How can spring help selling online? Ebay data-based insights

Last Updated on November 3, 2023 by Zeljko Drazovic

What sells best on eBay in spring: analysis

To understand better what sells best in spring, Webinterpret conducted an analysis based on historical eBay data. The analysis was prepared by Oleg Żero, Data Scientist at Webinterpret.

The data, based on finalized eBay transactions, come from 1st January 2015 until 31st December 2019 and are collected from listings of British, German and French eBay sellers.

In the study we took sales for each month and each category and divided them by the number of eBay accounts at that time (excluding the company’s own growth). We considered the general trend and seasonality fluctuations (in this case spring-related).

After some solid data crunching, we managed to identify seasonality trends and discriminate the categories with the biggest sales potential in the springtime.

Below you’ll find more details, numbers and insights for specific eBay markets: the UK, Germany and France.

Top selling eBay categories in the UK

Let’s start with the UK market. Analyzing GMV (generated market value, i.e. the total revenue collected from all sold products including shipment) helps to identify consistently top selling product categories during the spring season (March, April and May).

The data sample contains approximately 1.7 million records of finalized transactions counted since 2015. According to our data, the absolute winner is the “Garden and Patio” category. Other popular “springtime categories” include “Health and Beauty”, “Holidays and Travel” and “Pet Supplies”.

A couple of points worth considering:

• Some categories may have a relatively low ranking in springtime e.g. “Books, Comics & Magazines” or “Video Games & Consoles”. This doesn’t mean that these items sell badly. Actually, they may sell well, but most likely at seasons other than spring. Their “sales peak time” can be, for example, at Christmas.
• The data was collected in the years before the coronavirus outbreak. The current epidemic is likely to impact product demand in some categories. However, we believe that the trends will be restored over time.

Best-sellers in the “Garden & Patio” category on eBay

“Garden & Patio” is the most popular category among British eBay buyers in spring. To see what exactly sells best on eBay UK during this season, let’s dive deeper into this category.

The chart below illustrates the top-selling subcategories within “Garden & Patio” on eBay UK.

Some data in the chart may be surprising. For instance, the products from the “Plants, Seeds & Bulbs” subcategory may be expected to be obvious best-sellers around this time.

However, it is the “Furniture” subcategory that turns out to be the winner this season. It’s affected around six times more by spring-related seasonality than the remaining subcategories in “Garden & Patio” on eBay.

According to our data:

“Furniture” is the most seasonality-affected eBay subcategory from “Garden and Patio”. It’s also one of the sales drivers of the total market value generated.

Top selling eBay categories in Germany & France

Now let’s see how the sales on eBay UK in the spring season compare to the eBay markets in Germany and France. The same analysis was conducted for items listed on the three markets.

The charts below present the top selling categories in spring on eBay in the UK, Germany and France. These categories are most affected by the spring season in terms of the additional sales they generate. The values (in %) show an average increase in sales (per seller) in specific categories in 2015-2019.

Comparing the trends in the three major European ecommerce markets, there are a number of interesting differences/observations:

• Products from “Garden & Patio” have historically generated a substantial increase in sales. 145% increase has been estimated in the UK, almost 120% increase in Germany and 80% increase in France.
• While garden-related items are the top sellers in the UK and Germany, the top selling category in France relates to wine and gastronomy (well ahead of the summer holiday season).
• Comparing other top selling categories, in Britain top category no.2 is “Pet Supplies” (27%), in Germany it’s “Vehicle Parts & Accessories” (38%) and in France “Music, CD & Vinyls” (58%).
• As to selling music, in France we observe the preference for CDs & Vinyls. In the UK similar items would probably sell better around Christmas. In Germany the seasonality plays no significant role for these items.
• “Vehicle Parts and Accessories” belong to the top spring categories in all three markets.

Oleg Żero, Data Scientist at Webinterpret, specializes in exploratory data analysis, algorithm development, machine-learning and Python. In his private life, a father, passionate traveler and big enthusiast of various useless garage technology.

Finally, Easter is fast approaching: we’d like to wish you peace and plenty of online sales!