eBay UK is the fastest growing market in the world according to Devin Wenig, eBay President of Global Marketplaces. We’re growing faster then the two bigger marketplaces in the US and Germany and eBay UK is outpacing ecommerce growth which is estimated to be around 15%.
Devin explained in the Telegraph that people are turning to the Internet for deals, and the recession has actually encouraged people to use eBay. More interesting 10% of eBay’s UK traffic is now via mobile devices. With some 17 million visitors a month that’s a lot of browsers on phones and tablets and one item per second is now purchased via a mobile device.
ChannelAdvisor say that figures for their clients mirrors eBay’s – Seamus Whittingham, ChannelAdvisor EMEA MD say that their customers have seen a 22% increase in UK sales through eBay, which supports Devin’s statement of “Double digit growth” in the UK.
Of course much of this growth can be attributed to eBay working with high street retailers, but from what I hear buyers initially attracted to a Daily Deal or purchase from an eBay Outlet tend to go on to buy more items from regular eBay sellers.
What the Telegraph also failed to mention is the explosion in cross border trade – eBay sellers are seeing ever increasing sales from overseas in Europe and across the world, even as far away as Australia.
Are you seeing your eBay business grow and are your sales increasing inline with eBay’s double digit growth? Where is the growth coming from, is it domestic sales or cross border trade?
25 Responses
I am seeing amazing sales growth in Australia. Having said that I am about to start selling on Amazon and hope that the increased volume means I don’t have to sell outside the UK anymore.
I can 2nd the Australia thing. We’ve had 2 orders this month alone where the delivery charges were Over £60. One paid without any query the other paid with hardly a whimper. Might have to get my couriers account manager back in at this rate!
I’d love to know why the Autralians are turning to ebay UK.
I’ve got to admit sales to Australia are up on 12 months ago. Probably up 50% or more. I was putting this down to the weak pound/strong Australian dollar but maybe internal postage rates in Australia actually make UK airmail rates seem cheap!
Sales to Eastern Europe are also up.
Very interesting stuff re AU. I wonder. Their economy is quite strong right now. They may have dollars burning a hole.
Quote: More interesting 10% of eBay’s UK traffic is now via mobile devices.
…which means 90% isn’t, I really don’t understand why eBay and other companies have this unhealthy obsession with mobile (maybe it’s my age)
If eBay claim 1 item per second is purchased by a mobile device and that represents 10% of sales who is going to work out how many sales each day eBay UK make?
I make that 864,000 sales per day.
And 170m visits per month. Which is a conversion rate of about 1 sale every 6.5 visits. Now that is good by anybody’s standard!
Interesting. Assuming Zavvi and Argos get the same percentage of customers leaving feedback that I do. Then they account for 1 purchase on every 850 sales. Not that significant really.
PS I know Zavvi have a few ID’s – I just used the main Zavvi one!
Our cross border sales has increased to Germany, Sweden, France, Australia and Canada. The number of transaction is not high enough to mention here however, it is better compared to that of last year. During Christmas we sold quite a few Crackers to Germany and France !
rather than nostalgia we think a big part of sales abroad are governed on how the categories are mapped out between ebay sites,you can list an item in the UK and there may not be a suitable category in The US or Oz etc so it may never be noticed or at best less noticed
Our eBay store is still quite new having only launched it last Summer. But we have seen significant amounts of business from International buyers and this works VERY well for us.
In January over 60% of our eBay business was from outside the EU. We are now focused on growing the International business further still. Main growth has been from Australia, Brazil and Russia.
In terms of growth; very definitely “double digit” for revenue 🙂