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Amazon to attend Small Business 2.0

Small Business 2.0, an event for small businesses and online retailers who want to get more from the web in London on October 11th, has recently revealed that Amazon will be joining eBay, Microsoft, BT, Royal Mail and many others and presenting to attendees. Amazon’s Matthew Henderson will be talking about how you can plug in to the fast-growing marketplace which is increasingly popular with disaffected eBay sellers.

New sessions have also been announced including an SEO panel discussion and an ‘eBay Surgery’ Q&A. The eBay panel will include Tamebay’s very own Chris and Sue (who have been too coy to mention it yet). Don’t forget that eBay’s Richard Ambrose and Rafael Orta will also be presenting earlier in the day.

We’re looking forward to a great day, and I hope to see you there. We’ve got a few tickets still left and in a special just for Tamebay readers enter FREE into the registration form and you can come along for nowt.

MI6 terrorist records sold on eBay

The Sun reports that a camera containing MI6 intelligence records has been sold on eBay. A man from Hemel Hempstead bought the Nikon Coolpix for just £17, only to discover its memory held pictures of rocket launchers and missiles believed to be being supplied to Al Quaeda from Iran, as well as names, pictures, fingerprints and academic records of suspected terrorists. The man has been banned from speaking to the press, but a friend told reporters that he had “downloaded his holiday pictures and saw some of rocket launchers and missiles. He knew he hadn’t taken them so asked friends about it and they suggested going to the police.”

In February, a laptop containing a Home Office data disk was purchased on eBay.

Reduce ASQs with eBay seller FAQs

Did you know you can answer ASQs before they even hit your in-box? eBay sellers can create their own list of Frequently Asked Questions which are displayed to buyers when they click the “email the seller” link on your listings. Sellers can add up to 15 questions and answers in total: eBay suggest five of the most common, but these can be changed to suit your own needs.

Of course, if the question’s asked that often, you probably should think about including the information on your listings, but for things that need reiterating (”no, you can’t pay with a cheque on an instant payment only listing”), things that need expansion, or things that just get asked anyway (”yes, my free postage really is free”), it can be invaluable.

You can find the section to edit your FAQs from the link above, or under My eBay > Preferences > Ask Seller a Question. I’ve no doubt plenty of eBay old hands know about this already, but hopefully it should help a few people - and next time I’ve lost the link, I won’t have to spend quite so long looking for it.

Recent sales and auction/bin mix

Recent Sales

Multiple item listings with recent sales are working, and working well. I’ve watched one of my own listings with no listing enhancements (bar gallery) climb the search results pages. A search for KVM returns around 900 listing spread over 18 pages, by the time the listing ended late yesterday evening it was the third highest BIN with four auctions displayed above it.

I relisted the item with one edit, changing from a 10 day to a 30 day listing and within a minute the new listing was back in the same position (currently eighth from the top of the page out of 892 listings). Recent sales is working to gain visibility and the boost does carry over to a relisted item with no noticeable disadvantage to the new listing.

If you have any fixed price listings end which have had sales relist them as soon as possible to keep the search advantage. (The method I used for relisting was to synch in TL, relist from ended items, adjust the quantity down as some had sold, and upload back to eBay.)

The Blend

eBay have changed the order of search results to blend auctions ordered ending soonest with fixed price listings ordered by Best Match. The number of auctions displayed vs fixed price listings varies according to category. What is interesting to watch is, as an auction finishes and disappears from the page of search results, fixed price listing retain their position.

Each auction remaining moves up one auction slot with a new auction listing moving from page 2 to the bottom of page 1. The slots don’t vary so the only way a fixed price listing can move higher up the page is from recent sales or when a higher ranked fixed price listing ends without being relisted.

Featured First

There’s some interesting twists to the new Featured First listing enhancement. Sellers using the feature have reported an increase in questions from potential buyers and sales from the promoted listings. One seller of commodity products who listed a Featured First listing on Thursday, the day of the listing, watched his listing climb the search result pages as sales came in and within a couple of hours it reached the first page of search results with just a couple of sales.

Featured First definitely appears to be working if you can justify the initial cost, but should only ever need to be paid for once. So long as the listing attracts sales it’ll climb to the top of search results where it will retain it’s position naturally.

eBay have stated that “There are two Featured First placements, and the listings appearing in the slots will be picked at random“. These slots don’t appear to be dedicated slots, but are appearing in the space alongside where Featured Plus listings would normally be displayed. Featured Plus listings are only boosted to the top of the page the listing naturally falls on, but Featured First listings are boosted to the top of the first page of search results.

There appears to be a glut of old SIF listings which are being displayed alongside Featured First listings. It’s strongly suspected that these are SIF listings for which the Gallery Featured listing enhancement was paid prior to the 24th September. I wish I’d known, I’d have launched a load of SIFs with the Feature to get a boost in search!

eBay Elsewhere : links for 28th September 2008

Steve Lindhorst from GenuineSeller.com writes a superb post analysing a recent speech from John Donahoe.

An excellent, excellent post from The Brews News: if you haven’t already read this one, please do.

Scot Wingo spots some eBay/Google weirdness. This one needs watching: I think it’s more likely to be eBay not putting out product feeds rather than Google cutting them off, but time will tell us more.

The Telegraph reports on psychologists studying auction behaviour: fear of losing rather than desire to win motivates bidding.

And someone, somewhere in the world, downloaded the billionth copy of Skype today. That’s pretty impressive.

What eBay needs to do

Wow, that got some response, didn’t it? Thanks to everyone who left a comment on yesterday’s post, and in particular to Scott and Henrietta who responded on their own blogs.

In response to comments made by a couple of people, I want to emphasise that I am not complaining about lack of eBay sales. eBay still has buyers, and that is the reason that I and thousands of other sellers continue to list there. But compared to any number of other sales channels, our own websites included, eBay is becoming hard work. We spend time and effort jumping through their hoops, and in return, we don’t even get to feel that our eBay income is secure.

Today, I’m nailing nine theses to the door This is what eBay needs to do moving forward:

1. A one-year moratorium on fee changes We’ve had two major fee reconfigurations inside nine months. Let us get on with selling without having to spend hours with a calculator refiguring our listing strategies.

2. DSR granularity available now eBay judge us by our DSRs. We need a decent level of information so we can read these figures properly. At the very least, we want to see how many buyers have left us each score.
3. Introduce a proper warning system for sellers suspended under SNP, with right of appeal, and a human being to talk to. Right now, any of us could lose our account at any minute, and do nothing about it. That doesn’t make for long-term business partnership.
4. End secret policies (like the limitation on branded goods sales). We need transparency for all eBay policies. Secret listing limits and polices apparently applied inconsistently from seller to seller must end.
5. Give us proper notice of changes to the site, and an end to polices being introduced piecemeal and retracted later I know eBay are trying on this one, but they’re not there yet. Policy changes should be thought out and announced well in advance, not introduced as a knee-jerk reaction to questions on the forums (like the ban on sub-99p items) or as accidental fall-out to other site changes (like the loss of ISV for UK BIN listings). People’s livelihoods depend on things like these, so stop changing them at a moment’s notice.
6. Retract the ‘no paper payments’ policy, for the sake of your buyers No one believes this is about security; it’s only about eBay’s bottom line. Telling sellers they have to accept PayPal is one thing; telling buyers they can’t pay by cheque even if they want to, is a step too far. Think of the buyer experience.
7. Feedback editing should be introduced when it was promised Lorrie said “before the holidays”. Subsequent announcements said “by the end of October”. It’s October this week, and I see no announcements about the roll-out. Sellers want this. Prioritise it.
8. Remove all third-party advertising from the view item page The *only* possible action on the view item page should be buying the item. Stop distracting our buyers (yes, they’re our buyers: sellers are eBay’s buyers, and we’ve already paid for the view item page).
9. Let eBay catch up with the rest of the internet With so many sellers listing so many items, eBay is always going to be a complex site. Every change made to functionality or layout, therefore, should seek to minimise that complexity. Make it easier to use. In particular, recognise that half of eBay purchases are now buy it now, and give buyers a shopping cart: buying on eBay should not be more difficult than buying on every other ecommerce site out there.

Over to you…

New P&P requirements in place from 30th Oct. 2008

The latest update email from eBay UK includes a message at the bottom regarding postage charges.

Changes to our Excessive Postage & Packaging Charges Policy will come into effect on 30th October 2008. Excessive shipping costs are cited as a major reason for buyers spending less online. These changes will enable us to continue serving sellers with the largest volume of buyers on the web.

If you sell on eBay, read more here

The link is to the eBay.com announcement board - information there doesn’t always apply to sellers on eBay UK.

eBay have introduced maximum postage and packing charges for books, DVDs, music and video games on eBay.com. Also sellers are required to specify the shipping costs up front on all listings.

The only recent UK announcements regarding shipping are the display changes.

It’s unclear if there’s a UK announcement to come, or if the emails have had US information appended in error. Either way eBay are keen to see competitive shipping costs so it would be no surprise to see maximum charges for the UK in the near future.

Dear eBay, may I please get on with selling now?

So we made it to 25th September. For the second time in a year, sellers are making major changes to the way they do business on eBay, revising listings one by one, struggling to find information on how eBay’s latest round of changes will impact their particular business. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough. I’d really like to just get on with selling now.

Too much change, too often

Major changes are made on eBay far too often. Hardly a week goes by without some policy or other being revised, meaning sellers have a constant stream of new requirements to incorporate into their businesses. The time we’re spending at the moment changing our listings and figuring out new strategies to work around new policies, could be better spent working on our own websites and figuring out Google Adwords: at least then we’d eventually be in control.

eBay need to make it easier to keep up with their changes. Bulk editing is hard work, and when you have a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand listings to change, it’s really hard to justify spending the time to do so, again. There needs to be an easy way to change your shipping fees, or your returns policy, or even your email address on all your listings.

Policies are made, and then retracted, or tweaked, causing yet more work for sellers. eBay need to find a way to consult with their members before they make many of these changes: often as sellers, we understand the implications of what eBay do better than they do themselves. Policy changes need to be communicated fully, in advance, not piecemeal after the event.

Most importantly, eBay need to stop changing things. Let’s have some time to just get on with selling, please.

Lack of transparency

If eBay are sometimes poor at communicating, other times they’re just downright secretive, and this is doing no good to their relationship with sellers. Getting information about how the new search results work is like pulling teeth. eBay staff contradict each other. They can’t answer basic questions. And all this leaves sellers - rightly or wrongly - feeling as though they’re being duped. Getting sales on eBay feels more like gambling than running a business: if we don’t understand how to get ourselves to the top of the search results, we’re not going to hang around trying to figure it out, we’ll just go somewhere else to sell.

And it’s the same with feedback and DSRs: sellers are judged by those five little stars, but eBay won’t give us the information we need to improve. We’re encouraged to keep our scores above 4.8, but if they fall to 4.79, we don’t know if that’s one disgruntled buyer, or a real drop in the service we’re offering. How would eBay staff feel if their bonus depended on a secret target their boss kept to herself?

We’ve been promised “granularity” in DSRs: let’s have it. Let’s at least see how many buyers have left us each score. eBay need to stop using the excuse that we might harass our buyers if we think they’ve left us a 1 or a 2. A few sellers will do that anyway, but why are they punishing the rest of us for it? They say they want to make the site better: give us the tools to make it so.

Insecurity

Dolphins: need I say more? If you’re trading on eBay, you need to have in the back of your mind that eBay can take it all away at any moment, for any reason, with no warning whatsoever. Though eBay UK made an announcement in the summer that “we will be introducing a 1-month warning period for sellers who breach the Seller Non-Performance policy for the first time“, they didn’t quite mean what we all thought they meant. As clarified on the PowerSeller Board, “30 day warnings are given where appropriate. We have not guaranteed that every seller will get a warning.” You can still be stopped from selling, temporarily or permanently, with no notice, and no appeal.

And it’s not just about feedback and DSRs. eBay’s policy changes too can wipe your business out in a matter of days. If you were selling downloadable listing templates this time last year, you’re not any more, thanks to the policy that banned the sale of digital goods. Sellers of designer and brand name clothing are finding themselves suddenly restricted from selling too. Restrictions on particular trademarks are not being communicated to sellers, and so the first they know about it is when they suddenly can’t list any more of the stock they’ve tied their cash up in. Is that a way to do business? It’s safer to go elsewhere, somewhere where you’re in control.

Of course, it’s eBay’s site and they can do what they want, and that includes alienating every seller they’ve got if they choose to do so. But they shouldn’t count on sellers just bending over and taking it much longer.

We have more options now. When I started selling on eBay, setting up a website was difficult and expensive: eBay offered many sellers an opportunity to sell online that they couldn’t find any other way. Now, websites are both easy and cheap: why would any seller not have one? Comparison search engines and search marketing tools like Adwords make it easy and cheap to reach buyers. That easy, cheap connection with people who wanted to buy used to be eBay’s unique selling point, but it’s not any more. eBay can’t sit on their laurels forever. Unless they find a new way to reach out to sellers, to convince us that it’s worth persisting with eBay selling, I fear by this time next year, there won’t be many of us left.

This post was inspired by The Brews News’ “eBay Needs to Find a New Set of Tools to Motivate Sellers in 2009″, which you should certainly also read.

Facebook remove users with suspected fake names

Facebook users suspected of using fake names are being kicked off the site, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. The paper cites Elmo Keep - yes, it’s her real name - who was banned without warning from Facebook, until she sent in official proof of her identity. It says numerous others have been banned by Facebook’s name police, for using names ‘including “podcast”, “beaver”, “jelly”, “beer” and “duck”‘.

Facebook’s terms of use make a vague statement prohibiting “creat[ing] a false identity”. Their code of conduct goes a little further, telling members they may not “register for more than one account or use or attempt to use another’s account, service or system without authorization or create a false identity on the Service or the Site”.

The Sydney Morning Herald explains this as Facebook “making the web more credible” by preventing people from hiding behind pseudonyms and false identities. I prefer Valleywag’s interpretation, that this is Facebook’s guarantee to their advertisers that targetted ads are being aimed at the right demographics. You don’t want to pay to advertise to 20 year old women on Facebook, only to discover that half of them are actually 50 year old men in disguise.

Many eBay sellers and etailers I know have Facebook IDs that match their business names. From a branding point of view, this looks like a great idea: if you’re going to use Facebook to promote your online business, better to do it under your business name, right? But if you’re doing that, you’re risking having your Facebook account terminated.

Extra verification for non-knife buyers on eBay UK

At the end of August eBay announced they would introduce additional verification procedures for buyers wishing to purchase knives on eBay. From September buyers need to place a credit card on file or enter their card details at the point of purchase.

That seems an eminently step to ensure no one under the age of eighteen purchases knives but it’s being applied for non-knife listings.

 
TameBay reader Kate attempted to buy “PLASTIC BELL FLOWER FLOWER BEADS” from the plastic beads category. Although there is no reference to knives in the description she was still warned that placing a bid is confirmation that she’s legally entitled to buy a knife.
 
In her words “This is the silliest thing I’ve come across yet - no wonder buyers get put off.”

The credit crunch and eBay selling

Hardly a day goes by without a news story covering the credit crunch, but what difference will it make for sellers on eBay?

Buyers

Buyers are likely to hold off purchases of luxury goods, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be spending. There will still be birthdays, anniversaries, people will still move house but more than ever buyers will be looking for great deals. Buyers can save money by shopping on eBay - buying second hand instead of new, shopping on eBay.com instead of eBay UK to take advantage of the weak dollar, buying last seasons model rather than the latest version. Buyers looking for bargains should be great news for eBay sellers.

Stock Profiles

Sellers should take a look at their stock profiles and only order in goods that are needed. Save your money for products which you know will sell and if you have stock of slow moving items consider listing them at bargain prices. Money tied up in stock isn’t working for you and even if you make a loss on stock which has sat on the shelf for a year you can reinvest in lines which will make a profit and sell faster allowing you to buy yet more stock. The faster you turn your stock into sales the harder you can make your money work.

Credit Lines

Don’t be surprised if your suppliers tighten up on credit limits and payment terms. They too will be looking at their financials and will want to collect debts as quickly as possible so that they can reinvest in new stock. Consider asking for a cash discount for advance payment even if you have 30 day credit terms.

Banks

You’ll find it harder to get loans and credit card companies may review credit limits. Banks may review overdraft limits so if you use these to fund your business make sure you can survive if your own credit is restricted. Cash flow and an available balance to meet debts on time is key.

Bankruptcy

Sadly not all businesses will survive, but for those that do there are rich pickings to be had from bankrupt or liquidation stock. Look out for bargains and keep an eye on what’s happening with competitors in your marketplace. As a seller of computer products I already have my eye out for Lehman Brothers to start selling off their London office IT infrastructure.

Cut Costs

Now is a great time to assess the costs you incur in your business. What costs can be trimmed and do you have unnecessary luxuries that could be cut? Look at bulk buying essentials such as packaging material if it can save you money but at the same time don’t over order on items you can do without. Economise were you can, for instance using a mono laser for printing invoices rather colour printers, that alone can save £100s on ink over the course of a year.

Cut a deal

As businesses prepare to tighten their belts it’s an excellent time to look for new suppliers. Negotiate your terms remembering that for a good deal both parties need to win. Suppliers will still have sales targets to meet so a large order with cash on delivery may net you extra discounts.

I firmly believe that recession is always a great time for small traders to make their mark. Larger companies with big overheads are less able to trim costs and switch product portfolios. Although tough trading times may be coming, if they prepare, eBay sellers should be well placed to take advantage.

If you’ve got any more tips for trading through the credit crunch add them in comments below

eBay release new mobile site and iPhone app in EU

eBay are working on all things mobile this week with the release of a new version of the eBay Mobile site and the iPhone app for Europe.
 
eBay Mobile is the version of the site that you’ll see when browsing on your phone or PDA. Although it’s possible to log on to the full site, eBay mobile is optimised for low bandwidth and small screens. If you don’t have an Internet enabled mobile you can view the site at ebaymobile.co.uk.
 
The eBay iPhone app (iTunes required) which went live this week in the EU, is currently the most downloaded free iPhone app in the UK.
 
According to eBay mobile shoppers spend more per person than the average eBay user and place the winning bid more often than other buyers. As a group mobile users are purchasing hundreds of thousands of items each month via their phones so anything that makes it easier, faster, or available on more devices, has got to be great news.

eBay Australia bring back ads on view item page

eBay Australia have announced today that they will continue with their controversial third party adverts on view item pages. Earlier this week, ads beneath the bid box were removed after complaints by eBay members to the advertiser, digital television network Foxtel.

eBay have now said that the trial of these ads will continue, though they will be positioned lower on the page and “will be clearly marked as a sponsored link”. Sellers in the Sports, Movies and Electronics categories can expect to see “sponsored links” appearing on their listings.

eBay Australia add “similar advertisements are already running in a number of markets, including Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, and the UK.” Well, that’s alright then. Let me tell you, if I need to: the Austrians, the Swiss, the French, the Italians and the British don’t like the ads either.

Foxtel’s online marketing manager left a comment on TameBay, expanding on the company’s position. He said:

being a reputable company we didn’t think they would place them in a way that would annoy their members. As soon as the complaint came in we looked at the placement in question and agreed it was intrusive to the sellers (who like us are online marketers)

Foxtel get it. Don’t annoy your users.

eBay, however, don’t get it. eBay see the ads as purely a revenue spinner, a source of extra cash. They need to look beyond this week’s balance sheet. The message of these ads, on the very page where sellers are trying to sell, is that eBay do not care about your sales. Even though you’ve paid eBay for that page, they still believe they have the right to siphon off your traffic for the sake of a few pence per click. And they do: it’s their site. But how much longer are sellers going to put up with a company that demonstrates its contempt for its paying customers quite so blatantly?

Sellers are already suffering from change fatigue after a year of constant policy, fee and listing strategy change on eBay. Telling us that our sales matter less than flogging their own advertising is really not what eBay should be doing right now.

TurboLister SIF - 30 day BIN update procedure

The new version of TurboLister is now available for download but there is an extra step to ensure it gets the complete download:

* Open Turbo Lister
* Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R
* When a TL dialogue box appears click OK
* Check for updates and download as normal (available from the tools menu within TurboLister)

Once the update is completed all of your SIF listing templates will have been converted to BINs. If they were previously 90 day listings next time you go to edit them an error will inform you the listing duration has been changed (appears to change to GTC).

If you have duplicate BIN and SIF templates stored for the same item it may be worth deleting one or other prior to the update unless they’re materially different. This should save processing time during the update procedure.

Once updated the 30 day and GTC BINs options will be available along with the new Featured First listing enhancement.

Where are your auctions today?

eBay have rolled out major changes to the site over night with the end of SIF and introduction of the new 30 day BIN listing format.

The big question is how will it affect your listings and in particular for the categories you trade in which selling format is most effective?

I’ve done a few searches of my favorite categories for buying and selling and the blend of auctions to BINs varies greatly. In Pottery Vases every fifth item is a fixed price listing, out of a page of 50 listings just 10 are fixed price. Switching to a search for AA Battery it’s a 50/50 mix of auctions and BIN but search for a Dell PA-6 laptop power supply this drops to just 13 BINs out of 50 listings on the page.

With the sort order now being Best Match and recent sales coming into play, auctions may be a great way to gain exposure especially if few of your competitors are using the listing format.

How are your categories affected? Do they have more fixed price listings or greater exposure of auctions? How will this affect your listing strategy for the future?

eBay Spain advantage Spanish listings in search results

eBay Spain have announced that they are to boost the position of Spanish sellers’ listings in search results. The translated announcement is:

Dear Member:
We have changed the way we are presenting items in search results, giving greater weight to the location of the article. The first results should now be items located in Spain from sellers with satisfactory DSR scores.
Best wishes,
The eBay Spain team

Last night, the announcement was signed by the eBay Canada team, but it’s now been edited. I assume this is because eBay Canada have also introduced location as a factor in search sorting.

I’ve been hearing rumours about this happening on various eBay sites for a while. It seems a retrograde step: all the work eBay have done to discourage location misrepresentation would be undone by boosting local listings under Best Match. Nevertheless, those of us who list a significant number of items on sites that aren’t our own home site need to bear in mind the possibility that this will be rolled out generally.

eBay Spain’s default search sort remains Best Match (Relevancia) and there has been no announcement that this has changed.

eBay.com to launch revamped keyword ad program

eBay have announced today the launch of a pay-per-click keyword ad program to be known as ‘eBay AdCommerce‘. Initially the program will be run as a Beta test for selected sellers on eBay.com and eBay.de, but it’s anticipated AdCommerce will be opened up to all sellers on the US and German sites by the end of the year. Currently there are no plans to expand the program to other countries.

eBay AdCommerce will enable sellers to bid on selected keywords and those that bid the highest may have an advert displayed at the bottom of search results, when a buyer searches for that keyword. Links from the adverts can only go to an eBay page - the sellers eBay shop or a particular listing.

The adverts consist of a title, a short description, and if the seller wishes an image. Similar to a Google Adwords campaign sellers can set a budget and a cost per click - they’ll only be charged when a potential buyer clicks on their advert.

Getting sellers to pay for keyword advertising is nothing new to eBay, a similar keyword program was launched on eBay.com in the summer of 2003 and retired in September 2006 due to low adoption rates.

The original program displayed adverts at the top of search results, but the new program will insert them as sponsored results beneath the main search results where Yahoo!, Google or Shopping.com adverts currently appear.

With the recent changes to selling formats and visibility from a combination of Best Match, Recent Sales and the new Featured First listing enhancement it remains to be seen if sellers are willing to pay for yet another shot at getting their products seen by buyers.

Best Match: what’s in, what’s out

Earlier this week, eBay answered some members’ questions about Best Match and related search issues. There isn’t much we don’t already know, but it’s nice to have it all in one place (even if the eBay rep. turned up half an hour late for a one hour discussion).

For BINs, Best Match is now the default search sorting. Auctions will continue to be sorted by ending soonest by default, with sellers with a DSR of 4.3 or lower “disadvantaged” in search. eBay are coy about exactly what criteria are taken into account with BM and what importance is given to each. The exact algorithm will vary according to category: for one example, many collectables categories are concerned with one-offs, so popularity (i.e. number of items already sold) is not going to be a meaningful criterion. BM criteria are also likely to be fine-tuned over time, so don’t assume that what works for you this week will necessarily work next week.

However, we do know that at the moment, popularity is more important than price, because “a higher-priced popular item will rank better than a lower-priced unpopular one”. Additionally “importance will be placed on good DSRs, recent sales (in categories where multi quantity listing is prevalent), good value and relevant item titles.” As eBay have said that “total cost” is not a factor in BM, it’s not quite clear what “good value” might mean: item price, or distance from category average price, are two possibilities that spring to mind, but these are just my guesses. The matching of keywords between search query and item title is taken into account with Best Match, so well-written titles remain as crucial as ever.

Sellers who list single items can relist a sold listing within seven days in order to benefit from the recent sales rating and so improve their BM ranking. They will need to actually “relist” the same listing to achieve this; “sell similar” will reset their recent sales rating.

We also have a list of what BM does not take into account:

• seller status (private or business)
• seller’s total sold items
• postage costs being specified
• returns policy being specified
• feedback percentage
• item specifics
• total cost
• item description

However, both item specifics and item description are important in ensuring your item is actually picked up by search in the first place, so don’t skimp on either.

eBay UK will not be hiding duplicated items from the same seller, a process known as “deduping” on eBay.com. Now that popularity boosts search ranking, eBay believe that there will be fewer duplicated single item listings, and more multiple items listed together; deduping is therefore unnecessary.

My concern in all this, as ever, is what it’s doing to the buyers. Consider this explanation of how auction and BIN results will finally be sorted together:

Auction and BIN items will be sorted according to two different sets of criteria (time ending soonest and DSR scores for auction, and a mix of trust, value and popularity for BIN). Once the items for each format are sorted, the two separate lists are blended together based on buyer behaviour and can vary for category and query.

Buyers have spent the last decade and more learning to buy at the last minute on eBay: it’s such ingrained behaviour that they do it on BINs even though it makes no sense. And now, at the busiest, spendiest time of the year, we’re asking them to abandon those habits and deal with a new sort order that frankly looks just random. eBay talk a lot about the buyer experience, but when they pile these changes onto them, one after another, tweaking site functionality on a weekly basis, I wonder if they’re thinking of them at all.

Links Policy: eBay’s own goal

With all the brouhaha regarding off site links both in the UK and the US you might expect eBay to be a pretty safe place to trade. Buyers shouldn’t be directed to sellers own websites but that’s not the case when it’s eBay themselves.

A new seller profile on Jack Sheng (who has two eBay accounts with 1 million feedback and another about to reach the million mark) links directly to his websites.

Why not link to his eBay shops? Why link directly to his websites eforcity, everydaysource and accstation?

Buyers going to marvel at his 1 million feedback are simply getting redirected to off eBay websites. The eBay ID’s are eforcity, everydaysource and accstation. Mind you I don’t suppose Jack is complaining about a few extra sales with no eBay fees to pay!

Come on eBay, get your house in order and change the links Jack’s eBay stores.

eBay UK launches Enhanced Member Reporting

We’re hearing from several eBay members of invitations being sent out by eBay UK to join a new programme, Enhanced Member Reporting, which will allow selected trusted eBayers to more easily report listings which breach eBay policies. Reports received via EMR will be given higher priority for investigation by support staff. One member who joined up supplied me with some screen shots:

Members of EMR are able to report multiple items at once, without the tedious cut and paste of item numbers that the rest of us have to go through. They are also apparently able to report another eBay user, rather than simply their listed items: useful for shop headers or user IDs that breach links policies, for example.

Though eBay seem to be targetting members they believe to have expertise in specific areas, they’re keen to point out that abuse of the program won’t be tolerated. The email sent to new joiners spells this out:

Abuse of this tool in a pattern of unfairly ‘targeting’ items that are not in violation would result in removal from the Enhanced Member Reporting program at a minimum.

As the initial email asking if members are interested in joining EMR is sent out as a text email and does not apparently appear in My Messages, several recipients have assumed it’s a spoof. Forwarding to spoof@ebay.com gets it confirmed as a spoof, but in fact, it’s genuine.

Those who don’t reply to the initial email are then being contacted by eBay by telephone, again with no actual proof that they are calling on eBay’s behalf. When the company is putting so much effort into other programmes to ensure member safety, it’s a shame they can’t follow a few of their own guidelines.

Third party ads removed from eBay Oz after member complaints

Late yesterday, Australian eBayers began to notice third party ads appearing on their auction listings. A graphic and text link advert for Foxtel digital television was shown directly underneath the “your maximum bid” box on listings in some media and collectables categories: Auctionbytes has a screen shot.

As we might expect, the Australian community boards began to fill up with threads from members incensed that this had been foisted on them unannounced. Several sellers expressed a concern that buyers would assume that this “first month plus installation free” television package was included with the item they were selling, and that they would be left with the customer issues and the negative feedback when buyers discovered it was nothing to do with them.

eBay Support had no information to offer. Members contacting Live Help were told that they had received many complaints and were waiting to hear back from the business unit. Then they were told that the ads were “part of a test being done by our product development department”. Other support staff said they were “the result of a known eBay site issue”. New advertising space, test or glitch? Your guess is as good as mine.

And so some canny eBayers began to complain, not to eBay, but to Foxtel:

Send your complaint to Foxtel. If eBay stick their head in the sand about this, Foxtel certainly won’t, especially if they get lots of negative publicity about their product.

wrote one poster on the Australian PowerSellers Board. And that worked. Members who had complained directly to Foxtel received this email from their Corporate Affairs Co-ordinator:

These ads were placed on eBay by a third party, and it was never FOXTEL’s understanding that they would be placed in this way. We have asked that they be removed immediately.

I’ve got to applaud all those Australian eBayers who made their voices heard on this issue. It’s another appalling example of eBay’s inability to communicate, not only with its members, but internally: anyone could have predicted that 3P ads on the view item page would have resulted in an outcry from sellers, and Support should have been primed with correct information about just what was going on. Better still, eBay Australia should have announced the new ads ahead of time, so that sellers could make an informed decision about whether they wanted to pay for an eBay listing carrying someone else’s promotional material.

We’ve already seen adverts on eBay UK view item pages: I’m sure this won’t be the last time this happens. eBay’s belief is that they own the view item page, and can put what they like on it: but for sellers, it’s the page we’ve paid for and it should be all ours. The way this issue is resolved is going to shape the future of eBay: will it remain a marketplace where individual sellers can shine, or become Amazon Lite where you barely notice who you’re buying from? We’ve won a battle, but the conflict is nowhere near over.

eBay.ca 5c auction CLD 23rd September

eBay Canada are holding a cheap listing day on 23rd September. Insertion fees for auctions only are reduced to 5c, so long as you’re a Canadian-resident seller, and you specify shipping prices. Media items, which have their own fee tariff, are also included.

eBay Australia rolls out anonymous messaging

eBay Australia has announced the roll-out of anonymised emails between eBay members. Pre-sale ASQs will no longer show the sender’s email address, but will instead be sent with a temporary eBay-based email address. Recipients will be able to replay directly through their email client to this address, and eBay will forward the messages to the correct, real-world email. The email addresses used by eBay are composed of an apparently-random string of 10-14 letters and numbers: how long these “temporary” addresses remain valid isn’t yet clear. Members where an item has already been purchased will be able to see each other’s email addresses as normal.

Currently, eBay are not verifying that the email used to reply is the “correct” one - i.e. that it matches up with the eBay account to which the message was sent. This is, they say, a “short grace period”, presumably to allow members to ensure their registered email addresses match the ones their email client uses.

So today I’ve been able to reply to trial messages with emails registered with other eBay accounts, and emails that aren’t linked with any eBay account at all, and in all cases, messages sent from the ‘wrong’ email address still arrive with eBay subject lines suggesting they’ve come from the correct eBay member.

If a phisher gets hold of one of these temporary email addresses, or randomly generates the correct sequence of letters and numers, right now eBay’s own system will make their messages look genuine. The only security at present appears to be the obscurity of the email addresses themselves: with the vast amount of processing power at phishers’ disposal, generating some correct matches surely isn’t going to be difficult. eBay would have done better to give members more information about this in advance, so that registered addresses and email clients could have been made to match, rather than leaving the system so insecure, even if temporarily.

There’s currently no published timeline for the implementation of this system on other eBay sites, though it is expected to roll everywhere in the next few months.

eBay / ChannelAdvisor webinar oversubscribed

Although held on possibly the busiest day of the week for eBay sellers the ChannelAdvisor hosted eBay webinar was oversubscribed. ChannelAdvisor will be making a recording available within the next few days. If you were unable to get logged or didn’t plan to attend you can still register to be informed when the replay is available.

Rafael Orta from eBay opened the webinar with a short overview of the changes starting with the premise that eBay “Want you to load all your inventory on the site by Christmas”. Multi quantity listings are now the name of the game - they save on insertion costs, save time creating listings, can be good til canceled, and most important of all increase the chances of appearing high up in search results as soon as they attract sales.

All listings will be in main search results and best match will be tweaked to show the most relevant listings first although the option to kick start listings with the new featured first listing upgrade can jump start sales.

The Best match criteria will vary by category and continue to be tweaked and eBay guarantee a relevant mix of auction and BIN in search results.

Then it was straight into the Q&A session largely answered by Rafael, but with assistance from Max Leisten in the US ChannelAdvisor office. The first question was for those who haven’t received communications regarding the changes and the details can be found at http://ebay.co.uk/buyitnow08.

There were several questions regarding what changes will affect the recent sales boost in search results. This will be an issue for those who tweak prices daily based on fluctuations in their supply chain. If the sales price is increased then all recent sales advantage will be lost. The other listing edits which will lose the recent sales advantage are changes to the item title, item condition, description and the category listed in.

Interestingly changes to the postage cost do not affect recent sales according to Rafael. It does however mean that if you reduce your postage costs but increase the item price to compensate that any recent sales advantage will be wiped out - if you change to free post it really does have to be “free” to keep the boost in search.

When relisting the recent sales advantage will be carried over to the relisted item, but the window for relisting has not been disclosed. Rafael hinted that it would be no more than 7 days, but it could be less in some circumstances.

There is still no easy solution for listing an item which is compatible with multiple models, e.g, a car spark plug could fit hundreds of different vehicles. Rafael advised to make sure the most common are in the 55 character title but with the option to list duplicates with different titles to ensure your products are found.

There was a question regarding fees and would they go up or down overall. There is no easy answer to this (insertion fees will be less, but some final value fees are rising) as it’s likely seller behaviour will change dramatically. Sellers are likely to have less listings for each product line, but are being encourage to list more product lines and put all of their inventory on the site. As the selling model is changing so drastically each individual seller will need to assess the impact of fees based on their own listing strategy.

Best Match is already active on eBay UK, but is a different implementation to the eBay.com site. In the UK there will be no removal of duplicate listings from a single seller in search results, but the duplicate listing policy remains in force. From the 25th all listings will appear on the core site including current Shop Inventory items, but listings already live will incur fees (insertion, final value and listing enhancements) based on the old fee structure.

Auctions will continue to be important and crucially they will still be displayed with a time ending soonest sort order. This means if you list auctions regardless of other sellers gaining a boost in search with recent sales or by using the featured first listing upgrade your items will appear at the top of search results just before they end. Even if you add the BIN option to an auction it will still be treated as an auction in the search display order.

Finally a question was asked by a seller who’s listing strategy has always been to make sure she had listings ending daily - “Does new fee structure mean you can have just one listing instead of multiples for visibility”. The answer is a resounding “YES”. eBay.co.uk is changing this week, and your listing strategy needs to change as well.

Edited to add: The recording of the webinar including the Q&A is now available.

French postal strike 23rd September