chartixx Daily Deal Evaluation – eBay annual review 2011

chartixx, the sales analysis tool for online retailers, offers its customers a detailed view of the eBay Daily Deals of all countries, including those of the full year 2011. In three annual review analyses chartixx monitors the success and potential of eBay Daily Deals in Germany, Great Britain and the United States.

In 2011 eBay generated a turnover of almost €123m with the eBay Daily Deals program. Looking at the country split, eBay US reaches 52% with an equivalent of €64.m ($89.2m), followed by eBay DE with €32.7 and eBay UK with €26.1m (£22.6m).

In 2011 more than 4.800 Daily Deals ran on the platforms eBay.de, eBay.co.uk and eBay.com, each to a different extent. The programs in Germany and England ran on average two deals per day, whereas in the US the program ran with up to 8 deals per day. All eBay sites added further deals if articles sold out or performed badly. For a better understanding, every deal involves one or more articles, which can consist of several items.

How successful is the eBay Daily Deals program?

For the retailers turnover is the key figure. Looking at the average deal revenue (ADR) eBay.de is the clear winner with €43,660.06 per deal. eBay.co.uk follows with about €10,000 less (ADR UK: €33,344.07 € = £28,939.31) whereas eBay.com only turns over half with an average of €19,518.02 (ADR US: $27,171.03).

On average the eBay Daily Deals program managed to sell 5 bargains per minute over the virtual counter. In total more than 2.65m items were sold via the program. eBay.co.uk is top of the list with 1,000 sold items per deal, followed by eBay.de with 872 and eBay.com coming last with only 372 sold items per deal.

Top selling articles:

• On eBay DE deltatecc sold 7,999 Villeroy & Boch kitchenknife + set of 4 tea towels via a single deal on the 27.11.2011. The best-selling article with 28,330 sales in five deals was the set of 6x FRUIT OF THE LOOM T-Shirts
• On eBay UK tjhughes_outlet sold 9,533 SilentNight Memory Foam Core pillows on the 15.04.2011. It is worth mentioning that this product was sold in total 25,442 times by two retailers in four deals
• On eBay US almost 25,000 NOOK eBooks from Barnes&Noble Inc. were sold in three deals. On the 3.11.2011 buymicrosoftoutlet sold 17,444 Xbox LIVE 12-month Gold Membership Subscription Cards, being the best-selling single deal

The average shopping basket (ASP – average selling price) of eBay DE with €49.84 and eBay US with an equivalent of €52.49 are about level, whereas eBay UK with an equivalent of only €33.14 still has big potential.

The 4,812 deals run in 2011 included a total of 7,139 articles, of which 22% were sold out. eBay UK is leading the statistics with over 35% of sold-out articles. Accordingly, the clearance rate of the deals only reached 18.1%.

On eBay.de only 139 articles sold out over the year, but the site is leading with its average shopping basket of €76.69. eBay.com reports three times as many sold out articles, but only with an ASP of €65,54 (ASP US: $91.24). On eBay UK even more than 1,000 articles sold out. But this is due to the fact, that the retailers are not using the customer friendly multi-item function and rather list each variant per deal as a single article. Consequently eBay UK reports 374 deals with at least one sold out article.

Another success factor of the deal business is the number of sold items. Assuming that each sold item is considered a bargain for the buyer, eBay US clearly sold the most. With 1.22m bargains via the daily deals program alone, eBay.com sold double the amount of items as eBay.de (655,212 sold items). eBay UK sold about 100,000 items more than eBay.de with 777,430 sold items.

But how popular are the deals amongst the eBay users?

Again eBay.de with an average of 28,503 visitors per deal is well ahead of eBay UK with 21,872 visitors and eBay.com lagging far behind in third place with only 10,523 visitors per deal. Consequently, a German retailer, for example, has on average 20 visitors per minute watching his offer and therefore in his virtual shop. The conversion of sold items per visitor is good on eBay.de with a rate of 3.1%, but there is still room for improvement in comparison with eBay US and eBay UK having a conversion rate of 3.8% and even 4.2%.

How can the eBay Daily Deals program become even more successful?

chartixx asked their clients, who take part in the Daily Deal program, how eBay could improve it. Oliver Prothmann, founder and managing director of chartixx knows: “According to the retailers the eBay Daily Deals program could be much more popular and successful. eBay must come to a better understanding of the market, plan earlier and longer term together with the retailers.” Furthermore, the participating retailers are not yet using their full potential. They should consider utilizing the high visitor numbers through clear corporate design and especially cross selling effects.

You can find out more about the most successful retailers of the Daily Deals program in the second part of the chartixx evaluation which will be published soon. Part 3 will then assess the top selling articles and categories and will follow later.

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