I've never been a fan of number crunching or compiling data, in fact that's putting it mildly. Truth is it makes me shudder just thinking about it, but I've come to realize that whether I like it or not is irrelevant. Research data is valuable, so it needs my attention (and yours too). I've also learned that I don't have to be the one to pore over the excel spreadsheets – there are plenty of other people who get excited at equations and graphs and charts and algebra. I bring this topic up because this stuff is important to any business, including selling on eBay. For example, by taking the trouble to research the data, here's just a few of the important stats I've learned about eBay users:

· The busiest days for visitors to eBay are Monday and Tuesday evenings.

· 77% of visitors to the site go to the search box first, the remainder login to their account.

· The most popular category in terms of number of monthly visitors is ‘Business and Industrial' followed by ‘clothing, shoes & accessories' followed by ‘collectibles' then ‘computers'.

· The largest demographic of eBay users are in the age range of 25-55.

· The gender split is 47% female and 53% male.

· The number one reason that attracts people to use the site is the availability of unique items. Price is near the bottom of the list.

I suspect like me, that some of those statistics surprised you. Some preconceptions I had about eBay proved to be completely untrue. For example, I definitely assumed that the majority of users were female, whereas men in fact have a slight edge in the demographic. I also expected to see a significant teens audience, whereas that's not the case – the 17-24 group accounts for only 7% of the eBay market.

While most people continue to believe that Sunday evening is the best time to end an auction, hard facts again show that not to be true in most cases.

The fact that more than ¾ of eBay visitors go directly to the search box as their first action is an extremely important thing to understand. It means that above all else, your title is what will attract someone, not the fact that they're browsing a category – because the facts show that only a very small percentage of people do that.

Another source of data I came across revealed the overall level of buyers on the site throughout the year (See exhibit A). For 2006, you can see that February to April were quiet months, but there were big spikes in May, June and July (times when most sellers believe the site is quiet due to people on vacation etc). Again, the data reveals facts that are contrary to popular belief.

What about after Christmas? We all know that there's always a buying frenzy before Christmas every year – that's entirely logical, but look how early it occurs (and stops). It starts in late October and finishes early December. I would have expected it to stop much later than it does, but that's not the case. This of course means that you should begin planning NOW to take advantage of the enormous increase in traffic you'll see during October through early December.

Interestingly too, there's a huge spike for the first week in January, when I guess people are selling all those unwanted gifts! This kind of trend is obviously consistent from year to year.

I hope you get the point. If we didn't take the trouble to research this kind of data (fortunately you have me to do much of it for you) we'd never know the true picture of who uses eBay, and how and when they interact with the site. You should ideally do this kind of analysis with your customers so that you get data that's specific to your business as well as the overall picture we discussed here.

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