cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

Hi Everyone! This month's chat you’ll have an opportunity to talk to Lucan from our Seller Experience - Growth & Insights team. The theme of the chat is, “How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research”. See you August 10th!!!

 

Edit: Thanks for joining us for the Monthly Chat with eBay Staff and Lucan.

 

The chat thread will remain open until 2 PM PT at which point we'll close it from additional responses. After that time, we'll continue to work on responding to any queries that might still be unanswered.

 

To post your question, click Reply in the lower right corner of this post, type your question, and hit submit between 1-2 PM Pacific Time. The format of our chat mirrors the format of our Community Discussion Boards, where each post will appear in the thread chronologically. The (specialist name) and Community Team will review each question as it comes in, and will quote the original question in our reply. This quote and the reply will appear later in the thread, so just keep scrolling down to see our answers.

 

As a reminder, we want (specialist name) to be able to get to as many members as possible during the allotted hour, so we have a few things to ask of you:

  • Keep on topic
  • Scroll through the list of questions to see what has already been asked to decrease chances of redundancy 
  • Keep the message/question simple and no more than one to two items. If you include multiple questions in a post, please be aware that they may not be addressed during the chat and (specialist name) will do their best to follow-up with it after the chat has closed 

 

Missed the chat? Send your questions to the podcast by calling 888-723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com and maybe your questions will make it on the air! Or listen to past episodes while you wait for next month!

Velvet,
eBay
Message 1 of 17
latest reply
16 REPLIES 16

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

Hi Sellers! My name is Lucan McRandall and I’m a Product Manager in the Seller Experience group at eBay 🙂 

 

I’ve been a part of the Terapeak team at eBay for over 4 years, and was a Product Manager on Terapeak before it was acquired in 2017. I’m very passionate about helping sellers understand the eBay marketplace by providing them with guidance on what to source and how to list.

 

I’m really excited about today’s chat, and I’m looking forward to answering any question you may have about Terapeak Product Research and Sourcing Insights!

Message 2 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

Hi lucan@ebay ! Thanks for coming to the chat today.

 

Over a year ago, I posted this thread here in the community about sourcing insights not working in the Motors categories.

 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Terapeak-Sourcing-Insights-Not-Working-For-eBay-Motors/m-p/319... 

 

I had tagged Harry Temkin back then but since he's no longer at eBay and I never got an answer there, hopefully you can help.

 

I've confirmed with other sellers as recently as this week and the issues I found then appear to still be happening.

 

Most significantly, for any sub-category under Motors,  it's showing 0 search volume and 0.0 search-to-listing ratio. This has to be a technical problem or data error - with millions of listings in some of these categories, I don't believe it's possible no one is searching for those items on eBay in the last 30 days.

 

tpinsight1.png

 

Switching to Table View instead of Card View still shows 0 for search volume and search-to-listing ratio.


Table View also adds a column for Market Share. If you hover over it, a note pops up showing that Market Share is defined as "the share of the market owned by the top 10% of sellers in this category."


While I don't have hard numbers to verify, these percentages don't make sense to me - if the top 10% of sellers in a category really do own 100% of the market, what does that say for the other 90% of sellers?


Anecdotally, I've spoken to a seller who is consistently the #1 seller in one of these categories according to their Listing Quality Report and they said there is no way the market share of the top 10% is that high.

 

I'd be curious if you could tell us if those figures seem at all "normal" given what you may have seen across non-motors categories as well?

 

tpinsight2.png

 

I'm also not sure how "average days to first sale" could be a negative number, like it's showing for brake drums.

 

Any idea what could be going on here and why this issue appears to be affecting the entire Motors section?

 

----- 

Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

Message 3 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

Thank you for being here, Lucan. Is there a simple "idiot's guide" to mastering Terapeak? Every time I hear the explanations, I just don't get it. Could you help break it down for the simple-minded seller that is me? Thanks in advance -- Shakurra of "MemasHeckaStuff"

 

----- 

Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

Message 4 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

I am not sure how eBay sourcing insights and product research would be helpful to specialized sellers in collectible categories. Most market insight in the Stamps category comes from publications like Linn’s Stamp News or the Scott Catalog. Past sales on eBay can be helpful for listing and pricing decisions. Unfortunately, three months is not sufficient for pricing less frequently sold items. The Stamps category market on eBay is segmented by price and condition. Low quality common stamps sell at low prices while high quality unusual or graded stamps generally sell at prices posted in the Scott US stamp values by Grade or at Scott Catalog values adjusted for grade and condition.

 

While eBay sale prices can be accessed, eBay search is too weak to effectively capture sale prices by catalog number. Better, more searchable data is needed. A filter on catalog number and catalog name is needed to avoid extraneous hits on hard to search items like US Scott 1 or US Scott 500. Sellers are divided about including the catalog name in titles. Search for “1” or “500” will return few actual results. Scarce catalog numbers may return motorcycle parts instead of stamps. Item specifics instantiated as filters are poorly defined or incomplete. Item specifics like “Denomination” or “Color” do not have a significant role in determining market value unless the stamp is a listed color variety. Descriptive item specifics should be unbounded. I once received a message from eBay suggesting that a red orange stamp be listed ad “orange” to increase visibility. I opted for credibility over visibility.

 

“Grade” relates to the appearance of the stamp, but the eBay filters use abbreviations not commonly seen in the U.S. stamp marketplace. Item specific definitions should always be phases without abbreviations. Filters should match abbreviations. “Grade” is subjective unless the stamp was graded. Since only a tiny fraction of stamps are graded, a “Grade” item specific should not be required.

 

“Quality” relates to gum condition of unused stamps or postal usage. Scott catalog definitions and eBay definitions conflict. Sellers who import listings from their inventory will be unlikely to modify descriptions to match eBay. Stamps are priced as “Unused never hinged”, “Unused hinged”, “Unused no gum”, and “Used”. Unfortunately, “Item Condition” values “Unused” and “Used” disappeared from eBay a few years ago.

 

Better, more effective, eBay Item Specifics in the Stamps category would enable better and more efficient searches and potentially more sales in addition to the ability to generate better sales data.

 

----- 

Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

Message 5 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research


@valueaddedresource wrote:

Hi lucan@ebay ! Thanks for coming to the chat today.

 

Over a year ago, I posted this thread here in the community about sourcing insights not working in the Motors categories.

 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Terapeak-Sourcing-Insights-Not-Working-For-eBay-Motors/m-p/319... 

 

I had tagged Harry Temkin back then but since he's no longer at eBay and I never got an answer there, hopefully you can help.

 

I've confirmed with other sellers as recently as this week and the issues I found then appear to still be happening.

 

Most significantly, for any sub-category under Motors,  it's showing 0 search volume and 0.0 search-to-listing ratio. This has to be a technical problem or data error - with millions of listings in some of these categories, I don't believe it's possible no one is searching for those items on eBay in the last 30 days.

 

tpinsight1.png

 

Switching to Table View instead of Card View still shows 0 for search volume and search-to-listing ratio.


Table View also adds a column for Market Share. If you hover over it, a note pops up showing that Market Share is defined as "the share of the market owned by the top 10% of sellers in this category."


While I don't have hard numbers to verify, these percentages don't make sense to me - if the top 10% of sellers in a category really do own 100% of the market, what does that say for the other 90% of sellers?


Anecdotally, I've spoken to a seller who is consistently the #1 seller in one of these categories according to their Listing Quality Report and they said there is no way the market share of the top 10% is that high.

 

I'd be curious if you could tell us if those figures seem at all "normal" given what you may have seen across non-motors categories as well?

 

tpinsight2.png

 

I'm also not sure how "average days to first sale" could be a negative number, like it's showing for brake drums.

 

Any idea what could be going on here and why this issue appears to be affecting the entire Motors section?


Hi @valueaddedresource ! Thanks for passing this on 🙂 – based on your screenshots, it definitely looks like there are some inconsistencies, and that’s not something I would expect in relation to an entire category (in this case, Motors). I will definitely ask my team to investigate. Hopefully we can prioritize a fix relatively quickly.

I don't have any specific details on what the issue may be at the moment. Hopefully I can provide some additional information once we have a better understanding of the problem from a technical perspective.

Message 6 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research


@memasheckastuff wrote:

Thank you for being here, Lucan. Is there a simple "idiot's guide" to mastering Terapeak? Every time I hear the explanations, I just don't get it. Could you help break it down for the simple-minded seller that is me? Thanks in advance -- Shakurra of "MemasHeckaStuff"



Hi @memasheckastuff , this is a great question! There are a few helpful resources that I can share, here: https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/growth/ebay-research-tools

 

If I had to put this into my own words, I’d say the following:

 

Terapeak is a search engine that provides information about sold items matching the keywords that you’re searching for.

 

For instance, you can search for the word “Nike” and you’ll receive information about any listing that sold within your selected date range that has the word “Nike” in the title, or item specifics.

 

This can produce a lot of results: some items will be for shoes, others might be for t-shirts, hats or even sporting equipment. You can select categories or filters to narrow your search results down to the specific type of Nike item you want information about.

 

We also summarize those sales, showing you things like “Average sold price”, “Sold price range”, “Total sellers”, and more!

 

Some of the results will be very generic, so the quality of the information depends on how specific you get. There are also a ton of nuances to the product, and if you’re visiting for the first time, you can take our guided tour in the product to help you better understand how to use it and it’s advanced functions.

Message 7 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

Thank you!

Message 8 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research


lucan@ebay wrote:

@valueaddedresource wrote:

Hi lucan@ebay ! Thanks for coming to the chat today.

 

Over a year ago, I posted this thread here in the community about sourcing insights not working in the Motors categories.

 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Terapeak-Sourcing-Insights-Not-Working-For-eBay-Motors/m-p/319... 

 

I had tagged Harry Temkin back then but since he's no longer at eBay and I never got an answer there, hopefully you can help.

 

I've confirmed with other sellers as recently as this week and the issues I found then appear to still be happening.

 

Most significantly, for any sub-category under Motors,  it's showing 0 search volume and 0.0 search-to-listing ratio. This has to be a technical problem or data error - with millions of listings in some of these categories, I don't believe it's possible no one is searching for those items on eBay in the last 30 days.

 

tpinsight1.png

 

Switching to Table View instead of Card View still shows 0 for search volume and search-to-listing ratio.


Table View also adds a column for Market Share. If you hover over it, a note pops up showing that Market Share is defined as "the share of the market owned by the top 10% of sellers in this category."


While I don't have hard numbers to verify, these percentages don't make sense to me - if the top 10% of sellers in a category really do own 100% of the market, what does that say for the other 90% of sellers?


Anecdotally, I've spoken to a seller who is consistently the #1 seller in one of these categories according to their Listing Quality Report and they said there is no way the market share of the top 10% is that high.

 

I'd be curious if you could tell us if those figures seem at all "normal" given what you may have seen across non-motors categories as well?

 

tpinsight2.png

 

I'm also not sure how "average days to first sale" could be a negative number, like it's showing for brake drums.

 

Any idea what could be going on here and why this issue appears to be affecting the entire Motors section?


Hi @valueaddedresource ! Thanks for passing this on 🙂 – based on your screenshots, it definitely looks like there are some inconsistencies, and that’s not something I would expect in relation to an entire category (in this case, Motors). I will definitely ask my team to investigate. Hopefully we can prioritize a fix relatively quickly.

I don't have any specific details on what the issue may be at the moment. Hopefully I can provide some additional information once we have a better understanding of the problem from a technical perspective.


Thanks lucan@ebay !

 

Like I said, it's been that way for over a year as far as I know and it's pretty much made the feature unusable for sellers in Motors - hard to trust any of the data when there are inconsistencies like this.

 

Hopefully your team can get it sorted out. 👍

Message 9 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research


@clarkphilatelics wrote:

I am not sure how eBay sourcing insights and product research would be helpful to specialized sellers in collectible categories. Most market insight in the Stamps category comes from publications like Linn’s Stamp News or the Scott Catalog. Past sales on eBay can be helpful for listing and pricing decisions. Unfortunately, three months is not sufficient for pricing less frequently sold items. The Stamps category market on eBay is segmented by price and condition. Low quality common stamps sell at low prices while high quality unusual or graded stamps generally sell at prices posted in the Scott US stamp values by Grade or at Scott Catalog values adjusted for grade and condition.

 

While eBay sale prices can be accessed, eBay search is too weak to effectively capture sale prices by catalog number. Better, more searchable data is needed. A filter on catalog number and catalog name is needed to avoid extraneous hits on hard to search items like US Scott 1 or US Scott 500. Sellers are divided about including the catalog name in titles. Search for “1” or “500” will return few actual results. Scarce catalog numbers may return motorcycle parts instead of stamps. Item specifics instantiated as filters are poorly defined or incomplete. Item specifics like “Denomination” or “Color” do not have a significant role in determining market value unless the stamp is a listed color variety. Descriptive item specifics should be unbounded. I once received a message from eBay suggesting that a red orange stamp be listed ad “orange” to increase visibility. I opted for credibility over visibility.

 

“Grade” relates to the appearance of the stamp, but the eBay filters use abbreviations not commonly seen in the U.S. stamp marketplace. Item specific definitions should always be phases without abbreviations. Filters should match abbreviations. “Grade” is subjective unless the stamp was graded. Since only a tiny fraction of stamps are graded, a “Grade” item specific should not be required.

 

“Quality” relates to gum condition of unused stamps or postal usage. Scott catalog definitions and eBay definitions conflict. Sellers who import listings from their inventory will be unlikely to modify descriptions to match eBay. Stamps are priced as “Unused never hinged”, “Unused hinged”, “Unused no gum”, and “Used”. Unfortunately, “Item Condition” values “Unused” and “Used” disappeared from eBay a few years ago.

 

Better, more effective, eBay Item Specifics in the Stamps category would enable better and more efficient searches and potentially more sales in addition to the ability to generate better sales data.


Hi @clarkphilatelics! This is an interesting scenario that I’d like to explore a little more in-depth.

One thing that stands out to me right away is that it seems like you’ve been limited to searching the past 3 months. That’s a huge pain point that we recognize most collectible sellers experience when using eBay search results to view historic prices.

 

Terapeak Product Research (available at www.ebay.com/sh/research) allows you to search any date range up-to-and-including the past 365 days. This also allows you to view the actual sold prices of items, which isn’t always transparent on the standard eBay search results in cases where the Seller has accepted a Best Offer.

 

Sourcing insights also offers a full year of sales trends and can provide insights into item specific combinations that sell well within a category. It’s not always perfect, but it does depend on how frequently certain item specifics are used by other sellers.

 

When you search in Terapeak, always try to select a specific category to search in. Here’s an example of categories that you can select when submitting your search:

lucanebay_0-1660164132168.png

 

 

When you select a specific category, you will then be able to apply filters based on the most frequently used filters by sellers whose sold items are included in your results.

 

Here are some examples: 

lucanebay_1-1660164132137.png

 

 

lucanebay_2-1660164132150.png

 

 

It sounds like some of the specifics used in these filters don’t always match your expectations, or the standard practices of stamp sellers/collectors. 

 

There are likely some improvements we can make, but many of the specifics we use in these instances actually come from values that sellers have added to the listings included in the sold results. If we’re mis-identifying what kind of “grades” are used in this case, it would be helpful to connect with you in more detail about what would make sense from a stamp seller’s perspective.

 

However, I would also recommend looking at some of the other item specifics filters that are available. In this particular sub-category, many sellers use the “quality” item specific field to provide details on the exact quality or stamp-specific condition of the items they’re selling. You can use this in combination with the standard “condition” filter to give you a better set of filters that you can use to get very specific results. 

 

I hope this answers some of your questions or concerns. If you’d like more information, please reach out to your customer support representative – I’d love to set up a brief 1:1 meeting to learn more about this specific category and how we can make our products more useful to sellers like you.

Message 10 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

I'm a new eBay seller. I always think sourcing is one of my strengths. I have managed to get more sourcing than I could handle myself, and I don't need to pay anything before I sell. So I'm working on a platform that could help connect sellers and suppliers. Just want to get some feedback from seller on what you would expect from such a platform.

 

Cheers,

Risong

Message 11 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

lucan@ebay  - just to add more data for the team, there are also inconsistencies when you click through to get details for a category.

 

For Dash Cams it shows top combination is Manufacturer Part Number: Does Not Apply, Brand Unbranded, Color: Black

 

tpinsights3.png

 

Clicking the pop out icon for that top combination opens Terapeak Research in a new tab where it appears to just drop those item specifics into the search box. The resulting data doesn't seem to match up to what was shown under Terapeak Sourcing Insights.

 

Average sold price $119.98 vs $233.33

 

 

tpinsights4.png

And 880 active listings vs no active listings

 

tpsinsights5.png

 

 

----- 

Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

Message 12 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research


@valueaddedresource wrote:

lucan@ebay  - just to add more data for the team, there are also inconsistencies when you click through to get details for a category.

 

For Dash Cams it shows top combination is Manufacturer Part Number: Does Not Apply, Brand Unbranded, Color: Black

 

tpinsights3.png

 

Clicking the pop out icon for that top combination opens Terapeak Research in a new tab where it appears to just drop those item specifics into the search box. The resulting data doesn't seem to match up to what was shown under Terapeak Sourcing Insights.

 

Average sold price $119.98 vs $233.33

 

 

tpinsights4.png

And 880 active listings vs no active listings

 

tpsinsights5.png

 


Hi  @valueaddedresource – yes, these inconsistencies are likely related to the overall issues you’ve observed in Motors-related sub-categories.

 

One thing we are working to improve is ensuring that Sourcing Insights and Product Research provide matching insights. Sourcing Insights is using multiple different data sources to provide insights within a category, without the use of keywords. Many categories have millions of transactions that occur within a very short period of time (sometimes over just a few days). As a result, we process Sourcing Insights data in bulk which may result in a small discrepancy between the numbers you see here, and the numbers you see in Product Research (which uses real-time data). The difference is likely due to a small delay between the real-time information and the last data batch process for Sourcing Insights. This is something we hope to be able to minimize in the future, but the differences are generally within a small margin of error.

Message 13 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research

Thank you for the response. Unfortunately, "Quality" is the most abuse item specific in the Stamps category.

 

Message 14 of 17
latest reply

Monthly Chat - August 10th at 1:00 pm PT - How to use Sourcing Insights and Product Research


@valueaddedresource wrote:

For Dash Cams it shows top combination is Manufacturer Part Number: Does Not Apply, Brand Unbranded, Color: Black

 

And 880 active listings vs no active listings

 

tpsinsights5.png


The wording of the "No active results found for 'Does Not Apply Unbranded Black'" message suggests that it's searching listing titles for that phrase, rather than Item Specifics.

 

----- 

Edit: A reply to your question can be found here.

Message 15 of 17
latest reply
About this Board

Welcome to the Retired Monthly Chat with eBay Staff board! This board contains past chats with eBay Community team members along with eBay product teams.

For eBay news and information see:


Consider posting on one of these boards for input from fellow eBay members: