Realizing that even the most professional eBay sellers can be caught off guard, Anojan Abel and Lisa Wong set out to solve this common dilemma. With their combined 20-year careers working at eBay, ShelfTrend was created to help sellers stay on top.
Anojan Abel worked in the UK and Australian business looking after Search, Structured data and Buying experience, while Lisa Wong led Product & Technology across the Asia Pacific region delivering features that drove seller growth.
We spoke to the duo and they told us about the seller’s problem that drove them to create a tool to help eBay sellers research like big retailers and the features Shelftrend has today:
The Problem
An eBay seller had a problem. Without warning, their steady sales had started declining week after week, even though they hadn’t changed any listing details. The seller suspected it might be due to a change to eBay’s Best Match search algorithm.
Upon closer analysis, a new competitor had quietly, and aggressively listed similar inventory at lower prices. The merchant didn’t have an easy way to spot these marketplace changes and critical new listing activity which resulted in massive business disruption. There was an obvious need for sellers to quickly analyse the constant changes that occur on an open marketplace with less effort and Shelftrend was born.
What is ShelfTrend?
ShelfTrend is a marketplace intelligence tool providing live reporting on the eBay marketplace. Our tool provides transparency and insight into the latest eBay product pricing, sales and competing seller activity in real time. We also help sellers research supply gaps where shopping demand is higher than the supply of listings available for eBay to merchandise in search results.
Who uses your service?
Our customers are successful professional online sellers that trade on eBay or are looking to expand their business onto the eBay marketplace.
The majority of our user are located in the UK, US, China and are looking to grow sales in new categories in their domestic markets and learn about export opportunities.
Research is a regular part of their business operations and they understand it helps them make better decisions about the products they source.
What are key things sellers consider when researching trends?
Some of the most common requests for better competitive research is for:
- Bench-marking or using their competitor as a target for their own success.
- Learning listing and selling best practice.
- Assessing the sales potential of new products and pricing opportunities.
- Determining market share.
- Deciding how to respond to a competitor’s actions or changing market forces.
Where would you recommend I start my research for biggest returns?
A seller looking to learn about top sellers and products can understand what contributes to their success by running a Live Listings (Top 500) report and start filtering and sorting by fields that interest them. Drilling into the data to discover more will help them find opportunities to take advantage of.
Live Listings (Top 500) Report
A seller looking to learn where new products could do well in a category can run a Supply Demand report to analyse the most successful selling listings entering in the last 18 months compared to the amount and types of supply. This shows them gaps they should enter before other sellers find the niche.
Supply Demand Report
Should Sellers research for new products, or research to protect position on existing lines?
An established seller should spend more time looking at competition trying to source and undercut their products. Using the New Listings report makes this process efficient to spot new threats entering in the last 24hrs to 1 week.
Sellers looking to source new items to sell should spend more time finding products to compete with that they could compete against an established seller and take their sales. Alternatively they should establish themselves early in a quieter product niche with less competition they find in the Supply Demand report.
Doing both within the operations of your business is optimal to make sure you are the one dominating sales across all price and product ranges.
What does it cost and why sign up?
Data is an increasingly important asset to use and stay ahead of competitors. Getting started on ShelfTrend is free for basic research reports. When sellers are ready to access more powerful features like Seller ID search, Filters, interactive charts and CSV downloads they can join our premium service for only $14.99 USD per month (around £10 per month)
Sign up for a free Shelftrend Basic account today to get started.
