Most marketplace sellers know that including photos in a listing can help generate more bids and buyer activity, but we thought it’d be interesting to measure exactly how impactful pictures can be on your sales. That thought prompted Ngan, one of our awesome developers, to pull these great stats that may help you get more out of your listings.
First off, let’s take a look at our listing activity to date. Most of you guys include pictures of your items, but many of you stop at just one photo per listing:
We realize not all items benefit from multiple beauty shots–e.g., someone trying to win a book may not care to see it from all possible angles–so we also dissected our photo-per-listing counts into a few of our top categories:
The above shows the most common number of photos is still one (1), even across different types of items.
Now, here’s the interesting twist. If we compare the number of photos per listing with buyer activity (bids placed and credits spent), the numbers trend very differently. This chart shows how final credit amounts increase in listings with more photos:
And this chart shows how the number of bids placed is higher in listings that include more photos:
Pretty neat, eh? It’s cool to see how a few (or many) extra photos might motivate buyers to bid on your items. Even books, a category we thought didn’t need too many photos, benefited from additional pictures.
IN CONCLUSION: Next time you list an item, show as much of it as you can. Don’t stop at one picture if you want to get the most credits and bids possible. Every additional photo gives you an edge, so keep uploading and optimizing your listings!
Cheers, and happy trading!
