Remember the dive-bombing plane sound we'd make as little kids? "Neeeerrrrowwww." That same noise is perhaps the most succinct way of describing what's happening to traffic-related eBay statistics.
A Compete graph makes pretty clear that eBay received fewer unique visitors in October 2008 than the same month last year. The fall amounts to a 13.2 percent year-over-year change, and the September-to-October transition alone accounts for a decrease of 6.2 percent.
Compete's Record Of eBay's Declining Traffic
(Credit:
Compete)
Even more data that eBay fans are sure to view as disturbing is provided by a table Nielsen Online put together for Henry Blodget. True, Nielsen only reports a 10 percent year-over-year decrease in eBay's unique audience. But the numbers go on to indicate a 19 percent drop in time spent per user, and a 33 percent decline in pageviews during the same period.
All of this points to some rather serious problems. They may or may not be company-specific, of course - it looks like we're almost to the point that the term "recession" will officially be used to describe the entire economy - but eBay's facing some challenges either way. Don't be surprised if its scheduled slate of holiday promotions gets either stepped up or extended.
Finally, in case anyone's wondering, a graph of eBay's stock follows these other figures and then some, declining 59.7 percent since last November.
About the author:
Doug is a staff writer for
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No One to Blame But Themselves
EBay did this to themselves: alienated, exploited and abused their core sellers to the point where most sellers are gone now. And what they never got was that the sellers were also the primary buyers on EBay. They will be a B-School textbook case of how to self-sabotage a successful company to death.