While eBay is introducing greater transparency when it comes to seller defects (see story in today’s newsletter), it’s greatly reducing transparency for sellers who operate a Store on its marketplace. eBay sellers have less than one week left to access their traffic reports – eBay sent an email to sellers on May 1st informing them they would lose traffic reports on June 30th.
eBay sellers use the reports in the same way online merchants use Google Analytics reports – including to measure the success of their marketing campaigns. (eBay does not make Google Analytics reports available to its sellers.)
Upon hearing the news, one eBay seller described how important the traffic report was to his business. “I count each hit and divide by my monthly sales to know the value of a hit,” the seller wrote on EcommerceBytes’ AuctionBytes Blog. “I target Facebook and pay to promote my site. I carry multiple items to get the click on sellers other items. I see what is trending and make purchase decisions. I do not want this to go away!”
Other sellers said they haven’t been able to get the reports to run reliably. eBay uses third-party tool Omniture to power its Stores reports, and they’ve had chronic problems since their introduction years ago. Among the comments on the May 1st AuctionBytes Blog post were the following:
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- I am not sure what reports they are discontinuing, but of it’s the Omniture reports they can have it. I haven’t been able to run a accurate report in nearly a year.
- My Omniture has been down since the great blackout of September 2013. I complain to Ebay, they point at Omniture and say it’s those other people’s fault. I complain to Omniture, they point at Ebay and say it’s those other people’s fault.
- The Omniture reports sucked. I wish eBay would let us implement Google Analytics on a shop (as you can do at Etsy).
Sellers have already reported losing access to some of their eBay Store reports only 11 days after receiving the notification.
eBay sellers who haven’t been keeping copies of their traffic data were urged by some to download as much as they could before the reports disappear entirely.
