through rate gives you more of an insight into how many people have had the opportunity to view your listing and actively decided to click on it. The higher your click through rate the more engaging and effective your listings are.

How can you improve it? If your click through rate is low then you might need to improve your title and images. You should look at your competitor's listings and see what prices they are offering, and how they are encouraging buyers to click on their listing.

Sales conversion rate (sell-through)

What is it? The rate at which listing views convert to sales.  The number of items sold for that listing (sold items) divided by the number of times someone clicks on to your listing (clicks).

(Number of sold items ÷ number of clicks) * 100 = Sales-conversion rate (%)

Why is it important? Sell through rate is a good way of seeing which listings convert to sales well, and which ones you need to improve or remove. A low sell-through rate means that something in your listing isn’t what customers are expecting when they clicked on to it.

How can you improve it? There are a number of issues that might be causing a low sell through rate, it might be that your title doesn’t accurately match what the product is when buyers look at the listing, or you may not have enough information in your listing description to convince customers to purchase.

Total revenue

What is it? The total value of items sold from a listing.

Impressions

What is it? The number of times your listing has appeared to potential buyers in search results pages. If your listing isn’t appearing to a lot of buyers then you might need to change your title to include more relevant keywords that potential customers are searching for.

Rank

What is it? Where your eBay listing appears in eBay’s search results, based on the keywords that you enter into the listing analytics search box. It’s worth remembering that this won’t necessarily be what buyers actually type into the search box.

eBay Sales Reports

As an eBay shop owner, you can also view a number of overall eBay sales metrics in eBay’s Sales Report Plus, these can be set to a weekly or monthly report. These include a summary of your eBay and PayPal fees, which you need to include when you’re working out your net profit for your eBay sales.

Total sales

What is it? The total amount of money from all your sales in a certain time period for your eBay shop. This gives you an overall idea of the growth of your business. Underneath your total sales, you’ll be able to see a breakdown of where these sales have come from including the number of ended listings you have, the number of listings that were successful (sold items) by number and percentage, as well as the average sale price per listing.

Buyers

What is it? You’ll be able to see how many total buyers you’ve had over a certain time period, as well as the number of unique buyers and repeat buyers. Tracking your buyer numbers and whether they’re new or repeat customers helps you to decide where your main focus should be - attracting new customers, or ensuring customers come back again.

How can you improve it? If you don’t have a high number of repeat buyers it might be worth looking into your buyer’s experience once they have made a purchase from you - whether you need to improve the quality of your products, the packaging or the delivery service that you offer.

Category and Format metrics

You’ll also be able to see these same eBay metrics for your sales by category and format. Using this data you can get an overall view of how well your eBay items sell, and by breaking it down into categories you’ll be able to see which types of products are most successful and decide whether to improve your listings in one category or focus your attention on more popular items.

Tracking your sales on eBay and other platforms

If you sell on other ecommerce platforms as well as eBay, then Zenstores Insights can help you to keep track of your sales performance across multiple channels. It will also show you which products and channels are performing well, and which are your most valuable customers.

Find out more about Zenstores Insights here.