Hi Chris,
First off, a profile score of 74.2% isn’t that bad. You’re only 5.8% away from “LEXcellent.” But your ave response time of 5 days is definitely hurting your score. Failing to respond to messages (order 143545 for example) hurts that metric quite a lot. There are plenty of brewers with response times better than some merchants, but there is a wide range of response time (and all other metrics) across both brewers and merchants. Here are some quick examples of brewers with great response times:
Buyers expect a high level of performance from any seller (brewer or merchant) and profile score metrics help folks understand exactly what they’re getting into when considering a listing. That’s why we devoted so many resources to profile scores ~18 months ago. It was a massive, long overdue project.
Your profile score will improve if you do the following:
- Respond to messages quickly going forward
- Read community posts - that includes old ones like this, which means your community engagement score (currently 0%) will have increased tomorrow!
- Rate seller performance & lot numbers on future purchases
- Keep doing what you’re doing for shipping speed (this is the most important metric for many buyers)
- Maintain your 100% review & reliability metrics (nice work!)
Yes, The Exchange was originally closed to merchants and I lost plenty of sleep over that decision. After a few months of operation and lots of feedback from the community, we learned that a completely free & open marketplace was what the majority of brewers wanted. That was definitely the right decision & what the industry needed. What started as the Ebay of hops became the Amazon of hops, where brewers can find every variety, every brand, every vendor, real market prices, reviews, response time & shipping speed metrics, compare listings, and more. One Stop. All The Hops!
It’s definitely a buyer’s market and will be for years to come. This is a good reminder for everyone to pay attention to their profile scores now because you’ll want it to look good if you find yourself long on a variety and need to sell.