Not only was yesterday the busiest shopping day of the year on eBay UK, but it broke all the records by a considerable margin. More than 5 million shoppers logged on yesterday making 1.4 million purchases. Sales were up a massive 18% compared with last year with 17 gifts being purchased every second of the day.
DVDs maintained its top spot from last year as the favourite gift to purchase on “Super Sunday”, with women’s shoes in second spot and CDs in third. Unsurprisingly given the prominence of the Fashion Hub on eBay, clothing, shoes and accessories made up eight out of the top 10 most popular items bought yesterday.
International sales were up 11% as buyers from overseas headed to eBay UK. With the exchange rate in their favour sellers willing to ship overseas are cashing in and if you don’t currently ship outside the UK it’s time to strongly consider doing so. With UK still in economic turmoil making the most of the weak pound and overseas markets is one of the easiest ways to increase sales.
It’s good to see eBay going from strength to strength and with the freezing temperatures and the stress of busy high street crowds eBay is still the place to shop especially in the run up to Christmas.
21 Responses
I read last years record for amazon was 73 orders per second. For a regional site 25% less nothing to be ashamed of. You across the pond had the luxury of a shopping cart which did not get rolled out in the USA yet. 🙁
Do you know if shopper incentives like reward portals drive more traffic? Has ebay’s seo efforts paid off? Better customer service? Tv ads?
I think is eBay is making the right changes but their brand has taken such a reputation dive that I’m not sure Orr can ever recover. I get more negative stories passed on to me than positive.
I had a good Sunday selling on eBay as well.
I had a good Sunday but Monday was 50% up on that. Fantastic day.
Stonking December so far, makes up for some of the hassle.
no doubt ebay uk will break all records for where is my item emails, neutrals, low Dsrs ,and claim backs!
from the idiotic silly sods that think the post is collected and delivered by star trek beam up
It’s all ebay spin. Number of transactions??? Wot counts is cash in the till. Does anyone actually believe that the UK population is spending more than they did at the same time last year? I’ve been taking my parcels to the PO every day, pay up and job done. This time last year, there were huge Qs and I would leave my orders and the PO would stamp then when they could – usually after close of business.
Spin.
It’s funny, but we use PPI & when we make the Posting order online, we can tell just how busy it is generally.
If Royal Mail (and hence sales) are busy, it can take 5 minutes to get an order ‘completed’ ready for printing.
The wek before the snow came, we had a confirmation done, competed within 35 seconds.
That simply means they are NOT busy & hence assuming RM is the main carrier for most Post, means it ain’t busy out there.
When you Currtys & the likes offereing sales every week (I, mean, one sale ends & another starts within 2 days).
Even our local £ shops are closing down….!!!…..Is eBay UK really excempt from that??
Cross promotion does not seem to be working properly!
Just read the original item again. 5 million logged on and they made 1.4 million purchases. Now I find that poor. Just before Christmas. Generally awful weather across the country and we the ebay sellers are unable to generate a minimum of 1 sale per customer logged on. I remember years ago a friend was the Manager of a High Street Store he always told me that his ambition was to sell a minimum of so much(its years ago and I cannot remember the exact figure) to every potential customer that entered his branch. Surely on that basis we the ebay sellers can make at least one sale per potential customer logged on. Remember that some customers will make multiple purchases so its actually quite poor. After all I as a seller also am a buyer on ebay. Hardly a day goes by without me having a browse in those areas that interest me and every few days I buy something(sometimes even multiple items) So the next question should be Why is it so poor? Is it us the ebay sellers are not putting on attractive items at good attractive prices or is it perhaps the site that maybe is so confusing to the potential customer that after getting lost and frustrated they just give up. Obviously there will be some who browse with little or no intention of buying but surely it should be possible to rack up one sale per person logging on.
Going back to the original posting. I spent a few minutes and compared my sales this Christmas with last Christmas. I am down in both volume and cash. The stock is essentially the same mix of items. Am I just unlucky?
This does not look right here, I am down on eBay.co.uk by 80% – compared to this time last year. I have seen big increase on other sites. Is this true?
Personally I just stopped selling on ebay over the Christmas, after they did not remove the shipping time DSR and the weather did not seem to be improving. Who needs to be blamed by the idiots for the delays.
I can say sales on ebid were going well so it was not that bad a loss to miss out on ebay sales and all the idiot ebay buyers.
But it is odd that all the things that were selling were low cost penny profit items. Videos and CDs
We have also been looking at listing a few items on ebay for the after Christmas sales that used to happen every year but I may just add those items to ebid, as there seems to be nothing happening on ebay.
We just had an email from a buyer, thanking us for a replacement part, ‘that arrived today, NEW YEARS EVE’.
It was posted on 18th December.
Much Mail posted over the whole of December has still not arrived.
Ebay/Amazon/Ebid/Own website all the same if you use RM.
Yeah but if you sell someplace else then you are not going to have some idiot trying to close you down, as you would on ebay. They do seem to attract the buyer with less than normal IQ, that probably wondered what that white stuff outside the door was let alone why their parcels were delayed. So ebay should have removed the dispatch time DSR, as they know their buyers do tend to blame the seller rather than the weather or any other factor.
I had enough of dealing with the ebayer going through the strikes we have had in the past, with there “well my other item has turned up” during wild cat strikes, or the “what strike?” or “what bad weather?” As I said ebay should have removed that option especially after royal mail refused to even guarantee next day deliveries.