posted on February 20, 2001 06:13:25 AM new
I posted a few (5) test auctions on Yahoo last week. IF one can believe the Yahoo counters, then I am getting a tremendous amount of hits. Items which use to get 3 to 10 hits (pre-pay Yahoo) are getting well over 100! BUT, the same items normally sold in a day or two in the past, and all are 1 day from close now, with no sales but an enormous amount of hits - the prices are the same as they were in December!
VERY hard to believe this amount of hits with no sales is for real.
I posted one of the same items on eBay the same day I did on Yahoo and it sold in 2 days under their BIN program - on Yahoo it is still sitting!
Personally, I am beginning to question the counters, their numbers just don't jive with any of our sales on Yahoo of the past.
posted on February 20, 2001 06:35:52 AM new
If you decide to run another experiment, it just might be a good idea to include a third-party counter to your auctions.
posted on February 20, 2001 07:27:04 AM new
Those counters were always eratic, at best. I don't think they have the science down yet of getting the robots to adjust them.
posted on February 20, 2001 08:37:51 AM new
I listed 4 items on Yahoo as a test too... of the 4, one has gotten 35 hits but no bids.. the other 3 have gotten 5-10 hits - one bidder bid on 2 of those 3 auctions, and another person did an instant purchase on one of them (apparently this one item is HTD if Australia).
I'm QUITE happy with the results so far - 1 sale, 2 more bids - this might be worth the fees yet... .MAYBE...
posted on February 20, 2001 09:58:37 AM new
Well, I just found an item listed as HOT. It has 4 hours till close and there is 1 bid for a whopping $1.50!!!!
posted on February 20, 2001 10:06:20 AM new
It means that Yahoo!AuctionsLITE is a resounding success, attracting a significant number of buyers from all across the Yahoo! network of registered users.
Just as promised:
fearlessrick_53 asks: What is Yahoo doing to attract more BUYERS!? We need more bids in order for this to work. Giving buyers some incentive to use PayDirect is a possibility. What do you think?
y_auctions_guest: As of January 10, driving bidders to your auctions are of primary importance to us. y_auctions_guest: Yahoo! has a universe of 166 million users and we know by leveraging our network, we'll be able to effectively do that.
posted on February 20, 2001 10:32:41 AM new
I understand what you are saying InsightWatcher - I decided to go totally crazy and do one more test (under a new ID again) - and I am having the same experience - items getting hits but not buys - and similar items selling very well on eBay at a bit higher price.
Don't need Yahell for this - hits don't count only buys. And it is hard to believe the hits when there are no buys.
By the way the suggestion of an outside counter is a good idea, hadn't thought about it as I normally only use those on eBay.....think I'll put a couple on and track them for the next few days.
posted on February 20, 2001 10:54:25 AM new
I'm going to show my denseness:
How would one go about adding an independent counter?????
If I add one from AW, it won't show up on my control panel UNLESS I launched from here (or so that is my understanding). I see counters from honesty.com, but don't know how to add those to existing auctions.
Any help for the feeble minded/computer "challenged" would be greatly appreciated!
edited 'cause I can't spell either!
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Feb 20, 2001 10:56 AM ]
edited to lower my flag!
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Feb 20, 2001 05:52 PM ]
posted on February 20, 2001 04:48:09 PM new
I've never paid much attention to pageviews until the last few weeks. Mine don't seem out of line but I've noticed I get about 10 times as many on Wednesdays as I do on any other day. I read some website (don't remember which one) data a few months ago that said they tracked hits for auctions sites and the most hits by far were typically Sun and Mon. (They were trying to determine the best days to end auctions.) Is anyone else tracking patterns?
JWPC
"I decided to go totally crazy and do one more test (under a new ID again)"
Way to stick to your convictions LOL.
posted on February 20, 2001 05:45:03 PM new
I have now had my Honesty counters up on some of my auctions for 5 hours.
I am surprised at what I have found.
My Honesty counters are telling me I have had MORE views than my Yahoo counters are telling me. Most are only 2 ahead. But on one, there are 10 showing on the Honesty counter while Yahoo says I have only had an increase of 5.
I am more than midway on some of my auctions and several are approaching views of 150+! My all time record was on eBay where I had received 500+ views on an item, BUT it had made it into the hot category and ended at a "happy dance" figure. It has only happened once.
What good is 150+ views with no or very low bids????? It's kinda got my feelings hurt! Seems nobody wants my stuff!
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Feb 20, 2001 05:47 PM ]
posted on February 20, 2001 06:21:53 PM new
sulyn1950, don't feel badly---you're not alone. My two current Yahoo auctions of my "hottest" items (which USED TO sell very quickly at the buy price) have comparatively HIGH page views (higher than I used to get) and pitiful bidding (1 bid on one, 0 on the other after 6 days exposure).
I don't know if the counters are accurate or not, but I MUCH PREFER the way it USED to be for me on Yahoo---generally few page views, but READY BUYERS among that number.
posted on February 20, 2001 07:39:26 PM new
Has anyone experiencing inordinarily (is that a word?) high hits on their auctions checked the main Yahoo category page for your items? Are your auctions showing up there?
It could be that being on the front page of your category causes more people to click thru to your auction. Or even that everytime somone opens that front page it is counting as a 'hit' on your auction.
posted on February 20, 2001 11:06:49 PM new
Appears to be people are going through the motions of shopping, and just don't have the money to bid. Meanwhile they may be just passing time and having fun. At least they are sticking around.
My ebay numbers are very close to my Yahoo's now so it seems to be an overall market condition that effecting sales.
posted on February 21, 2001 06:32:50 AM new
quickdraw
"IF" you are correct, then only those who are broke shop on Yahoo, because on eBay my sales are just fine -
REGARDING days of closing or days which get the most hits......we have a very large web site, and have had counters on the 1st page of all the major sections of the site, and I just checked them to see which days get the most hits, and it was interesting.
In our crystal section (higher end items of European Crystal) - Most hits are on Monday & Thursday
In our antique stain glass section of 1800 Stain Glass Windows (Again higher end items) - Most hits on Monday
BUT when you go to some of our lower priced items the pattern changes.
In our Medieval/Dragon section - Most hits on Thursday
In our knife section – Most Hits are on Thursday and Friday.
We have about 10 sections - and over the 2 1/2 years of the web sites life, there are always more hits during the week than on the weekend, although there are more sales across the weekend!
The only thing I can figure, in our higher priced items, perhaps the wife does searches during the week, picks out items, but waits till the weekend to show her husband, and to order.
The only category which has consistent daily buys is our cutlery department.
We use "The Counter" at thecounter.com
These counters give all the history of a count, that is what day, time, if it originated with a search engine and which, what browser it was on, and what version of that browser, if it was a link referral, what link referred, the ISP of the shopper (not the e-mail addy), and much more. These are fantastic counters for permanent sites because there is so much information to keep the web site owner informed on all elements of the traffic to their site.
posted on February 21, 2001 12:21:28 PM new
Well, seems my usual luck is holding!
Yesterday I added Honesty counters to see if Yahoo!'s were anywhere near correct, because of the unusually high counts vs minimal bidding.
Today, I checked and no Honesty.Com counters!
I went to their site and found this:
"Notice: We disabled Counter Stats due to a large strain on the database. We apologize for this and are currently evaluating a way to make it more efficient.
Add Images is currently not giving upload confirmation. We are working on this. It is also only uploading one image.
The One-Step Listers ARE NOT functioning correctly at this time. The Listers are kicking back Internal Server Errors. We suggest that you copy the description of work in progress and paste it into a word processing document for later retrieval. We hope to have this resolved as soon as possible. -Honesty Staff"
I BROKE THE WHOLE SITE!!!!!
ORMaybe Yahoo doesn't want 3rd party counters and they sabotaged the offending counters!!!!!
edited to repair rogue UBB Code!!!
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Feb 21, 2001 12:25 PM ]
posted on February 21, 2001 05:55:17 PM new
it could be that the pages are being automatically accessed by some sort of web agent. the 'page views' might have nothing to do with how many *humans* have seen the pages.
[ edited by sulyn1950 on Feb 20, 2001 05:47 PM ]