Originally published at: http://blog.tindie.com/2015/02/3-changes-selling-tindie/
2015 has started with a bang – last month we had 150k visits from over 100k visitors! The community is growing and we want to ensure all Tindarians have a great experience. This week we will introduce 3 new changes to further raise the bar and ensure every visit to Tindie is a fantastic one. 1. New Product…
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When will the backorders be removed?
Well, shit.
When stuff is out of stock, I get lots of backorders. I just shipped 25 backorders - a combination of fan kits, which were really preorders, and Re:loads, which were legitimately out of stock and backordered. How many of those customers would have come back and ordered once it was in stock? I have no idea, but I bet it’s not all of them. How many people simply wandered away without backordering? I have no idea either, because when backorders are enabled, you can’t ask to be notified when something goes back into stock.
It would be really, really nice if you would consult the seller community for feedback before making huge changes like this, Emile.
-Nick
Arachnid Labs
This week we’ll remove the functionality to make products Backorderable. So we’ll leave products in whatever state they are in currently. No time frame set on when we’ll totally remove it but within the next few weeks.
I don’t mind for Tindie.com to start removing junk offers, but the chosen verbiage in the article equates low selling products with junk.
My High Power RGB LED shield is a rather advanced pice of gear that comes with a dedicated Arduino library. It is certainly not a high seller because application for high power LEDs are relatively rare, but just because it has not sold often does not mean that it is junk.
I would hope that Tindie.com applies better judgement when removing products than they did when writing this blog post!
Does that mean that products currently in stock won’t be able to go into backorder, or that it won’t be possible to add the “backorderable” flag to future products?
@arachnidlabs Do your backorders approach the volume of orders you receive? In looking at the data across the marketplace, there is massive difference between orders vs backorders. Across the entire site, once a product sells out, the pace of backorders drops to <10% of normal buying behavior.
Looking at products that only do in stock / out of stock, what happens is there is a rush of orders when we email the waiting list - in many cases selling out within 24 hrs. I think a few things are happening -
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More visitors leave their email in the waiting list because its a very low barrier. A larger audience of potential customers.
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When that email goes out, customers see it similarly to how many view crowdfunding campaigns. Either you buy now or miss your chance. Therefore the conversion rate also increases.
The net result is multiples more orders than would have been gained from backorders. That is the behavior we see with other products that sell out and then come back in stock. So I’d actually disagree emphatically - you’ll end up with much more than 25 orders.
Sharing this news now is meant to start that conversation with sellers. It’s why we announced it now and without a specific date in mind. We knew some sellers would disagree, but at the end of the day, the result the data is pretty stark. We’ll share it in the next post from Lauren, our data scientist.
We will be removing the option for existing products to become backorderable. For new products, they won’t have the option.
@trippylighting apologies for the confusion. We are starting with products that are over a year old without any orders. Can we help sellers get their first and second orders? That is the question we are trying to answer.
Your shield is actually an example of a fantastic product! 2 reasons why -
- Clear Photos
- Thorough description
Those are actually 2 signals for a product that should sell well. Removing the clutter should only bring more traffic and subsequent sales.
Good point - hopefully that clarifies what we meant -
Do your backorders approach the volume of orders you receive?
They’re significantly less, though you’re probably in a better position to tell me how much less than I am. They’re still significant. I’ve got no way to know if they’d do better allowing people to ask for notifications without disabling backorders, but removing my ability to take backorders altogether seems extremely heavy-handed. Wouldn’t it make more sense to add the ability to ask to be notified on backorderable products, so you can gather some actual side-by-side data on what people choose to do on the same product?
We will be removing the option for existing products to become backorderable. For new products, they won’t have the option.
To clarify, that means that my existing product with backorders enabled will still be able to be backordered if it goes out of stock after the change?
With backorders enabled last year, I had probably 2 to 3 backorders at any given time.
In the last 2-3 weeks, with backorders disabled, my product sold out and I have 11 people on the wait list and emails coming in asking me to make more!
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I like backorders from both seller and buyer perspective. As a seller I get a sale even when I’m out of stock as a buyer I like to buy backorder to make sure I’ll get one when they are back in stock. Remember how Nexus 4 was sold out in 15 minutes with no preorders and no backorders? This completely ruined the user experience.
That is right. It will be a few weeks before we switch to no new backorders - and then it may still be months before it is fully removed. It may be 90 days before all backorders have been shipped from that point.
On SparkFun they have a “Nofify Me” button for out of stock items. Is that what the “Wish List” does?
Ah cool - we flip on the Waitlist feature (exactly like the Notify Me) when a product sells out.
Wish List is a separate feature for saving a product that you want to remember later.
I haven’t quite been able to follow the thread, but yes, I think a way of customers requesting notification when item is back in stock is a better way of capturing potential sales than “backorder” while still allowing the seller to see potential demand.
I’ve always assumed a backorder was about 1/10 the probability of an instock order. I’ll bet a “notification” feature would improve those odds a bit.
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Thanks everyone for your thoughts on this. I understand the hesitancy on this change as it is against what I would expect too.
However over the last few weeks, we have had 15x the waitlist orders vs backorders. We also have a much higher checkout rate with waitlist. The results across the marketplace are pretty black and white…
Right now I am emailing sellers with live backorders, but here is the timeline we are working off of -
This afternoon we are removing the ability for sellers to turn on backorders on existing and new products.
In 2 weeks we will automatically convert products that accept backorders to waitlist. While very little in the grand scheme of things, this gives sellers another 2 weeks to get backorders.
In ~3.5 months we will fully halt backorders as all of the backorders we get over the next 2 weeks will have either expired or shipped by then.
Thanks again!
Emile