Why Amazon traffic is up and eBay traffic is down
Ina Steiner at AuctionBytes.com is reporting "Unique visitors to eBay dropped in 7.72% in November 2009 compared to November 2008, while Amazon.com's unique visitors rose 5.57% for the same time period."
I have read dozens of theories about why this is happening. The answer is simple, as most answers are.
Since day one Jeff Bezos has had a clear vision about where he wants Amazon to be. He has always said he wants Amazon.com to be the most customer-centric site on the internet and a place where you can buy everything. Amazon.com started out as a bookstore and has constantly added to it's catalog of items to buy since it's founding. Their traffic is up because every day there is more there to buy. The more you have available for sale the more people will look. It is what made Wal-Mart the world's largest retailer. People don't shop at Wal-mart just for low prices. Their prices are not always the lowest. People keep flocking to Wal-Mart because every time they go there they can find things to buy they couldn't find before. This is the same reason people keep going to Amazon.com. They know they can find almost everything there and if they don't find what they are looking for there will be plenty of new items they can buy.
eBay on the other hand built a huge traffic base because of the same reason. There were unique items being added to the site every day. You could buy almost anything on eBay. That was then. Now eBay is a pretty good place to buy new, refurbished, & out of season items but if you are hunting something unique you are about out of luck. It seems that the people in charge of eBay have no vision. Every quarter we hear they want to be something else. Last time I heard they wanted to be the Costco of the web. That is ok if you don't want a lot of visitors.
Go to your local Costco and count the number of cars in the parking lot. Go to your local Wal-Mart and count the number of cars in the lot.
$5 will get you $10 that the number of cars at Wal-Mart is at least double the number at Costco.
Why can you not find the unique items at eBay? A couple of years ago the new CEO decided eBay was too much like a flea market and he wanted to change it. He has done a tremendous job in that respect. It is no longer like a flea market. What John Donahoe's MBA probably didn't tell him is what makes flea markets successful. He has probably never spent much time in a flea market. If he has it was probably a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. What makes flea markets great is that most of the sellers do most of the buying. This is mostly done before the doors open to the general public. I have known people that rented booths at flea markets just so they could get in early to get the good buys. Flea markets exchange a lot of cash, mostly between the insiders. eBay made out like a bandit when it was like a flea market because items were sold over and over and they received fees every time this happened. When eBay decided they didn't want to be a flea market any more they succeeded in running a lot of the flea-market type sellers off. These were also some of the biggest buyers. This in itself would have been bad enough but what they didn't seem to realize is that every one of these "flea market" sellers had dozens of relatives and friends that also bought on eBay because they had heard about it from these seller/buyers. Word of mouth is what built eBay and word of mouth is tearing it down. They can do all the advertising, giveaways, etc they want. All this does is waste money, which they seem to have an unlimited supply of. Word of mouth has always been king
Tomorrow: What eBay should do to get back in the game
I have read dozens of theories about why this is happening. The answer is simple, as most answers are.
Since day one Jeff Bezos has had a clear vision about where he wants Amazon to be. He has always said he wants Amazon.com to be the most customer-centric site on the internet and a place where you can buy everything. Amazon.com started out as a bookstore and has constantly added to it's catalog of items to buy since it's founding. Their traffic is up because every day there is more there to buy. The more you have available for sale the more people will look. It is what made Wal-Mart the world's largest retailer. People don't shop at Wal-mart just for low prices. Their prices are not always the lowest. People keep flocking to Wal-Mart because every time they go there they can find things to buy they couldn't find before. This is the same reason people keep going to Amazon.com. They know they can find almost everything there and if they don't find what they are looking for there will be plenty of new items they can buy.
eBay on the other hand built a huge traffic base because of the same reason. There were unique items being added to the site every day. You could buy almost anything on eBay. That was then. Now eBay is a pretty good place to buy new, refurbished, & out of season items but if you are hunting something unique you are about out of luck. It seems that the people in charge of eBay have no vision. Every quarter we hear they want to be something else. Last time I heard they wanted to be the Costco of the web. That is ok if you don't want a lot of visitors.
Go to your local Costco and count the number of cars in the parking lot. Go to your local Wal-Mart and count the number of cars in the lot.
$5 will get you $10 that the number of cars at Wal-Mart is at least double the number at Costco.
Why can you not find the unique items at eBay? A couple of years ago the new CEO decided eBay was too much like a flea market and he wanted to change it. He has done a tremendous job in that respect. It is no longer like a flea market. What John Donahoe's MBA probably didn't tell him is what makes flea markets successful. He has probably never spent much time in a flea market. If he has it was probably a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. What makes flea markets great is that most of the sellers do most of the buying. This is mostly done before the doors open to the general public. I have known people that rented booths at flea markets just so they could get in early to get the good buys. Flea markets exchange a lot of cash, mostly between the insiders. eBay made out like a bandit when it was like a flea market because items were sold over and over and they received fees every time this happened. When eBay decided they didn't want to be a flea market any more they succeeded in running a lot of the flea-market type sellers off. These were also some of the biggest buyers. This in itself would have been bad enough but what they didn't seem to realize is that every one of these "flea market" sellers had dozens of relatives and friends that also bought on eBay because they had heard about it from these seller/buyers. Word of mouth is what built eBay and word of mouth is tearing it down. They can do all the advertising, giveaways, etc they want. All this does is waste money, which they seem to have an unlimited supply of. Word of mouth has always been king
Tomorrow: What eBay should do to get back in the game
The bottom line is that Amazon has been leading a consistent marketing vision since the beginning and this is easily reflected in Amazon business politics today. This article is a good reference for those who are not still not convinced that a good business vision matters a lot.
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