SourceDSR adoption rates
We’re delighted that buyers are leaving detailed seller ratings over 78% of the time. In addition, the overall rate of Feedback being left remains at 70%. This is a positive result, because it shows that the introduction of DSRs has not had any negative impact on buyers’ willingness to leave Feedback.
A look at marketplace DSR scores
With over six months of data, the DSR scores for eBay.co.uk are showing some healthy early patterns. Our data prove the vast majority of our sellers perform well in satisfying their buyers.
Below is a table with a breakdown of DSR scores by seller percentile. The median score reflects the score that a seller in the middle would get, if sellers were ranked by their buyers from best to worst. As you can see, the scores are quite high, with 4.8 for most items and 4.6 for shipping costs.
Using DSRs
Detailed Seller Ratings are a measurement of buyer satisfaction, and they give sellers a tool they can use to evaluate how they are performing. When an individual set of DSRs (visible to sellers by mousing over the stars in their profile) is compared with the chart above, sellers can get a sense of how well they are performing compared to the marketplace as a whole. Sellers with scores lower than the median can take advantage of this data – which is provided by buyers across the marketplace -- to reevaluate and adjust their business practices.
As we look to ensure that buyers have great experiences on eBay, we will be leveraging this DSR data in several ways in 2008: to help us evaluate seller performance, as criteria for seller benefits such as PowerSeller eligibility and other rewards, and for prioritising search results.
First off, don't fall for the eBay spin on it's adoption rate. 78% of people leaving feedback use them, but only 70% of people bother leaving feedback in the first place.
So the specific adoption rate of DSR's is only 54.6% of all buying transactions. That's not what I would call a positve result, more of a lethargic result.
The average figures quoted also show that the majority of scores left are straight 5's. Remember that buyers can only rate whole numbers, and given that the median score left in all categories is over 4.5, would indicate that the majority of people are leaving 5's rather than 4 or less. Even the bottom 10% of sellers are still rated 4+ !!!
Combining this with the first observation, would indicate that around 1% of all buying transactions result in a DSR score of 4 or less. if 99% of people are leaving straight 5's, then why not extend the range? The more cynical amongst us will expect eBay to use this data to suggest that all is peachy in eBay-land and buyers are ecstatic with service levels, rather than apathetic about having to click a few extra buttons.
So eBay have admitted that they will be using these ratings to evaluate sellers, and use them to prioritise search results, which means that a small percentage of buyers will be able to influence the selling abilities of the many.
Once again emphasis is placed on ensuring that "buyers have a great experience on eBay", but what about the sellers' experience? Does that not count for anything?
