The head of Seller Experience at eBay posted a message to sellers to provide an update about its plans to bring more buyers to the site. In his blog post, Bob Kupbens also addressed some of the changes eBay is testing and rolling out but hadn’t announced to sellers. He also offered sellers advice about pricing and shipping and return policies.
Blog post by Bob Kupbens, eBay Vice President Seller Experience (pictured), follows:
Bob’s Blog: Bringing More Buyers and Sales to You in 2017
I hope you’re having an amazing 2017. Back in February, I posted about our 2017 plans to bring you more buyers and more sales – along with some new ways to make your selling easier and more profitable. As we’re mid-way through the year, I wanted to reach out again with an update on our progress.
As your partner at eBay, we aim to consolidate impactful changes that may require action on your part into seasonal seller updates so you have time to adapt – our spring and summer updates are examples.
At the same time, we are a company of continuous innovation, and we regularly evaluate new platform capabilities. These typically start with small-scale tests, and when we see positive results that benefit buyers and sellers, we want to bring these new features to the broader ecosystem right away.
Some recent examples:
Pricing guidance: From the Growth tab in Seller Hub you can now get real-time pricing guidance based on current market conditions. See price trends for your inventory, where you stand in relation to your competitors, and key restocking opportunities for your fast-moving items.
More opportunity for promoting your listings: You can now promote your single quantity and unique items for prime eBay placements to boost your visibility and sales. As always, promoted listings are risk-free: you pay only if your ad results in a sale.
Product reviews in more listings: Buyers can now see product reviews in your multi-variation listings – listings for items available in different sizes, colors, etc. – as well as single item listings. Another opportunity to drive increased sales.
A few things you may encounter that we’re currently testing:
Fewer unpaid items: To reduce unpaid items for all sellers, more transactions require buyers to “Confirm and Pay” immediately. Unless the buyer pays, your listing isn’t ended and your inventory quantity isn’t reduced.
Robust negotiations in Best Offer: We’re testing an increase in the number of communications in Best Offer to improve sales conversion. You can still limit contacts by setting up Best Offer to respond automatically.
We’ve also taken a few steps recently to benefit the marketplace:
Structured data. As we announced last year, new and manufacturer refurbished items in many categories must now have valid product identifiers to help buyers find what they’re looking for. Most likely you’re one of the vast majority of sellers whose listings are in great shape. But starting this month, listings missing valid identifiers will not be able to be revised and relisted, and starting in early September, Good ‘Til Cancelled listings will not automatically renew.
Stronger marketplace protection: Also starting this month for the small group of sellers who repeatedly violate important eBay policies like completing transactions outside of eBay checkout, their active listings will be suppressed from search and browse results in line with selling restrictions.
Duplicate and non-performing listings: To improve the speed and performance of the site, we recently completed an exercise of removing some listings that should be moving but haven’t had a sale for two years or more. That action is complete, but we continue to enforce eBay’s duplicate listing policy. If you have listings that haven’t sold for a year or more, we encourage you to update them to help your own sales.
Consider these performance-boosting adjustments:
– Be price competitive. Real-time pricing guidance is available in Seller Hub.
– Add images. Multiple photos go a long way to help the sale.
– Include all pertinent item specifics. This helps get your listing found in search.
– Offer free shipping and free returns. Free returns can boost sales up to 34%.
Again, we hope you’re enjoying strong sales in 2017 – we look forward to an excellent second half of the year!
SOURCE: eBay Blog Post
See what others are saying and leave a comment on the EcommerceBytes Blog.
Blab, Blab, Blab, Blab Same old Blab Blab Blab. Just like that other Ebay mouth piece, they just love to hear themselves talk. Blab Blab Blab Blab.
One has to be brain dead to even begin to believe a word this mouth piece has to say……
Really Bob,
How about listening to sellers and making things easier on us? Do you know that some of us are actually ethical and have agreements with the companies we buy our stock from that prohibit us from using product identifiers? Or that they prohibit the use of their photography? How about cracking down on the sellers that are blatant in breaking rules, like using copyrighted material (photography and descriptions) without permission?
Thanks for putting us between a rock and a hard place. Do we follow your rules and risk getting banned from our product sources? How about letting us prove that our sources are legit (through a scanned copy of a purchase order) rather than making us use identifiers that might cause us trouble.