eBay’s customer-to-customer and business-to-customer marketplaces are some of the world’s most popular eCommerce websites allowing more than 171 million active users in 190 different markets to do their online shopping. Since their founding in 1995, eBay has come a long way making the transformation from an online auction website to an eCommerce marketplace with over 1.5 billion product listings worldwide. Over 87% of eBay’s $84 billion gross merchandise volume in 2016 came from fixed-price listings instead of auction listings.
The Italian eCommerce market was worth €24 billion ($28.26 billion) in 2017, doubling its value from just four years ago. This rapid growth in market size has lead many online retailers to Italy, where eBay is the second biggest eCommerce Website, only second to Amazon Italy. Italy is expected to be one of the fastest-growing eCommerce markets in Europe in the future with an annual growth of 14%.
A huge amount of sellers means there is intense competition across product categories
There are around 790,000 top-rated sellers worldwide and millions of other sellers that make eBay the eCommerce platform that it is today. With every seller on average having 460 products listed, the sheer amount of competition on every product category is staggering resulting in search result pages with many listings that are basically the same. This makes it harder for you to stand out from competition and drive more customers to your shop. Optimizing product listings and increasing your marketing budget can help you increase sales, however it’s tightly connected to continuous costs because your sales most likely will drop when your marketing campaign ends. A more sustainable approach includes considering low-competition products and adding them to your sales mix. Algopix’s eBay Italy product research allows you to quickly assess the amount of sellers that offer the same product so you can take in only the most promising products for your business.
Different seller fees makes it a challenge to estimate expenses and profit margins
While eBay lets you sign up for free, it doesn’t mean selling on its marketplaces is for free too. eBay allows you to build your online retail business on their website and offers you access to millions of potential customers. For this service, eBay charges different fees that span across every stage of a product sale. Starting with a Fixed Price Insertion Fee, which is due for inserting a new product listing, you will have to pay additional fees like PayPal fees and Final Value Fees (FVF), just to name a few. These fees must be paid whenever a product is being sold and some of them depend on the price of a product (FVF) or the payment method (PayPal fees). You can also choose to run your own eBay store for a monthly subscription fee which will lower some of the other fees you have to pay. This labyrinth of subscriptions and fees make it a challenge to consistently estimate the costs for selling a product and the expected profit.
Algopix’s eBay Italy product research tool provides you with the total sum of all expenses related to selling your product on eBay’s marketplace and additionally offers a detailed breakdown of all cost segments. This allows you to understand how high taxes, shipping fees, marketplace fees, PayPal fees, FVF, and other fees are for a given product. Algopix even calculates the expected profit margin taking into account the expenses and your purchasing price. These powerful features enable you to make fast and educated business decisions that will be best for your online store.
Algopix’s eBay Italy market research
Deadstock usually is the result of a bad pricing strategy due to a lack of knowledge about a product market. By sourcing the wrong products and pricing them incorrectly, your inventory will move much slower or in the worst case you won’t be able to sell it. It means that some storage space is blocked which can’t be used for other products and you also won’t be able to sell your current items. This is a big financial loss, that can be easily avoided with a thorough product market research.
Nevertheless,you don’t need to do the research manually. Algopix’s eBay Italy market research offers a broad set of features that cover everything related to a new product and its respective market. Crucial information about a product’s demand level and competition level are complimented by a product’s sales volume and gross merchandise volume (GMV) in the last month giving you an idea about the current state of the product market. A detailed expenses analysis broken down by costs like taxes, shipping fees, marketplace fees, and others then allows you to form a comprehensive pricing strategy to compete with other suppliers on the market. You even will be able to get these insights for 14 different marketplaces worldwide. With this powerful information you can understand a market, avoid unprofitable products, and improve your inventory management.
eBay Italy seller tool
eBay is not only active in Italy, but many other countries around the world, like the U.S, Australia, Germany, UK, and France. In total, eBay reaches customers in 190 different markets which is about 98% of all the countries in the world, making eBay a truly global player. This is also reflected in eBay’s revenue share of the non-US marketplaces, which makes up around 58% of eBay’s marketplace revenue.
While it is always tempting to take a chance on new markets, lots of work and research has to be done before expanding your business operations in order to avoid a fiasco. Questions about a product’s demand and supply in a given market are crucial and need to be answered to determine if there is a market for the product and if so, how big this potential market is. In the next step, all the costs associated with selling on an international market need to be considered, which then allows the calculation of an estimated profit margin. Algopix’s powerful eBay Italy seller tool provides these insights right at your fingertips. Besides a demand level and competition level indicator, it also calculates a product’s sales volume and gross merchandise volume from the last month. An extensive and detailed cost analysis gives insights into any expenses that must be paid when doing business on a market, including taxes, marketplace fees, shipping fees, and many more. This cost analysis allows Algopix to then calculate a profit margin allowing you to assess the profitability of a market and a product in this market. These insights are available for 14 different marketplaces worldwide.
Sourcing many products is a time-consuming task restraining you from achieving the full potential of your eBay store
When it comes to selling, a good sales mix consists of diverse products because it makes you less prone to fluctuations in the market demand and ensures a steady cash flow. Before you’ll be able to offer such a sales mix, you have to go through hundreds of different products to find the right ones. This process is very time consuming and can slow down your business operations. Algopix’s eBay Italy marketplace research helps you understand the most important information about a product in just a few seconds thanks to its intuitive, easy-to-read interface that aggregates crucial information in its dashboard and allows for in-depth insights in other sections of the search results. Furthermore, Algopix supports bulk analysis allowing you to research up to 200 products at once. This helps you free up much needed time for other business tasks while still making promising product sourcing decisions.
