posted on December 29, 2000 11:32:24 AM new
well, after your question, I had to go look. I sell jewelry, so i went to that category. All the auctions showing on the pages showed bids, and some with quite a few. That is the autions that they were showing, as I went through the pages to get to the actual lists of Sterling jewelry. When I got to the listings, after about 4 pages of clicking, well,,,,
The actual listings were bare of bids , i.e. one bid in the first two PAGES.
So I would guess that Yahoo is just showing the auctions that have bids, on the first few opening pages, to make you think all is going well. Great ploy.
posted on December 29, 2000 11:38:51 AM new
Yup Bidding was way down at yahoo since June then all of a sudden around the frist week in November bidding took a big rise.
After selling 2 Item there in 5 month I started getting bids on 1 to 4 items every week its not great but its 100X more then the past month a nice suplment to inbetween bidding on ebay auctions.
Most of the bids I have had are from new Users and international sales.
posted on December 29, 2000 11:39:59 AM new
A couple of changes I'm aware of contribute to what you saw.
YAHOO has a section in the beginning of each category where it shows the auctions from that grouping with the most bids.
It also has changed the defult for showing all items from a "time remaining" sort to some, still unclear to me, ranking that favors items with bids and/or sellers listings that, on average, get more bids/sales.
In reverse, you could list an item and it may start and stay at the back of 50 pages of auctions throughout the entire auction duration. Think resort publicity photo with the beautiful people up front and the rest of us in the out of focus background.
It does make the site look busier and other sorts like "time remaining" are available by clickable links on each category page.
The actual sales activity is also hard to judge because so many sellers like myself use 1st Bid Wins on all 80/90 listings I run so after one bid the listing disappears.
I, and a seemingly large number of other sellers, don't like the current default and are consistantly asking for a return to the old, eBay like, time remaining standard. Your comments give me a new perspective on the approach.
Maybe our dissatisfaction and, we believe, lower sales are somewhat offset by buyers perception that the sight looks busy.
Since the long term benefit of a larger buyer base will help everyone, maybe this is window dressing we will have to endure for a while.
The previous sort often showed long lists of just closed or about to close auctions with no bids. It was a negative impression.
The present approach also invites shilling which is not healthy for the long term and presently has little negative effects for sellers, unless caught, due to the absence of fees. It's nice to have friends but encouraging them to place at least one bid on your auctions so that you receive prominent display position is not a sound activity for YAHOO to, even unintentionally, encourage.
