eBay / ChannelAdvisor webinar oversubscribed

September 22, 2008

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.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips, Site Changes, eBay.co.uk | 56 Comments 

Understanding eBay changes workshop 22nd Sept

September 16, 2008

ChannelAdvisor are hosting a webinar in conjunction with eBay aimed at understanding the changes to eBay.co.uk Buy it Now and Shops coming this month.

The webinar will take place on the 22nd September at 1pm (BST) and will be hosted by Rafael Orta, Head of Seller Experience for eBay UK and Max Leisten, Senior Product Manager at ChannelAdvisor.

As well as detailing the changes this will be a great opportunity to ask any questions prior to the changes. If you want to know how to get your current SIFs rolled over to 30 day Buy It Now listings, what will happen to your SMP auto-relist rules or have any other burning questions sign up for the webinar as there will be time for Q&A at the end.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 12 Comments