What information Online Auction Retailers need to know to run a profitable business

Owning and operating a successful online auction business requires careful tracking of sales, payments, inventory and even store visitors. Fortunately many online auction sites make it easy with their helpful tracking tools.

Here are a few statistics to look for and how to use them.

Traffic reports. Knowing how many people visit your online auction store is powerful information. It can be compared to the number of purchases made and help store owners make promotion decisions, product placement decisions and even pricing decisions.

• The number of page views
• The number of unique visitors
• How visitors are coming to your store. For example are they finding your store via search engines?
• Number of page views.
• Search terms people use inside your store
• How people move through your store, aka Path analysis
• Bid/BIN tracking
• Number of returning customers
• How visitors see the pages inside your store. This is helpful in making store design decisions.

Marketplace research. Many online auction sites offer marketplace research statistics including trends, demographic, and even distribution statistics. Knowing this information will enable you as a business owner to make strategic decisions and projections about your products, pricing, marketing, inventory and much more.
For example:

Average number of bids/item
Average sold price
Number of items sold
Number of completed items
Average starting price
Number of items sold

Many sites give information on just about every statistic available including demographic information on customers, shipping costs per item, per month, per category, beginning price levels broken down by specific item, category, or date. It will also tell you how items are paid for, when items are sold and so on. Tracking information and statistics can be an online auction retailers best friend, giving them the inside information necessary to make optimal business decisions.

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