Power Sellers Unite

pjrcoffee · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 634

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/bonanzle.com+ecrater.com+atomicmall.com/

I went to Compete.com and did a little research. See chart from link and add another statistic from PSU's Auction Count to get Unique Visitors per listing.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx UNIQUE VISITORS JUNE xxx LISTINGS JULY ! xxxxxx UNIQUE VISITORS PER LISTING
eCrater xxxxxxxxxxxx 1,504,315 xxxxxxxxxxx 2,110,000 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 0.71

AtomicMall xxxxxxxxxxxx 98,302xxxxxxxxxxxxx 182,700 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 0.54

Bonanzle xxxxxxxxxxxx 506,182 xxxxxxxxxxxx 2,130,000 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 0.24

This seems to indicate that eCrater delivers more traffic to each of a seller's listings than the other two. I personally don't care how BIG a site is. What I want is visitors to MY listings. Don't you? Sales depend on pricing, ad copy, demand and other factors but eyeballs are an important measure of a venue's value to a seller.

jjj525 · Joined: 08 Apr 2009 Posts: 354

I like ecrater a lot.

But the recent changes are little disappointing.

Now when you search for a product in main ecrater page your competitor's listings appear below your page instead of your own listings.

The google feeds also seem to fail very often.Mine failed on July 9th.

Baconsdozen · Joined: 06 May 2008 Posts: 771

I've found ecrater sales are OK and consistent.They should be giving ebay a hard time of it in the states.

CabinFever · Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2009 2:08 pm Post subject:

I was on eCrater last year and did not sell anything and that is why I moved to Bonanzle. Not sure what was going on because I liked the look of it a lot at that time. Worked great for my art pieces. It was a bit more difficult to navigate, however.

Now I am curious about it. Interesting numbers. Wish there was a way to see the sell through rates.

Angelsong777 · Joined: 31 Dec 2006 Posts: 2309

pjrcoffee wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")http://siteanalytics.compete.com/bonanzle.com+ecrater.com+atomicmall.com/

I went to Compete.com and did a little research. See chart from link and add another statistic from PSU's Auction Count to get Unique Visitors per listing.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx UNIQUE VISITORS JUNE xxx LISTINGS JULY ! xxxxxx UNIQUE VISITORS PER LISTING
eCrater xxxxxxxxxxxx 1,504,315 xxxxxxxxxxx 2,110,000 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 0.71

AtomicMall xxxxxxxxxxxx 98,302xxxxxxxxxxxxx 182,700 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 0.54

Bonanzle xxxxxxxxxxxx 506,182 xxxxxxxxxxxx 2,130,000 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 0.24

This seems to indicate that eCrater delivers more traffic to each of a seller's listings than the other two. I personally don't care how BIG a site is. What I want is visitors to MY listings. Don't you? Sales depend on pricing, ad copy, demand and other factors but eyeballs are an important measure of a venue's value to a seller.

Interesting, but that number for Atomic Mall is low. If you look at Quantcast.com that measures traffic directly instead of estimating it, it shows 146.9K monthly unique visitors.

This would make the unique visitors per listing closer to 0.80 instead of 0.54.

ECrater is a good site too though. Speaking of which, I need to take my eCrater store off vacation today. It's been on vacation since April. I spose I ought to be getting back to business now. :oops:

jjj525 · Joined: 08 Apr 2009 Posts: 354

According to cubestat.com on 7/11/2009

Daily Pageviews

* Ecrater - 184,570

* Bonanzle - 89,318

* Atomic mall - 11,503

AtomicMall.com · Joined: 20 Jun 2008 Posts: 970 Location: Yakima, WA

jjj525 wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")According to cubestat.com on 7/11/2009
* Atomic mall - 11,503

This number is not accurate (it's low), but even assuming it is, there's another way to express it that's interesting and perhaps more insightful:

Daily Page views per listing

* Ecrater - .086

* Bonanzle - .041

* Atomic Mall - .064

Using a direct measurement through QC:

* Atomic Mall (actual) - .086

mojavelyn · Posted: Sat Jul 11, 2009 8:52 pm Post subject:

Compete is like Alexa, users must have the toolbar installed in their browser... while quantcast has a widget that is installed on the site.

DaLizardsLair · Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Posts: 4780

Page views are great, but they will never beat actual sales.

So, as far as I'm concerned, traffic is meaningless if the items aren't selling.

pjrcoffee · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 634

Compete does not apparently have an axe to grind in its reporting. As long as all sites are treated exactly the same then there is some validity to their stats. Comparing apples to apples. Can anyone confirm the actual unique visitor count for June for the other two sites? Essentially improve on Compete's numbers? Perhaps eCrater's actual count and Bonanzle's count are also much higher making the comparison still ballpark correct. Is there any evidence that Compete has a systemic bias against some sites, especially one of the three in play here? Their methodology can be questioned but when new data is brought in, it must apply evenly to all sites as well. So all three will need revised unique visitor counts to be fair to all, not just one. Until then Compete has come up with some interesting numbers.

Until we have sales figures comparable from all sites (hard to do) we have to make educated guesses and act on them from the numbers we DO have.

AtomicMall.com · Joined: 20 Jun 2008 Posts: 970 Location: Yakima, WA

pjrcoffee wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")As long as all sites are treated exactly the same then there is some validity to their stats. Comparing apples to apples.

There's the rub, because it's difficult to tell which direction or by how much the "estimated" stats vary from real data when sites don't release actual, measured traffic. As long as this variance is consistent with every site, then it is apples to apples and your argument holds, but if Compete or Alexa are showing traffic with a 40% margin of error for site A, and a 5% margin of error for site B, the comparison is no longer valid.

Quote: › docWrite("quote")Can anyone confirm the actual unique visitor count for June for the other two sites?

I haven't seen any stats for EC or BZ that purport to be a direct measurement of traffic flow. I did notice that Onlineauction.com recently became Quantified, so their traffic can now be analyzed directly:

http://www.quantcast.com/onlineauction.com#traffic

pjrcoffee · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 634

Now if one can demonstrate where a site has encouraged its members to install a toolbar to favor their site in the stats that would go a long way to show there is manipulation going on. Has that happened?

A toolbar can only measure data from those who have it installed. They then extrapolate their numbers to apply to the entire Internet. Like the Nielsen TV ratings surveys with one family representing hundreds or thousands of viewers. Not as precise as direct measurement to be sure. No one has presented any evidence that the margin of error is higher for one site over another. Is there a reason to assume a wide variance as Mike suggested?

Is there a suggestion here that NO method used outside a widget on the site can have ANY usefulness? Compete is one of many stat sites and certainly not ideal but discarding its conclusions seems unwise to me.

These are not numbers showing a neck and neck race. According to them, eCrater has three times the number of unique visitors per listing over Bonanzle. THAT is significant. It also shows Atomic Mall very respectably in the middle.

Angelsong777 · Joined: 31 Dec 2006 Posts: 2309

pjrcoffee wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")No one has presented any evidence that the margin of error is higher for one site over another. Is there a reason to assume a wide variance as Mike suggested?

I don't think I can present evidence without spending more time on it than I'm willing to, but I've seen plenty of cases where Alexa and Compete stats are far higher or lower than directly measured stats. They can be very far off, high or low for different sites. This is why I prefer to look at Quantcast where we can at least get closer to accurate figures for some sites.

I do sell on all three of these sites, and do think Bonanzle really is far below the other two. I have some of the same listings on Atomic Mall and eCrater, and might actually do a comparison of traffic to those listings between those two sites in August and see what that looks like (hope I can remember!).

IllinoisGal · Joined: 01 Jun 2007 Posts: 203

I have seven stores on Ecrater and have much more traffic then I used to even a few months ago. It's at least double on all and even triple on some of my stores. I had a couple of stores on Bonanzle and hardly got any traffic there. I closed them down. I do know some people have had success there though. I don't know about Atomic Mall as I never had a store there.

hotnana · Joined: 02 Feb 2008 Posts: 875

I'm not surprised at the results...my sales have been very good on eCrater. I sell more on eCrater than the site I am paying for! :shock: