eBay UK have now rolled out the change for multiple item listings made a few weeks ago on eBay.com. BIN items with an available quantity greater than 10 will now say simply “more than 10 available”, rather than listing the actual quantity a seller has in inventory. ; I can sneakily reveal that Chris has 34 of these in stock.
buyers tend to purchase less often when they see a large quantity of items available. This is most likely because they feel a lack of urgency to purchase, or they perceive that the item isn’t selling well.
Hopefully this should instill a sense of urgency into more eBay shoppers, though I’d still say in some categories, “more than ten” is too many and sellers should stick with listing fewer and amending their listings where necessary.
6 Responses
That’s a good idea by eBay IMO.
We kind of do this ‘limited stock’ tactic, and it works.
We list in quantities of 2, 4 or 6 but rarely higher unless it sells in very high volumes.
Why does it work? It creates a sense of urgency with shoppers who think it’s the last few in stock!
It also helps if your stock management isn’t too great (like mine)
This strategy only works with a featured/anchored shop though, where it’s 5p or less to list each time they sell out – I wouldn’t do it if I was paying 40p each time to list.
The site’s great BTW, I have it on RSS feed. Keep up the good work.
A Merry Christmas to you all.
James
I fail to see how saying “more than 10 available” helps create urgency. That means if you have 11, 12, 13, etc available for all the buyer knows you have an infinite supply. Plus here’s a little trick most of you probably aren’t aware of …
Just click on the purchases link and it will tell you the total quantity available. I see that Chris has 34 available now.
Until eBay changes this to say, “more than 1 available” or nothing at all the best solution is still to use an automatic quantity manager.
I don’t see why the buyer needs to know how many are available at all, they don’t know this on my other websites.
I do think it would be more productive to have the option to make a big deal of “only one of these left in stock!” though.
eBay claim they understand buyers but in this instance I think they fail miserably.
As just pointed out on the PSB, if you want to know the quantity available, you can just check out the purchase history page:
https://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidsLogin&item=190270162715
Another half-assed implementation.
Also curious as to why the shop categories have been removed from the left of the new item layout page.
Computer monitors are getting bigger and cheaper – I just upgraded to giant one.. so why are ebay shrinking the width of the new item page?
I really cant see what was wrong with the old one, other than maybe needing a makeover with some fresh graphics and maybe a different colour scheme – but retaining the format.
#5. So that they can put advertising on the page