Bad weekend on ebay

I’ve had a bit of a disaster on eBay this weekend. It started on Thursday. EBay is instigating another change for sellers. They are updating the look of EBay stores. This is an update that will come into effect in March, whether you like it or not. I went into my control panel and saw eBay had given me the option of previewing the new store. I didn’t have to accept it yet but I could look at it and if I liked it, I could keep it running.

So, with nothing to lose (so I thought) I clicked the preview button. Everything looked great. I really liked the new look, it’s crisp, clear and attractive so I decided to keep it, why not? So, I applied the change and carried on doing what I was doing.

By Sunday afternoon, I was getting a bit worried that my weekend sales had dropped off drastically from eBay. This was unusual; my sales have been consistently climbing, even on a bad day I sell a certain amount on eBay. To be honest I was enjoying the break but this lack of activity was starting to drag my daily sales average down. A situation I could not allow to go on for long if I am to achieve my yearly/monthly/weekly/daily income goals.

So I moved into investigation mode. The first question I asked myself was “what’s happening?” I moved into my eBay control panel and opened my traffic reports. A brief examination showed me that my traffic was way down. A more thorough examination revealed that my traffic had plummeted since last Thursday.

Now what happened last Thursday? Yes, that’s right I changed my eBay store over to the new look store. I had done nothing else. The drop in traffic and correspondingly sales occurred from the time I swopped over so I concluded this must have had something to do with it.

Further investigation led me to the eBay forums and confirmation of my theory. Other members were complaining about the same thing. They had switched over and lost traffic and sales. A few were quiet irate about it and who can blame them. I did a Google search and found more people complaining about the same thing.

Going back to my control panel, I returned to my original shop front. Within hours, my sales had kicked off again. EBay had introduced the new shop fronts without checking what other effects they would have. Fortunately, there will be no compulsory introduction until March, by which time I hope eBay has sorted the problem out. If not there may be another exodus of sellers who are still smarting from price increases and other anti seller legislation. Eventually the people running eBay might wake up to the fact that they won’t be a monopoly for long if they don’t stop making life difficult for sellers.