Eagle-eyed sellers noticed one startling change to eBay when they logged on to their accounts recently. eBay has removed sales history from their eBay listings page!
Seasoned sellers were able to see the items from their listings page, but it is no longer hyperlinked, which means they cannot click on the previously sold items. If you’re one of the sellers who noticed the change, you might be scrambling for answers. It appears eBay has made another update, or was it a glitch? The top rated sellers were not spared either.
Why would eBay remove sales history from their eBay listings page? And why is it such a big deal?
If you are wondering what happened to the site, and if you’re able to retrieve the sold history data on the seller hub, keep reading. Online sellers, especially those on eBay, use the sold history for reviewing their eBay sales and other purposes. Find out what they use it for and how you can overcome this issue.
Let’s get started!
Article Overview
eBay Removes Sales History: Updates on Changes
eBay Removes Sales History: Its Impact
Why Would You Want to See Your Sales History?
Research Pricing Strategy
Product Research and Competitor Analysis
Financial Transactions Reporting
How ZIK Analytics Can Help
eBay Removes Sales History: Final Tip
eBay Removes Sales History: Updates on Changes
Many eBay sellers are surprised when they logged into their account: they can still see their sold history but it is no longer hyperlinked.
Before the update, a seller could click on the sold quantity for a particular listing. You could also see the date sold and the item price. With this update, the sold items is no longer hyperlinked.
eBay Removes Sales History: Its Impact
Now that eBay removes sales history from your listings page, what impact does it make?
There are potential impacts for the seller, especially when it comes to spying on competitors and doing manual product research.
First off, you can still see the total number of sales that another seller has on a particular product and its price. However, you will only have access to the total number of sales, not the historical data.
For example, you can see the total number of sales for a particular product, say 32 sales. But when doing your product research on that particular listing, you won’t be able to see when the last date of purchase was, and how many orders it generated in the past 30 days or so.
If you’re a seller looking for trending products that are selling recently, you won’t be able to access that information anymore by looking at the listing page of the competitor. It’s harder to make a data-driven decision in choosing products to add to your online store.
As a seller, this change is frustrating. Being able to see only the overall sales, you are deprived of the information that you need to decide what to sell.
Why Would You Want to See Your Sales History?
When eBay removes sales history on the listing pages, it has multi-fold impact for sellers on eBay. Most sellers want to be able to see the sold history on their listing pages for many reasons.
Research Pricing Strategy
The first reason is for research and strategic purposes. eBay is one of the top online marketplaces and is one of the most coveted places to sell items and make money online. When eBay removes sales history, it was a huge setback for sellers.
Sellers who wish to succeed on the platform must come up with a pricing strategy that would ensure their products are competitive enough, and that you can attract more buyers. The ability to view purchase history and sales history plays an instrumental role here.
First off, prices change constantly. One day it goes up, another it goes down. One of the secrets to setting the correct price on your listings page and ensure they are competitive is to look at your sold history. The items sold on your listings page are a good indicator of the prices that your buyers are willing to pay for those items. Hence, you can use the items sold in the past as a research tool for determining the best prices when selling items for your business.
Product Research and Competitor Analysis
You can also use eBay’s search algorithm as a research tool, which is why when eBay removes sales history it got a lot of attention from sellers.
You can do advanced research on sold items via eBay. Go to Advanced Search and input any search item or brand. Once you have the results for your search, filter the items by clicking on the Sold Listings. It will show you the items that are sold from the search results page.
You will now be able to do competitor analysis on the sold items from your search. There are several factors you must examine at different angles here. First, you can look at the price listed by the other sellers on these sold items. Most sellers follow a particular pricing strategy for each item, so it will give you an idea on the right selling price for a particular item.
You can also use the advanced search results to examine the particular item that’s been generating lots of sales over the past few days. Check the item number, the sold quantity of items, and the title and description on the listings. It will give you a few ideas on how to create your eBay listings so that you can also generate more sales, if you are selling similar items.
You can save time and effort in doing your research with this approach. At the same time, it will help you get a pulse for what the customers want and are willing to pay for based on what they’ve purchased in the past.
Financial Transactions Reporting
Aside from being able to use your sold history on eBay for research purposes, it is also a useful tool for recording and reporting your financial activity. The sales history in your eBay account will provide you with a detailed list of information, such as the orders, transaction date, order number, buyer name, shipping fees, and other pertinent information. These are crucial information you need to finalize your financial statement for your eBay account.
When you don’t have access to your sales history on eBay, you will no longer be able to track this information in detailed extent. It would be detrimental to your efforts at managing your online business because you need to have those internal records for keeping track of sales and for tax purposes.
Before eBay removed sales history, sellers are able to view all sold items in their eBay sales history for up to two years.
How ZIK Analytics Can Help
When eBay removes sales history on the listing pages of seller accounts, it worried most sellers on eBay. How are they able to retrieve crucial data about product listings, especially when doing competitor analysis.
Looking at your competitors’ completed orders can provide valuable insight to your product research. Without this, you’re basically choosing blind on what products might be trending or not.
ZIK Analytics is a research tool that gives you the ability to evaluate several factors about a sold listing. All you have to do is launch the ZIK Analytics tool and then specify eBay on the product research tab, if you want to obtain sales information from eBay sellers. You can also use the Competitor Analysis tab to learn more about the products your competitors are selling.
For example, you are looking at doing research on men’s digital sports watch. Enter this search term on the ZIK Analytics Product Research search bar. The research tool provides relevant data, such as the following:
- Sell through rate
- Number of active listings
- Sold quantity
- Sales earnings
- Successful listings rate
- Average product price
- Keyword used
The product research tool will also provide you with a chart so you can see the sales activity within a particular period, which can be up to 12 months of eBay sales history. With the current update on eBay, you no longer have this information, only the overall sales of the product. That is why ZIK Analytics gives you competitive edge when choosing the most attractive products for your listings.
The result will provide you more detailed information that you can use for your research. For example, it will show you the sellers who were able to generate sales for that particular product. You will be able to check out the actual listing pages and other useful data, such as the product name, 30-day sales, total sold items, and the price for each sold item.
But this research tool goes beyond showing you the purchase history of the items and their listed price upon the closing of the sale. It will also enable you to learn in-depth about the sellers who were listed in the research. You will be able to see the seller’s performance on eBay, such as their feedback score, successful and active listings, sold items, and sales earnings. You can even browse the products they’ve sold over the past 30 days and for what price they are listing those items.
As you can see, ZIK Analytics is an all-in-one tool that enables you to obtain the information you need to improve your eBay sales performance and improve your sell-through rate on your listing pages.
eBay Removes Sales History: Final Tip
It remains unclear as to when they will address the same issue, or if this will be a permanent update on eBay. Sellers are still looking for the answer they need.
Whether the ability to access sold history will be restored soon – or not – sellers cannot leave it to chance. It’s time to seek out a reliable product research tool that will enable them to do market research and competitor analysis. eBay users lament this recent change to the platform, especially since the detailed sales and purchase history was one of the features that set the platform apart from other marketplaces online.
While there is no immediate solution to this, it’s best for sellers and buyers alike to find a workaround solution that will resolve the same issue.
