eBay Chief Financial Officer Steve Priest told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday that its International Shipping program was strategically important. The same day, eBay uploaded marketing videos to YouTube urging sellers to use the program, telling them, “Reach millions of buyers around the world, simply. eBay International Shipping: Unlock the World.”
Steve Priest made his remarks during the company’s 2nd-quarter earnings call, where eBay CEO Jamie Iannone elaborated on the importance of the program. “Why we’re excited by it is because 20% of the business on eBay is cross-border, but less than half of our big-three inventory is available to be shipped internationally. So opening up that inventory we think is a unique advantage for eBay and a unique value proposition for our sellers on the marketplace.” (“Big-three” appears to be a reference to its three largest geographic markets.)
eBay believes its new EIS international shipping program will help it increase cross-border trade, and the new marketing videos targeted at sellers share the tagline, “Unlock the World.”
A major stumbling block to increasing seller adoption of the program: international shoppers can’t combine multiple items into a single order. eBay told sellers on July 13 and again on July 25 that the problem was related to customs.
eBay uploaded to YouTube a 6-second video and a 25-second video titled, “eBay International Shipping: Boundless,” describing the videos as follows: “The love for all the great stuff you sell doesn’t stop at the border. So why should your stuff? Sell globally. Ship locally. Simply. Unlock the world with eBay International Shipping.”
eBay also uploaded a 6-second and a 27-second video titled, “eBay International Shipping: Notice,” describing them as follows: “Selling globally is now so easy, you might not even realize you’re doing it. Sell globally. Ship locally. With no customs or paperwork to deal with, you’ll simply unlock a world of buyers with eBay International Shipping.”
The videos link to a landing page on the eBay website describing the eBay International Shipping program.
Members of the eBay shipping team will be on hand during next week’s chat session to answer sellers’ questions about shipping, where sellers may again raise the issue of combined orders through International Shipping.
How hard is to just limit combined shipping to same category items. But why expect that to change when eBay can’t even combine an unlimited number of items in one invoice. Why is there a limit on that? I lose sales all the time over that one.
In 6 yrs they can’t figure how to put combine shipping on the app, they’ll never do it on international shipping. Which is a shame, I’d do it in a heart beat if they did, I’m already shipping international without even knowing it, they opted me in even though I have no international shipping selected and I’m still getting buyers from different parts of the world. There’s no way to end it because I’ll have to redo “business policies” I already have 30+, every time you change one thing, another business policy.