Why has my click-through rate stayed exactly the same for weeks now?

[royalsage]

I just realized that my click through rate has stayed the same for weeks perhaps longer because I hadn't monitored it before

It is at .3% 

The listing impressions have went from around 100 thousand to now at 175 thousand

My actual click throughs have went from a low of about 400 to what they are now around 600 or so

My sales on Ebay are down almost 30 percent from last year.

Can the click through rate be manipulated?

Or am I just going crazy. 

Thanks for your consideration.

[hartungcards]

This is due to an annual increase in system activity experienced during this period, which has caused processing delays.

[royalsage]

Thanks for your reply

So I was right, that something funny was happening?

Although I don't quite understand what "processing delays" mean when it comes to buyers not seeing your products?

When will it all end?

And go back to normal?

[fbusoni]

@royalsage 

I personally pay no attention to these sorts of statistics.

If your sales are down, then it might be best to take steps to reinvigorate your listings.

One way to breathe new life into stagnant listings is to end them, and then re-list them using the "sell similar" feature that eBay offers.

I have had great success with this technique; buyers are often looking for items that are "newly listed," and when you sell similar, you do just that.

[royalsage]

Thank you for your reply

I'll give that try

The reason I've never done it before is because I figured it would help sales for buyers to see that hundreds of your items have already sold

I'll find out quick. 

[dy60609]

That is a copy & paste semi-sarcastic reply posted to many threads and should be taken with a grain of salt and even that expenditure may be an overallotment of resources giving it undue credit.

[meme6253]

I don't quite understand that answer as well, It seems a little vague.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

Think about what defines your click through rate.

The percentage of the search results which actually are relevant to what the buyers are looking for. Many buyers are clueless about how to find something on Ebay when they know what they are looking for. Others don't know what they are looking for until they find it.

The placement in the search results your items have. Many buyers will lose interest in the search results if there are too many irrelevant results before they have found yours. If you do not pay to promote, you are not likely to see improved placement when there are more listings. You might only be capturing the searches from buyers who want what you have and know how to use the search to find it and less irrelevant rubbish.

Your pricing. If your listing has what the buyer thinks is an outrageous price, they will probably not click through.

Whether the buyer is using Google or another external search to find your items. Visits from Google or bookmarked listings are not counted in these statistics. I suspect a large number of my sales come from external views, my sales are off when the number of external views are low. The extreme case of this would be a pathetic clickthrough rate even when sales are good, and it would be extremely stable,

[royalsage]

Thanks for your reply

I've considered all the points you mentioned

I can always increase the advertising rate, but that means I'll have to raise my prices

Indeed on one item I raised the ad rate percentage to an outrageous number and I did get a huge uptick on views, but no sales. I did raise the price a bit higher too, not really expecting any buyers. But to get my brand presented on at least one item to a larger audience. 

I don't think it's worked

 That being said, why would my percentage of click throughs stay the same for weeks? Is it because .3 % is the lowest rate and therefore the default number when there is low views?

Just curious, because it does seem odd