More on eBay’s new listing template
by Chris Dawson
The new listing template is causing much discussion on what’s good and what’s bad. Since writing the post I’ve discovered a few more changes worth noting.
The “Make it yours” box has some interesting new features. Firstly the time remaining on some listings changes to a dynamic count down clock ticking away the seconds. A more important change is the way bidding works, rather than directing you to a new screen it simply greys out the page opening a bid box without requiring a new page to load.
The other part of the page worth looking at more closely is the “Related items” tab. Clicking this does reveal that items from the seller are shown, but also items from other sellers on eBay. Mousing over the items pulls up an enlarged product shot with title, price and time remaining.
It’s worth pointing out that the buyer has to click the related items tab to view this information. It’s still bound to cause uproar when sellers realise other sellers items are viewable direct from the listings that they paid for.
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21 Responses to “More on eBay’s new listing template”
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Any info on how the related items are selected Chris? if other sellers are appearing on my listing then in theory I should be on there’s or someones?
That’s the point, isn’t it, Whirly: it’s not just pushing other sellers onto your listings, it does work both ways.
The more I think about this, the less of an issue I have with it: buyers aren’t gonna click that tab very often, and when they do, it’s like that old thing about a shoe shop in a street full of shoe shops will sell more shoes than a shoe shop in a street full of non-shoe shops.
Who cares how they’re selected? I remember not so long ago that people were actively cross promoting their mates listings on thiers and vice versa. As Sue says if a buyer clicks that tab they’re probably not gonna buy your item anyway but are still browsing
I asked simply because if you knew how they were selected there maybe things you could do to improve / tweek your listings… giving you a better chance of appearing more often than your competitors.
I remember I used to actively use cross promotion with friends mainly, but only a complete muppet would cross promote with someone selling the same stuff ?
Actually I used to cross-promote with a couple of my direct competitors on the basis that if I didn’t have the 3mm purple bead or whatever, they would have, and that kept the buyer “in the gang” as it were.
“only a complete muppet would cross promote with someone selling the same stuff ?”
Err no - my cross promotion strategy was ONLY to cross promote with my immediate competitors. If you didn’t sell the same stuff as me I wasn’t interested. Certainly I didn’t cross promote with anyone out of friendship.
(Actually thinking about it one of the people I used to cross promote with was most certainly *not* a friend, but you know how it is… business is business
)
Interesting.
Keep waving the flag.
Whirly, don’t get me wrong - I think me deciding to cross-promote with my competitors is VERY different from eBay deciding to do it for me. I honestly think it’s going to be one of those things that people get very angry about, but in practice, makes little difference to anything, especially sales.
Hopefully though, the cross promotions will be with people who have good DSRs - if the buyers think we are recommending the other sellers, and anything goes wrong, then the comeback will be to us, not to eBay…
I think unless your cross promoting £10 notes for sale at £9
its an utter waste of time and effort cross promoting
I would imagine that this cross promotion is entirely optional. It is at the moment.
(it can be turned off in the Marketing Tools section).
I agree Sue.
I used to cross promote with people who sold bath related products, soap, shampoo etc things I didn’t sell but were relevant to my product or friends if they wanted a bit of free publicity, I stand by my statement however that I would be a muppet to give my competitors the opportunity of selling off my back by allowing them to have there baths showing on my listing using the cross promotion tool (didn’t they bin that ages ago?) if Chris feels differently then he must have his reasons and you must have yours.
My original question was not about cross promotion, but about the criteria eBay will use to pick the related items, I thought it was a valid question.
It’s completely a valid question, Whirly - the problem is that no one has an answer. TBH I think it’s unlikely eBay would ever tell sellers. And lets all remember that this is only being seen by 2% of UK users; it’s far from finished.
I keep wondering why eBay is testing this while a cross selling function might prove better at THE end of the purchasing process where the site might show the user other related products to her purchase (prioritizing same seller listings on the basis that if she had shopped already with this seller another related purchase will be easier…and if the seller does not have related listings then show other sellers listings).
AMZN anyone?
The dfference with the old seller cross-promotion was that you chose who you wanted to work with, this is a whole new ball game.
eBay said at the time they stopped the feature because that no one used it, seems quite amusing they’ve now changed their tune.
I wonder if what appears in this “Related items” tab works in a similar way to the end of auction emails where you can opt in/out having your items included.
I’m trying to remain level-headed until I know more details, but I really feel ebay has gone too far with this one and are taking the Michael, what next you have to wonder. First outside links, now this, what brain wave are they going to dream up next.
Seems to me eBay is going to end up little more than a shopping comparison site at this rate.
[...] UK have made an announcement about the changes to the view item page we noted earlier in the week. It’s not the most wordy of communications, so here it is in full: We [...]
I wont be happy if they are cross promoting my listings with other lingerie sellers that are selling fakes at 1/3 of the price of the real item!
As I am sure people wont be amused if *dodgy* or other types of *bad* sellers items appear in the cross promotion tab! …. or tax avoiding hobby sellers selling at a loss… etc etc
Bad news, other sellers items do appear on live listings, not just completed ones. There’s a very long thread on auctionsbytes about this (not sure If I’m allowed to post the URL)?
But I do have complete screenshots of a live listing where this can be seen. Not happy at all with this one. I work hard on my titles, DSR stars to get higher in the new best match and yet I’ll be supporting others who are maybe not so good. Master stroke eBay, let the better sellers promote those not so good, which clown came up with this one.
If/when this goes live like this I’m out of eBay, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay eBay for them to promote other peoples items on my listings.
Hi Richard - Does your screenshot show competitors listings just in the related items tab as in the 2nd screenshot above, or does it show them elsewhere on the live listing? Currently I’ve only seen them on the related items tab unless the listing has already ended (and of course you can link auctionbytes
)
It only shows other sellers items in the “Related items” tab.
I have no idea what the criteria is for showing items from other sellers. Perhaps it only shows them if the seller only has a few items, I’d like to think that’s the case but i don’t know for sure.