Vendio Lifts the Veil on eBay Competitor Strategy By Michelle Megna
May 13, 2008
If you think going on a little reconnaissance mission to find out what your competitors are up to can help you make better business decisions, Vendio says it has the right tool for the job. Vendio Services, Inc., yesterday released its Competitive Seller Research tool that lets eBay merchants evaluate and compare the sales and listing strategies of their competitors.
This Competitive Seller Research feature is available to all existing Vendio Research users at no additional cost and is part of the company's Research suite.
What sets the research tool apart from others, said Michael Levit, executive vice president of marketing and business development, is its ability to provide detailed analysis of competitors' Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR).
On eBay, DSR is the part of the feedback system that allows buyers to leave detailed ratings for the seller on four aspects of a transaction. These four areas available for comment and ratings include the following: item as described; communication; shipping time; and shipping and handling charges. The rating system is based on a one to five-star scale with five stars being the highest rating and one star being the lowest rating.
"DSR is hugely important now because search results now weigh this, so now shipping and other variables are taken into account," he said. "So there's a huge opportunity small sellers can seize right now. They can see where the competition falls short and address that in their strategy to get an edge."
Competitive Seller Research allows eBay merchants to perform research on both specific products and general categories of interest to evaluate and compare the top competition's sales and eBay listing strategies.
Reports on Key Performance of Competitors Once an eBay seller is identified by their eBay ID or username, Vendio Research generates reports by product or category that disclose average selling prices, success rates (sell-through), DSRs and other key performance metrics and trends. It also reveals the most successful selling strategies used by the seller for the specific item or category.
Vendio Research tools also include recommendations to improve each eBay listing, identifying which days and times yield the highest prices or most successful sell-through rates, which listing categories get the most bids, and recommendations on which eBay features (bold, highlight) will likely provide the highest return on your investment.
"You can see that one of the top 10 competitors has a great DSR, say 4.5, but is in the bottom 25 percent of sellers in regard to shipping and handling charges," said Levit. "So you can decide if you want to reduce your shipping fees to be competitive for that product."
One strength of the feature is that the interface is uncluttered, and though it provides graphs of top sellers, you can then drill down to specific sellers, to find out details , such as the type of auctions they use, what time of day they sell, their average selling price, total sales, numbers of bids and listings, their success rate and so on.
In regard to keywords, the tool helps you figure out which ones are the most popular with top sellers, which can then help you decide what specific products to sell. For instance, if you sell DVDs and know that "Gilmore Girls" is a fairly hot series, you can select the top 10 sellers and then graph out which keywords are most successful. So, in this case, you might find that seasons five and six are selling well, while other ones are not.
"The product research tool greatly increases profits on eBay. In addition to measuring my performance in relation to my competition, it helps me adjust pricing to obtain a better conversion rate while maximizing gross margin. I can also examine new categories and make an informed decision about expanding my product lines," said Glenn Rudolph, CEO of David Jewelers.
More DSR Details from ChannelAdvisor ChannelAdvisor is also offering a free DSR tool that launched earlier this year. ChannelAdvisor's DSRWatch displays any registered eBay seller's DSR and lets buyers compare the DSR ratings to other sellers.
DSRWatch lets you enter a seller's user ID and see how that seller stacks up in terms of raw numbers, and where the merchant stands compared to other sellers. DSRWatch is freely available online at dsrwatch.com. To use the tool, you simply enter an eBay user ID into the search box and get a view of the sellers' five-star rating for communication, shipping time, shipping and handling charges, as well as where the member ranks overall and the number of ratings in each category.
Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.
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