Have you looked at your traffic reports  lately?

What are they?

If you have an eBay store, one of the great perks you get are Traffic Reports -- detailed info on what keywords bring people to your store, which pages are most popular, what search engines are referring customers you, etc.  This Guide will show you how to use Traffic Reports to fine-tune your listings and generate more visits.  Here are some tips on how to use that info:

Where do I find these reports?

Go to "My eBay" and look for a category called "Reports" on the sidebar.  Under that, click on "Traffic Reports."  The first time you do this, you will get a request to accept the User Agreement for the third party entity, Omniture Site Catalyst,  that generates these reports for eBay.  This is necessary for you to give eBay permission to send your data to Omniture and activate this feature. 

What will I see?

All kinds of neat stuff!    In fact, there is so much to explore, you will probably spend an hour or more in Traffic Reports the first time you visit.  I sure did!  I was amazed to see exactly how many people had visited my storefront, which auctions they looked at, which keywords they used to get there, what search engines had sent them there, who was linking to my store... and much more!  All nicely laid out in graphs, lists, and colorful pie diagrams. (Note: it sometimes takes a few minutes to generate all this info and put it on your screen.  Be patient -- its worth it!)

Site Traffic 

The first things you will probably look at are Site Traffic reports, which are displayed on the main page of your reports.  Click various links for more details.  These show you how many visitors you had this month or on a certain day -- and which pages were viewed.  Not only are your auctions covered, but any other pages that eBay tracks, such as your "About Me" page, your feedback page, your store's Custom pages, etc.  Most likely, your top page will be the storefront -- but not always!  I've had unusual auctions out-pace the homepage several times.  This can help you see which types of auctions are best for attracting customers to your site.

Keywords 

The next thing you want to do is check out the list of most popular keyword searches that brought people to your site.  You find this under "Finding Methods" on the sidebar.  Keywords are the biggest sales tool for attracting customers.  Note the ones that work, and utilize them more.  Also note the ones that don't work -- either they only have one or two clicks, or they aren't even there (but you know what they are from your listings.)  Try to think of a better way to list those unvisited auctions.

Search Engines 

Under "Finding Methods" you will also see a listing for "Search Engines."  This will show you which engines have sent customers to your store, and how many times.  You might be surprised at just how far around the globe your listings can reach.  Not seeing much action here?  Maybe you need to activate your store's listing feeds.   This is another free service that generates a file for RSS (Really Simple Service) to give your listings data to search engines.   See my Guide on Listing Feeds for how to do this.

Referring domains

This is similar to the Search Engines report, only it shows ALL the domains that are sending traffic to your store, not just search engines.   You may find some pleasant surprises here.  I discovered that, because my store, The Happy Rooster, sells cruelty-free feathers, I am getting linked to animal welfare activist sites.  I didn't ask for these links.  The webmasters found my custom store page, About Our Cruelty-Free Feathers,  and thought their readers might like to know about this product source.   If your store has a permanent theme, create an educational custom page with some good content and you, too, may find it linked around the Web -- for free! 

Store Search Terms

This report shows which keywords people use to search within your store.  Consider creating categories with the top few words on the list.  This will enable your customers to zero in on those items without having to do a search.  Time is money -- if you can save your customers time, they will appreciate that and keep coming back!

Visit often and be creative!

There's so much more info in your Traffic Reports, you will no doubt find more ways to use it.   Whatever you do, come back at least once every 90 days, or the data gets deleted.  (However, eBay thoughtfully posts a reminder about a month in advance so you don't forget to do this.)   Most likely, you will come back more often than that.  I visit my Traffic Reports once a week to see how things are going, to fine-tune my listings, and to enjoy "spying" on all that Web activity!