Cassini Case Study, Part I: Auction vs. Fixed Price

She's not sure about this Cassini thing!

Two weeks ago, John Donahoe, CEO of eBay, was a presenter at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York.  

This past Wednesday, The Top Rated Webinar Series presented "Search at eBay" with Hugh Williams, eBay's VP of Experience, Search, and Platforms.

Both men spoke in depth about search at eBay, and the new Cassini search algorithm.  I highly recommend all full-time eBay sellers listen to both presentations if you want to understand what eBay is doing.

Yet after listening to their collective 2.5 hours of content, I still did not have a sense that we were being told the whole story.  So... I've decided to investigate on my own.

A little background:  I sell in eBay's fashion category, and have experienced sales falling steadily since last fall.  I've been doing extensive maintenance on my store to address the "problems" eBay has been encouraging us to solve: larger photos, clean backgrounds, minimal text in listings, minimal html in listing descriptions, mobile optimization, SEO optimization...  If eBay suggested we do it, I sure as heck did!  And yet at best I was only able to recover about 10% of the sales volume I lost.

As you can imagine, I was ravenous for any insight Mr. Williams would provide.  Last week, I summarized the small amount of information I gleaned from the presentation.  

Sadly, Mr. Williams explicitly declined to provide anything concrete to answer what best listing practices could maximize our performance, in fact he shared a slide that said why he would NOT tell us (something about a level playing field for all sellers).  This is a departure from how eBay has always worked with sellers; eBay used to advise us of specific factors that would raise our result in search (such as offering free shipping, accepting returns, etc.).

Since they won't tell us (much), I decided to investigate for myself.  To insure my personal buying behavior was not factored into ranking results, I logged out of eBay, opened a different browser, and deleted all cookies/browsing history before proceeding.  This approach should mimic what a new-to-eBay shopper would see.

Disclaimer: My results from this study in the "Fashion" category may not be true across all categories, as Fashion does not have a catalog, ISBN, or SKU numbers to unify the items.

"Black Pencil Skirt 12"

I queried "Black Pencil Skirt 12", applied only 1 filter (Women's Clothing), and collected data on the top 100 results in Best Match.  I will be reporting back my findings over the next several blog entries.

For today, lets explore the relationship between Fixed Price and Auction rankings.  In my query, eBay found 1,219 results: 78 were Auction format (representing 6.4% of all results) and 1,141 were Fixed Price (93.6%).
I counted 36 of the top 100 were Auction listings, and 64 were Fixed Price.

Here's the exciting part:
36 Auctions items in the top 100 = 46.2% of all Auction listings. 
This means nearly half of the Auction listings appeared in the top 100 results!

This leaves the Fixed Price listings under-represented in the top 100 results, only 5.6% (64) of the Fixed Price listings appeared in the top 100 results.

Take-away:

If you sell fashion, always include Auction items in your listing mix.

In Part II of this series, I will be highlighting some jaw-dropping data on Multi-variation listings.  Stay tuned!

Reflections on Cassini and eBay Search

Cassini Spacecraft, Artists Rendition.  Courtesy NASA.

Wednesday, Hugh Williams, eBay VP of Experience, Search, and Platforms, presented "Search at eBay" as a part of the Top Rated Seller Webinar Series.

The webinar discussed Cassini, the search algorithm eBay designed to replace the old "Voyager" search algorithm which was in use for over 10 years.

eBay Powerseller Joe S. took excellent notes during the event, and has graciously agreed to share his "take-aways" with you here:

Overall, it is the buyer experience sellers need to focus on, always considering three factors: Trust, Safety, and Relevance.

1. Keyword spamming and otherwise taking short cuts won't pay off... the buyer sees through it.
2. Cassini is being implemented in stages, it is not completely here yet for live listings. 
3. Cassini is fully implemented for all sold/completed items, going back for 90-days.
4. Duration: If you list for 30-days or Good Till Cancelled, it does not make a difference for you search ranking.
5. HTML: In your listings, having HTML does not make a difference when determining search placement as Cassini strips it out.  However, be aware of mobile listings as HTML and Flash may not read well on smartphones or tablets.
6. Category: The category you list your item in is important since search is not always by queries (this is when buyers enter keywords in the search box); they also shop by also category browsing.
7. TRS/Top Rated Seller Status: Is very important for search rank results.
8. Photos: Having bright, large size pictures is very important .
9. Sales:  Many sellers ask "why are my sales down", most often because of price competition, or because the seller is failing with one of the values above Trust, Safety, and Relevance.
   

These webinars move so fast, everyone catches something different in their notes, which is why I'm so grateful for Joe's help!

I picked up a few other "nuggets".

There are three factors that affect how you get visibility.  1) Search recall, 2) Search refinement, and 3) Best Match.

For best results in Search Recall, use powerful keywords in your title and (if appropriate for the category) make sure you are using the eBay catalog.

Mr. Williams would not explicitly say what determines "value" for the buyer, but I inferred from what he discussed that having the lowest price for a comparable product is a huge factor.  I have a LOT to say on this, but will reserve these comments for a stand alone blog post very soon.

Best Match factors which eBay used to clearly give us (1-day handling, free shipping, etc.) are still important, but Mr. Williams refused to answer most questions on what factors are considered now.  He did explicitly say that 'new vs. old' and listing on a mobile device vs. a desktop computer (regardless of listing service) are not factors.

Studying the Top Rated Seller program and using its "pillars" is important to meet the 'Trust' factor in search success.

And this final nugget is something I realized for myself when he was discussing language translation software... Always remember when writing your descriptions that they need to use simple language that translates easily.  Don't just say "Turquoise" make sure you say "Turquoise blue" because blue will translate better.  Avoid idioms in your listings ("setting up this computer is as easy as falling off a log") because they won't make sense when translated (instead, "This computer is very easy to set-up.")

When Best Practices Conflict: Marketing eBay Items on Pinterest

This week, Curalate published "The Perfect Pinterest Pin: How to Optimize Your Images for Maximum Engagement on Pinterest".  It's a great article, with extremely useful insight into what characteristics will make an image more likely to be re-pinned.

If we are using Pinterest to market our brands and products, we need to know this information.

For me, the most stunning fact revealed was that images with stark backgrounds (such as all white, catalog style) are much less likely to be re-pinned.  Here is the dilemma:  For selling on eBay, having a stark background (all white) actually gives you higher placement in Cassini search results!

I've devised the following work-around, which should let you maximize photos on each platform.  

• First, load the item on eBay with the pictures we normally would have used on eBay (the one with the clean background). 
• Next, when we go to promote on Pinterest, we upload the Pinterest-optimized photo to Pinterest using the "add a pin" feature.
• Last, edit the pin to include a manual link which points back to the item in your eBay store.
  

Here is an example.  These two photos are of the same Tadashi dress.  The photo on the left would be the ideal eBay gallery photo with a simple, clean white background. However, the photo on the right (model Paloma Dominguez, photographer Lee Sterling Photography) would be better suited for Pinterest sharing.

You should be aware that in using this approach (and not pinning directly from eBay) we are disabling the new rich pin feature - but is this a bad thing? The rich pins are likely to decrease our Pinterest click-through rates because they include the price and availability of our items right on the pin. Disabling rich pins in this way, for now, might actually be to the seller's advantage.

If you are using Pinterest for the social media marketing of your business, I highly encourage you to read the full Curalate article and learn more.