Marks out of 10 for feedback
May 20, 2009
eBay are testing more changes to feedback with new feedback flows to be presented to selected sellers customers over the next four to six weeks in the US. eBay Ink has some screen shots as well as an interview with Brian Burke, eBay Director of Seller Standards & Feedback.
Options could include scrapping the almost universally hated Detailed Seller Ratings (no surprise there – regularly getting 4 stars out of 5 for free shipping pretty much shows they’re not working that well). Coming in with a marks out of 10 score is the simple question “How likely is it you would recommend this seller?”
Click image to embiggen
That, to be honest, is possibly the most important feedback question that could be asked. Forget the fact buyers may have overpaid for postage, returned the item for refund or even had an item go missing or damaged in transit. It’s all about how the seller handles their customers and did they leave the customer happy enough to recommend them to others.
Having said that just how many more changes to feedback will there be? DSRs have come and they may well go, for selected sellers if not for all. DSRs are a pain for buyers to complete, especially for multiple purchases and some sellers still feel victimised that they can’t leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers if they feel it appropriate.
The good news is that regardless of the test results there are no feedback changes planned for this year. Tests normally result in changes though, so what sort of feedback changes would you like to see? Do you want to be ranked out of 10, have you grown to like DSRs, or is there another feedback option that you’d prefer?
5 Free auctions for all eBay.com sellers
May 12, 2009
eBay.com have announced five free auctions every 30 days, for all sellers, starting in June this year. Insertion fees will be zero with a final value fee of 8.75% capped at a maximum of $20 (for the sixth and subsequent listings fees will be as normal).
eBay say this is open to all sellers, but that’s not quite true. To qualify you have to use either the Sell Your Item (SYI) form or Simple listing form, you can “opt out” by using an eBay tool or third-party listing solution. Quite frankly not many pro-sellers will want to use the SYI form so simply won’t be eligible, which is probably a good thing if you expect your item to sell for a high price (More than $62.00 final value and you’re cheaper “opting out”.
Also if you’re going to list an item with a Start/BIN/Reserve price of $18 million or higher you’ll sadly be excluded from the promotion. I’d suggest starting your item at $17,999,999.99 as then your final value fee will be just $20 
Third-party checkouts changing, not banned
April 16, 2009
You may have read a blog post yesterday on AuctionBytes reporting that third party checkouts were to be banned on eBay from June. The post cited ProStores and Infopia as saying that their checkouts were to be discontinued, and named the source of the story as “letters sent to some sellers”: surprisingly, it hadn’t been included in eBay’s biannual changes announcement made the day before.
I spoke to ChannelAdvisor, who said that their own checkout was not being discontinued, though changes were to be made. There’s currently no detail on just what those changes are, but Scot Wingo wrote a long and impassioned plea for CA customers to defend their checkout.
Then eBay weighed in with their own post: Dinesh Lathi writes that third party checkouts will only be available from a select group of providers who “have updated their user interface according to a set of eBay guidelines. Our goal is to give buyers a more consistent checkout experience.” Again, there is a conspicuous lack of detail about exactly what these changes will involve, so sellers using one of the approved providers on Dinesh’s list should contact that provider for more details.
As eBay have been talking since at least eBay Live in Chicago last June about “a more consistent and safe checkout experience”, my guess would be that the new rules will force less merchant branding, no offsite links and definitely no off-eBay upsell. 3P checkouts will remain available for payment processing and stock control purposes, but the way that they’ve been used to siphon customers from eBay to merchant’s own sites will be stopped. But all that is only my guess, and eBay have given me no information on this whatsoever. As Dinesh writes:
Please keep in mind that the definitive source of information about eBay is eBay. You can find accurate information about any planned changes through this Announcement Board and through emails, calls and other official communications from eBay.
The problem is, when eBay themselves don’t give out the information, give out incomplete information, promise announcements and then don’t deliver them, where are merchants and 3P providers supposed to turn?
eBay.com’s big announcement: what’s in it for sellers?
April 14, 2009
eBay.com made its first biannual announcement of 2009 today. This is part of the new strategy to limit disruption to sellers by making two big rafts of changes each year, rather than constant piecemeal adjustments to the platform. The changes are due to take place from 15th June (actual implementation time may, however, be later and in some cases isn’t yet fixed).
There is a lot of detail in the announcement, and I would encourage all sellers to read it for themselves. Here are the highlights, and no doubt more information will be forthcoming over the next few weeks:
Multiple variant listings
Sellers will be able to offer variants of products – for example, shirts in different colours and sizes – within the same listing. It will be possible to vary the price (but not the shipping) for different items in the same listing. This is as announced by Mark Lewis for eBay UK at Catalyst last month.
Multi-variant listings will be available in Mens’ and Womens’ Shoes categories from the week commencing 15th June, and for the rest of Clothing, Shoes and Accessories plus Home and Garden from mid-July. Rollout across all categories is planned, but currently has no implementation date (the rumour I hear is 2010).
Amazonification of product pages
There will be an expansion of product pages: frequently used to group identical items in Music and Electronics (e.g. all the copies of one particular CD), expect to see these in Books, Movies & DVDs, Music, Video Games, Cell Phones, and Tickets, with more categories to follow. More sellers will be chasing the highlighted “value box” at the top right
The new view item page which eBay have been testing for the past year will roll out to “most” buyers by mid-June. “Photo zoom” is coming later this summer, together with an animated countdown timer for auction listings.
Dispute resolution moves from PayPal to eBay
eBay are touting this as a “new dispute resolution process”, but in fact, it looks very much like the old PayPal dispute resolution process, only hosted on eBay instead of PayPal; eBay themselves say that they will “retain substantially the same definitions and policies that PayPal uses to resolve item not received and item not as described disputes”.
Buyers will have the current 45 days to file a non-receipt or SNAD claim with eBay. Exactly how this will differ from filing a claim with PayPal isn’t immediately apparent, except that buyers will be able to file the dispute whatever payment method they have used. Once the claim is filed, buyers “may” be given the option to contact eBay by phone (we’ve heard from some people involved in the testing process that this has been done). The case is then reviewed by an eBay Customer Service rep, who will consider transaction details, buyer and seller track record, shipping information and item location; if the buyer’s claim warrants further investigation, the CS rep will contact the seller. eBay say:
We’ll be taking a more active role, and in certain cases when we determine the seller was not at fault we may refund the buyer at our own expense.
Optimistically, it’s possible that this new process might stop serial non-receipt claimants on eBay. Sellers, though, are going to see it as the loss of yet more control over the transaction, with eBay likely to be just as trigger-happy with refunds as PayPal are.
The new resolution process applies to eBay.com only; there’s no news when or if it might roll out in other countries. The transition process from PayPal disputes to eBay disputes begins Q2 2009 (i.e. now) and the change should be complete before the holiday selling season. I have no doubt that sellers will have a raft of questions about this, so leave us a comment and I’ll do my best to get more info as required.
Project Echo Beta launches Selling Manager Service
April 1, 2009
Project Echo, the opening up of the eBay platform to enable third party providers to build applications into Selling Manager has gone into full public beta.
Selling Manager Applications will become available on eBay.com for Selling Manager subscribers. UPS will be the first shipping provider to launch a Selling Manager Application which will eliminating the re-keying (or copy and pasting) of information between eBay and UPS WorldShip.
Developers can choose to charge a one off fee, or an ongoing subscription but must agree to a revenue share, with eBay getting a 20% cut. In the future usage based charging will be added giving developers more flexible charging options.
Currently the Selling Manager Service Beta platform is only open for applications on eBay.com with the full release expected towards the middle of the year followed by a worldwide roll out. eBay Ink has some video footage introducing the new service.
As a user of an array of eBay tools including Terapeak, Tradebox, Frooition and Aimco Packing Partner it’ll be great to start accessing some of these services from within eBay. I’m hoping that the larger UK carriers and Royal Mail also incorporate applications to streamline shipping once the services spreads to the UK.
Most sellers have at least one third party application which they simply couldn’t do without. What are your favourite eBay applications and which would you like to see available at the click of a mouse within Selling Manager?
[CA Catalyst] eBay reveal more details on Adcommerce and Multi-Variation Listings
March 31, 2009
In an informal session today, eBay revealed more of their future plans for two new additions to the site. Firstly, Adcommerce: conversion data is coming! A trial release of an updated dashboard which includes sales information will roll out shortly in the US and in Germany: quite why the UK’s been excluded, I’m not sure, but the product you see today is not a finished one. eBay’s message is that it’s being developed in response to seller feedback, so if you get either a survey request or a telemarketing call, make your feelings known!
I also asked if it will ever be possible to advertise something other than your eBay listings via Adcommerce: i.e. I want to advertise my website rather than my eBay Shop. The answer I got was extremely non-committal, but I get the feeling that eBay haven’t entirely ruled this out as a future development.
There were also more details on the “multi-variation listings” which Mark Lewis announced yesterday. These are to roll out in three stages:
- June 15th: UK, US, DE in men’s shoes and women’s shoes only.
- July 15th: UK, US, CA, CAfr, DE, IE, AT, CH, IT in all clothing categories and some Home and Garden.
- Date TBC: rest of Europe, all categories.
In the US and Canada, any seller currently permitted to offer multi-item listings will have MVLs available, but in Europe, a Shop subscription will be necessary.
It will be possible to vary the price within listings: e.g. larger shirts can cost more, but shipping prices cannot be varied. Sellers can remove particular variants from a listing with sales without needing to end the entire listing. Variations will be indexed for search, so you can list red, blue and yellow shirts without necessarily needing to mention each colour in your title.
MVLs are a voluntary feature: if sellers want to carry on listing variants separately, they’re free to do so. I’ll be testing this one to see how buyers react to it – they’re so used to single-feature listings on eBay that it’ll be a bit of a shock to suddenly have variants available.
eBay.com retires old search system
February 20, 2009
eBay.com has announced that their old-style search format will be retired in April. The new “finding” system offers users the ability to specify a range of criteria from payment method and item location, to specifics of colour, size and item condition.
eBays say that 90% of users are now using the new format, and that “response from the Community to the new finding has been great”. A thread on the US discussion board is less enthusiastic: one member writes “the biggest single enhancement the users have asked for is to keep the OPT OUT link working because we don’t like or even want the new search”.
The announcement’s been made only for eBay.com, so it’s not quite clear how this will affect other sites: eBay UK had said the old system would be retired in March, so it’s possible we’ll see the option to opt out disappear before .com users do.
eBay.com introduces Amazon-style buy box
February 15, 2009
eBay.com have announced some changes to the product pages for items listed with pre-filled item information. The biggest change is the introduction of an Amazon-style ‘buy box’ at the top of the product page, featuring one “trusted seller”. eBay say that this item will be selected by Best Match, considering total price (purchase price plus shipping), and that the seller’s search standing must be “raised”. Below this, buyers who scroll down further will see a mixture of fixed price and auction listings.
It’s not quite clear at the moment whether the buy box will remain the exclusive preserve of just one seller, or whether different sellers can appear in it at any one time: initial testing makes me lean towards the former scenario, but eBay haven’t specified exactly how this will work.
Of more concern is that the buy box is not necessarily comparing like with like. I’ve been searching for a camera where the item in the box is a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than the average; this turns out to be because, unlike the normal kit, it comes without a lens. eBay really need to work on refining this system, because buyers are going to assume that the buy box is the “recommended purchase”, and read the listing less closely even than they normally do.
In media categories, items will be sorted by condition: newer items are listed above used ones, and the initial search results page shows a selection of each condition, with a link to “view all like-new items”, etc.
eBay says that the new page layout “makes it faster and easier for buyers to find the book, music, movie or game item they’re looking for from sellers they trust.” Sellers, however, are likely to be less enthusiastic about the changes; the new pages will give buyers very little incentive to move beyond the first page of search results, and that’s not going to be popular with many sellers who are already complaining about plummeting eBay sales.
Currently the new product pages are on eBay.com only, but I’d be very surprised if they don’t roll out across other eBay sites in the next few months.
More free pix for eBay.com collectibles’ sellers
February 12, 2009
eBay.com have announced more free photos for sellers in the Collectibles, Art, Antiques and Pottery & Glass categories.
The first picture for all eBay listings is free, but as of February 18th, listings in these categories will get Picture Pack and Gallery Plus free, for all listing formats and durations. Picture Pack allows sellers to add up to twelve extra photos to the listing, and Gallery Plus displays a larger picture when buyers hover over a gallery picture on the search results page.
eBay says that
more free photos will allow sellers to provide buyers the visual details they need to make these decisions, lower buyer questions, and increase seller sales.
Though most collectibles’ sellers post extra pictures using their own hosting, this should make it easier for everyone to post plenty of images on listings that really need them (though I sincerely hope it doesn’t presage eBay limiting photos on listings to eBay-hosted ones). Gallery Plus is a superb feature, and it would be great to see that freebie expanded over the whole site.
There are more enhancements to the “visual shopping experience” promised for eBay.com too: more information as soon as we get it.
Please note that this announcement has been made for eBay.com only, and does not apply at the moment to any other site.
My eBay classic retired, new My eBay rolled out
January 20, 2009
Be prepared for a bit of a shock next time you log into eBay, it’s been announced around the world (although not in the UK) that My eBay Beta is about to become the default for all users. Today the old or “classic” version is set to be retired for good.
Back in August we took a first look at the new My eBay Beta and found it good for buyers but lacking in functionality for sellers, but many of our complaints addressed with added functionality. There are a few differences worth calling out:
Best Offers
Items with outstanding Best Offers aren’t as visible as in the old version. Whereas they’d be highlighted at the top of the selling tab in the classic eBay, in the new version they only appear in “Selling Reminders” on the “All Selling” summary view. If you’re on the “Selling Tab” you don’t get selling reminders and so won’t see any prompts to accept, decline or make a counter offer.
Even in Selling Reminders Best Offers could be handled better, if you counter offer to a buyer it still displays as “1 item with offers from buyers”. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to respond just to find out I’m waiting for the buyer to make a decision.
Unsold Items
Another major display change to be aware of is with unsold items. The quantity displayed will now be the starting 
quantity, regardless how many items have been sold on a listing. In the classic version of My eBay the unsold item view displayed the quantity remaining when the listing ended. It’s a minor change, but a frustrating one for those who rely on these numbers for stock control.
Sort Options
The old My eBay was highly configurable with sort options for almost every attribute displayed. The new My eBay is severely limited with sorting limited to just the Watchers, Bids, Price and Time left columns.
In the past I’ve used sorts such as for highest/lowest shipping charges, to look for listings with outstanding questions to answer, or even available quantity. That’s no longer possible which makes managing your eBay listings that little bit more difficult, and TurboLister that little bit more attractive.
The biggest change facing most buyer and sellers is that the focus of the new My eBay shifts to the listing title rather than the User ID. This is somewhat perturbing at first although in fairness I soon got used to it when using the Beta.
Currently those who use Selling Manager Pro will escape the worst of the changes, but we’ve managed to get a sneaky preview (shown left) of what the new SMP tabs will look like when they get a minor makeover in the near future.
If you’ve been using the new My eBay let us know what you think of it. If you’re still using My eBay classic today is the last day it’ll be available on many eBay sites.
eBay announces new eBay shop design
January 14, 2009
eBay.com have announced an overhaul of eBay shops (or eBay stores as they’re known in the US). eBay shops haven’t changed significantly for many years and the face lift by brings the design more in line with the rest of eBay, which makes it less confusing to buyers when they land in an eBay shop.
Key enhancements are:
- Improved in-store search ability and merchandise suggestions for misspellings and low results.
- Improved look and feel in line with the rest of eBay
- Enhanced promotion boxes with a new promotion box filmstrip.
- Updated the eBay themes for professional-looking shops without any HTML knowledge needed - Improved buyer features
- Ability for buyers to refine their search preferences
- New 3 column Gallery View - Future flexibility – With this new version eBay can continue to build enhancements to eBay Stores quickly
eBay.com sellers can preview their eBay store in the new format and opt in if they like what they see. All users will be upgraded some time after the end of March, but expect to see the new shops starting to appear on the site as users opt in. Anyone opening a new eBay.com shop will automatically be opted in to the new shops experience.
One of the major changes eBay are addressing with the new eBay shops is to bring them into line with their Site Interference Policy. Up until now sellers have been able to heavily customise their eBay shop using CSS and JS but any customisation conflicting with the policy will now be blocked.
eBay will also make some changes such as blocking the use of stores tags (e.g. {eBayStoresItemList}, {eBayStoresItemShowcase}, eBayStoresItem}, {eBayStoresItemDetail} and {eBayPromo}.) from the shop header.
If you have heavily customised your eBay shop you’ll need to preview it and make any changes needed to bring it into full compliance prior to opting in to the upgraded shops.
New format Frooition Shop
The changes to bring the rather dated eBay shops solution out of the 1990’s is long over due. Sellers will benefit from better merchandising of their products and with the new shops search buyers will find it easier to find the products their looking for.
It’s expected that similar changes will be announced in the UK, with sellers available to upgrade to the new shops experience in the near future.
eBay.com remove feedback complaining about import taxes
January 8, 2009
eBay.com have announced changes to their feedback removal policy today. They will remove non-positive feedback left complaining about customs fees charged to buyers, or customs delays.
However, in order to be eligible for feedback removal, sellers must point out in their listings that cross-border transactions may incur import duties and that these are not included in the shipping fees; they’re also advised by eBay to clarify that they will not mark items as “gifts” to avoid duties. Notices about import duties must be “prominently” included in the listing and be in a font size no smaller than the rest of the item description.
Sellers who trade within the EU might like to also add that trading within the EU should not normally incur customs fees; in my experience, UK and European buyers are not necessarily aware of this, and need some reassurance.
The announcement has been made on eBay.com and there has been no corresponding announcement for any other eBay site, so it’s not immediately clear whether the new policy will apply to non-US sellers or not.
The yellow button returns to eBay My Messages
December 18, 2008
The yellow button has returned to eBay My Messages to allow users to click and reply from within eBay rather than using their email reader such as Outlook.
This disappeared when eBay annonymised email addresses in member to member communications but was promised to be restored by the New Year. It’s still possible to simply click reply in your email reader to respond, but there is now an option to reply through eBay, which has the advantage that messages will be marked as replied to in your My Messages inbox.
Email addresses will still be concealed between eBay users until a transaction has taken place.
eBay.com drops duplicate listings policy
November 21, 2008
eBay.com announced yesterday that search results would no longer hide duplicate listings from the same seller, a process that’s become known as “de-duping“. Where an individual seller has more than one identical listing for sale, all instances will now show in search; previously, only one would have been displayed. eBay say that sellers are now taking advantage of the boost that recent sales give their listings, by combining identical items into single listings offering multiple items for sale, and that “this has proven to be the right strategy for sellers and a great shopping experience for buyers”.
But this doesn’t feel quite like the whole story to me. If the policy works, and sellers are changing their behaviour as desired because of it, why change the policy? The duplicate listings policy was – at least in part – intended to stop a few huge sellers dominating particular categories: might we assume that eBay are now happy to have one or two or their largest sellers dominant after all?
eBay.com will continue to show a maximum of ten listings per seller per search results page. Sellers should at least spread their listings out over time rather than listing in ‘clumps’ to try to avoid having them hidden under this policy.
DSR console enhancments for 2009
November 14, 2008
Click to embiggen
The new module should enable sellers to see which transactions are helping or hurting their DSR ratings enabling them to take action to improve their service.
Reports will be available for Buyer Location, Category, Date Range, Shipping Service (plus free post vs paid) and Item Numbers. There will also be a breakdown by percentage of how many 1 & 2 star, 3 & 4 star and 5 star ratings have been received for each report.
This will be a fantastic tool for sellers that make use of it, being able to identify if there is one particular product line that’s dragging down overall ratings is exactly what sellers need to know in order to raise their overall rankings.
eBay communicate on communicating
November 13, 2008
eBay have provided some additional insight into the annoymisation of eBay communications between buyers and sellers today, explaining why many sellers have received bounced emails when communicating with buyers. There are still some enhancements to be implemented and from early next year eBay member to member communications will be further improved.
Currently when an email is returned by the buyer’s email provider sellers have received a standard reply informing them and advising to resend using eBay My Messages. Some sellers may have received this message even if the original email was sent through an eBay contact webform or My Messages and a fix is being rolled out in the next few days to prevent this.
In the past when My Messages were used rather that direct email communications the data to determine when a users email addresses was invalid wasn’t available (any bounced emails would return to the sender, not to eBay). Now that the data is available to eBay they will introduce a process in early 2009 to force members to update their email preferences with a valid email address.
In the future eBay will also capture the reason for bounced emails and include this information in failure notices, which could be as simple as the mailbox being full, or a spam filter rejecting the email.
An additional process will be to mark messages as replied to in eBay My Messages even though an email client may have been used to send the reply. This means by checking My Messages buyers and sellers will easily be able to identify which emails have been responded to and which still need attention.
Currently the old “Yellow Button” has been removed from notifications leaving users with the option of replying from their email client or navigating to eBay My Messages manually to respond to emails. Next year a button will be restored giving the option of a single click for users who prefer to use My Messages to respond to buyer or seller communications.
The case for changing how eBay communications work is simple, in the past when a bidder sends an ASQ tied to a fraudulent listing, eBay revealed the bidder’s email address to the fraudster. Under the new process replies to anonymized emails are routed through eBay and scanned by multiple security layers including fraud and anti virus checks. Email addresses will automatically be stripped out of anonymous communications, even if they are included in the message body. Only once a valid auction bid or buy it now purchase is made are the buyer’s and seller’s real email addresses revealed.
The changes are great news for sellers, using my normal email client (Outlook) to respond to buyer questions has certainly made my life a lot easier. Once eBay begin forcing users to keep their email addresses up to date, communications will not only be safer from fraud but buyers are likely to see messages sooner – most people check their email more regularly than logging into eBay.
If you would like to send and receive eBay messages from an alternative email address to your eBay registered email, you can change your Member-to-Member email address in the Notification Preferences section of My eBay (Communication preferences if you’re using My eBay Beta)
eBay dispute console changes
October 31, 2008
The dispute console has changed to allow an easier flow for mutual cancellations rather than being a part of the unpaid item dispute flow. From now on a “Cancel Transaction” option is available when the “We have both agreed not to complete the transaction” option is selected.
New Cancel Transaction Confirmation
A word of warning… do not test this unless you really do want to cancel a transaction! There is no confirm page when selecting this option so don’t click confirm until you are certain that you want to cancel the transaction. As soon as you select the option and click “continue” the cancellation will be sent. This is a change from the older dispute console flow and many users are likely to be caught out by it thinking that there will be a confirmation screen and “Continue” suggests there are further steps before sending the cancellation.
On eBay.com the dispute wording has been changed and now reads “Unpaid Item Cases” and alerts in Selling Manager display “An Unpaid Item or a Cancel Transaction case has been opened for this item” rather than the UK version which still reads “An Unpaid Item dispute…” It’s great to see “Disputes” being removed from the language – I don’t think I’ve ever had a dispute with a customer although I’ve had plenty of unpaid items.
eBay In Demand – Hot products in short supply
October 29, 2008
eBay In Demand is a new website coming soon to eBay.com which aims to inform sellers of products in short supply on the site.
There will be incentives in the form of product by product discounts on insertion and final value fees for sellers that can meet demand. Discounts will be on top of any PowerSeller/Business discounts the seller already qualifies for.
eBay In Demand will run off catalogue data and to access discounts you’ll need to list using pre-filled information. Scot Wingo, who broke the news on eBay Strategies, has already found products on eBay In Demand which are listed on eBay in core and SIF, but none of the sellers used pre-filled information when listing.
eBay are more likely to highlight listings in search results that have been listed with catalogue information where it’s available and with eBay In Demand this will become more important than ever for sellers as it’s the only way to access the individual item discounts.
In order to access eBay In Demand data you’ll need to fulfil the following criteria:
* A registered seller on eBay.com
* A minimum detailed seller rating of 4.8 across all four 30-day detailed seller ratings
* A buyer satisfaction rating of Excellent or Good
* A PowerSeller.
This is an interesting development from eBay.com, for the first time eBay will publish data on which products buyers are searching for but for which there is a shortage. Sellers able to take advantage will be well positioned to appear high in Best Match, gain recent sales and, as other sellers start supplying the product, appear at the top of search results.
eBay.com paperless payments policy goes live
October 27, 2008
A week later than expected, eBay.com’s paperless payments policy has finally gone live today; sellers may not offer cash, cheques or money orders as means of payment, but only one of the approved electronic methods: PayPal, credit or debit card payment to a seller’s merchant account, or ProPay. As of today, sellers will not be able to list as accepting “checks” or “money orders” through the SYI form; listings already live with checks and MOs as payment options will have those hidden on the view item page.
eBay has extended the grace period for .com sellers to amend their listings to remove references to paper payments to January 15th 2009. Sellers who have to cancel and relist Good Til Cancelled listings in order to remove references to prohibited payment methods, will have their insertion and feature fees credited to their seller account.
What’s still not clear is how this affects non-US sellers whose listings are available on eBay.com, whether using the ISV upgrade or on an international search. Both pinkie James on the UK PowerSeller Board and John McDonald, head of Trust and Safety in the US, talking to Scot Wingo, were unable to clarify the position. In Australia during the short period where PayPal was the only permitted payment method, sellers who offered other means of payment had their listings hidden from Australian buyers. Scot asked John whether sellers on .com would be permitted to offer paper payments to buyers from countries where this is still permitted: he, like thousands of sellers, is still waiting for an answer to this one. If the head of T&S doesn’t know, one has to wonder just who he’s gone to ask; as soon as we get an answer, I’ll update this post.
Updated to add the answer:
A little site experimentation finds that if you search for something you’re likely to find from German sellers and then choose one of the ones not offering PayPal, the View Item page is blocked:
This item is not available for purchase
This item is not available for purchase on eBay United States.
Learn more about our accepted payments policy.
View the original listing on eBay and buy this item on eBay Germany
More generously than we might expect, there is a link to the listing on the original site.
On items which offer PayPal plus paper payments on the original non-.com listing, when viewed on .com the paper payments are not shown.
eBay.com hides quantity available on multi-item listings
October 18, 2008
eBay.com have said they are to hide the quantity available on multiple item listings for more than ten items. Rather than saying “84 available”, the listing will now tell potential buyers “more than 10 available”. eBay say:
both research and the input we’ve received from sellers indicate that buyers tend to purchase less often when they see a large quantity of items available. This is most likely because they feel a lack of urgency to purchase, or they perceive that the item isn’t selling well.
This certainly mirrors my experience, and that of other TameBayers: buyers buy faster when they think they might miss out.
Depending on the item, of course, a quantity of ten is still too high. Right now I have a few items listed that, with a quantity of 3 or 4 available for 10 days, I get a dozen watchers and no sales; if I list them singly, I can sell a couple every day. In many categories – largely, the ones selling pretty non-essentials – multiple item listings just don’t work so well. So if this change rolls on other eBay sites, it would be very useful to have the facility to set our own maximum visible quantity for each item.
eBay.com announce more changes
October 16, 2008
eBay.com have announced another set of changes which they say will help sellers be successful this holiday season.
Likely to be most controversial with sellers is a new Amazon-style product page for goods which use pre-filled item information. These feature the “best value box”, one single Best Matched seller highlighted at the top of the item page, labelled “buy from trusted seller…”. Somehow, I don’t think this is going to be terribly popular with sellers.
Beyond the best value box, media items are grouped by condition, from “brand new” to “acceptable”. Bizarrely, buyers appear to have to click on the seller’s comments on the item condition in order to access the view item page to purchase. This is a major change in what we expect from buyers, who are used to clicking item titles and gallery pictures. If we must make eBay more like Amazon, then lets have a “buy it now” button right there on the search results page.
Free subtitle for pre-filled info items
Media items (books, music, movies, DVDs and video games) listed with pre-filled item information receive free subtitles from now until the end of the year. “Help your listings stand out” says Dinesh: if everyone’s using subtitle, of course, your listing won’t stand out because of it, so think about how you can use this space imaginatively.
Featured First might get you featured
Featured First is a new listing upgrade, which offers you the chance to have your listings appear at the top of the search results page. A limited number of FF listings are randomly rotated into the featured area: there is no guarantee that yours will appear. At $24.95 for up to 10 days, and $74.95 for up to 30 days, FF isn’t cheap, but it can be a good way to kick-start sales on a new listing to boost them under Best Match: choosing 10 days’ FF on a 30 day listing is a more cost-effective way to do this.
Best Match for SIF
Stores Inventory Format listings will still be shown at the end of search results pages which have not returned many results: the threshold for this has been increased from 30 core listings to “about 50″. SIF listings will now be sorted according to Best Match, “using the same factors that apply for Fixed Price listings. These include recent sales, competitive pricing – including shipping – and seller track record.”
No more relist credits for BINs
From October 22nd, there will be no more relist credits for BIN items which have not sold. Previously, sellers who relisted an unsold item would receive a credit for their insertion fees if it sold on the second time of listing. Auction items will still be eligible for relist credits, and so will unpaid items.
These announcements are for eBay.com only at the moment, though I think we’ll see the end of relist credits and that Amazon-style product page rolled out on more sites in the very near future.
Feedback revision rolls out for eBay UK, Ireland, .com
October 13, 2008
eBay UK have announced that feedback revision will be rolled out on 20th October. eBay Ireland and eBay.com will also launch feedback revision on the same day.
As already announced for eBay Australia, the new system will allow sellers to request that buyers edit feedback within 30 days of it being left. Buyers will only be able to revise feedback “upwards” – i.e. a positive cannot be changed to a negative or neutral – and sellers cannot request that buyers edit positive feedback. Buyers will be able to edit the rating, the DSR scores and the comment they left.
Sellers will be able to request 5 edits per 1,000 feedbacks received, though eBay have said that this limit may be reconsidered: when it was announced for the Australian site, many sellers wondered what would be the position for buyers who’d left multiple non-positive feedbacks for combined transactions, so it would be good to see this addressed in the near future.
There’s more detail on exactly how the system will work in the FAQs.
eBay UK will also launch the new Resolution Centre at the end of October: this replaces the current Dispute Console, and just the change of name alone should make trading on eBay a more pleasant experience. There’s not much detail in the announcement of exactly what will be changing, but one welcome addition should be “a separate flow for buyers and sellers to mutually agree to cancel a transaction”: seeing this process made simpler and less antagonistic should be good news for buyers *and* sellers.
eBay.com to launch revamped keyword ad program
September 24, 2008
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.
eBay.com turn on recent sales tracking early
September 9, 2008
The US fee and listing changes are to take place on the 16th September, but they’ve already started tracking recent sales.
The most significant change is the introduction of 30 day Buy It Nows, and although this listing format is not currently available US sellers can start to take advantage and this is how:
- Recent sales will be used as a measure of a listings popularity, listings with recent (last seven days) will be given a boost in Best Match search results.
- Listing a multi-item, 10 day listing on eBay.com now will ensure it’s live on the 16th. If it has sales between now and the 16th it will be advantaged over a similar listing without sales.
- Waiting to list on the 16th will automatically mean your listing is disadvantaged as it won’t have any recent sales.
- Recent sales are rolled over when a listing is relisted, even if you relist a few days later.
- When you relist it will be possible to edit the listing to the new 30 day Buy It Now listing (You can’t keep the recent sales boost if you make major changes such as to title, category, condition, or increase the price).
Recent sales tracking has started now for eBay.com, it’s time to ensure you have multiple item listings for each product and ensure that in the future if a listing ends with sales that it’s relisted rather than launch a new listing for the same item.
This change is currently for eBay.com only. I’m guessing that recent sales tracking will start a week early in the UK which means listings with sales from the 17th onwards should be relisted rather than a new listing launched.
eBay drop Bid Assistant
September 5, 2008
eBay.com have announced today that they are to drop the Bid Assistant tool as of 15th September. Introduced in May last year, Bid Assistant allowed buyers to specify a group of items of which they wanted to buy one: the system would then bid for them on each in turn, moving on to the next in the group if they failed to win the preceding one.
eBay’s announcement says that the feature had very little use, and sadly I think this was predictable: for buyers who are savvy enough to use such tools, there are plenty of third-party offerings with better features. Bid Assistant never offered the ability to “snipe”, or bid at the last minute so no rival bidder had the chance to go higher. Perhaps it’s understandable that eBay couldn’t offer this: the whole point of sniping, after all, is to keep auction prices as low as possible. But without this essential feature for buyers, Bid Assistant was never going to take off.
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