eBay CEO Jamie Iannone said the company was listening and innovating to meet sellers’ needs, citing a recent survey eBay had conducted. “I’m excited to strengthen the partnerships we have with our sellers through new technology and tools that speak to their needs,” he said.
Iannone was referring to a survey commissioned in January of over 1,000 US sellers across a spectrum of sizes and categories.
The CEO linked to an eBay corporate blog that reported on the results, where the company stated the following:
“Despite a tough year for the global economy, the survey found that over half of eBay sellers grew their businesses on the marketplace in 2020, in part due to our latest tools and products. As just one example, of sellers who often use Terapeak — a data-driven research tool that provides sellers with essential eBay marketplace intelligence to improve their business — 32% grew their (total) businesses significantly in 2020 compared to just 23% of sellers who never use the tool.”
(Readers should note that while 2020 was indeed a tough year, one of the bright spots was online shopping.)
The survey also asked sellers what would be most helpful to growing their business in the future and found the following:
- Technology applications and features to support shipping (72%)
- Listing management tools (61%)
- Pricing tools (59%)
- Tools that improve the visual appeal of eBay Stores (45%)
- Sales reporting tools (34%)
- Insights tools that provide a dashboard of data about sellers’ businesses (30%)
“Our recent tech survey showed us where our tools have helped sellers stay the course and grow their businesses despite all the challenges of last year,” he said. Iannone took the helm at eBay in 2020 and has been touting his vision of “tech-led reimagination” of the marketplace.
In presentations, Harry Temkin, Vice President and Head of Seller Experience at eBay, has been focusing on his work to help sellers understand supply and demand on eBay to help them decide which products to sell through a tool called Terapeak Insights.
But he also revealed eBay has a new “backend data platform” and a “packed roadmap” and said he was excited about all the tools eBay was working on.
eBay conducted another survey this month (April 2021) in which it asked sellers to rate eBay’s performance for their “most recent selling experience.” The survey also asked sellers about how they felt about the brand, and whether they thought eBay shared their values and cared about sellers. Whether eBay will share any of the results in a blog post as it did with January’s survey results remains to be seen.
eBay also revealed in today’s post that it is working on a tool to enable local selling – read more and weigh in on whether you would use eBay for local selling on the EcommerceBytes Blog.
So once again Ebay picks out one topic from their numerous surveys to pat themselves on the back about. What would be really interesting is if Ebay were to publish the results of all of these surveys they do as I am sure they would show results that Ebay Sellers are not at all happy with Ebay and the lack of actions that they take. How about sending out a survey asking Sellers how happy they are with all of the fixes to the platform that Ebay has made in the last couple of years? I am sure you might have corrected one – but no glitch gets corrected if it is bringing more money into Ebays coffers than it should have done due to that glitch!!! Nor will Ebay willingly refund those overcharges except to the Seller who actually brings it up and forces them to admit it was a mistake. Rather than refund all the other Sellers they stole money from they just pass it off as a know problem and that is the last we hear about it on Ebay.