eBay For Business Podcast Reveals New Features For Mobile App
This week's eBay for Business podcast featured Chuck Van Pelt from the Seller Advocacy Team discussing new features out now or coming soon to the eBay mobile app.
Here's what's in store for sellers who use the mobile app:
Sale Events & Markdowns
I think most sellers who have a store subscription understand the value of a sale event, being able to promote their items and generate more sales, increase sell through with these events. And in the past you could do that from your web browser. And that was it. Now we're rolling out the capability to start a sale event right from your phone.
I do want to qualify this by pointing out that you do have to be a store subscriber to use sale events...
...If you go to the app, you tap on the Sell Tab and then on Active Listings and then you tap on the Action Button, there'll be a little Action Button up top left and select Create Sale Event. From there you can um, scroll through all your listings, you can use the existing sort and refinement tools and there'll be a little checkbox next to each item in the list.
Recommendations On Active Listings
Coming soon, sellers may start seeing recommendations on their active listing screen with suggestions to sell it faster for each item.
So what eBay's going to do is analyze all of your listings and we're gonna make determinations about what would have the highest likelihood of improving your sell through. And then we will offer those things to you. We will provide links and advice to you on all of these items.
Now this is all course at your discretion. There's nothing forced on you. You'll never be required to do any of these things, but it's just another way that we are trying to use the power of, I hate to say AI, but there is some kind of algorithm at play that looks at your items and does analysis and you'll benefit from that advice.
Both Sale Events and "Sell It Faster" recommendations in the app were announced as part of the Winter 2024 Seller update, with recommendations already being live for actions relating to sending offers to buyers but Chuck says the feature will evolve to include a more holistic view of listings, providing data to help sellers improve listings beyond Promoted Listings ads and discounts.
I can't go into too much detail, um, because I think a lot of the things are still being kinda worked out in how the algorithm will work.
But I would say it's more a holistic view of your listings and things you can do. Not necessarily promoting listings or spending money, but things you can do for no cost other than your time to go in and and improve those items.
Immediate Pay On Seller Initiated Offers
Chuck also confirmed that the changes to immediate payment for Seller Initiated Offers announced in the update are currently on rolled out to about 50% of users.
Chuck:...when a buyer accepts an offer, the buyer will have to check out and complete the payment when they accept the offer. This will reduce any opportunity for an unpaid item, of course.
Griff: I've already been subjected to this as a buyer and it was quite an easy experience...I must be part of a group during this rollout where my user ID was part of that because I'm seeing it already as a, as a buyer.
Chuck: Yeah. Well that's very observant and you're one of the lucky 50% currently.
So some sellers may have noticed a recent change which is rolled out at 50% right now. You've probably heard this before. We don't always roll things out at a hundred percent. We like to do it gradually and make sure everything's going smooth. We like to compare before and after. Currently items with offers under consideration will still be available for purchase until a payment is received from a buyer.
So basically that means in the past, offers under consideration would take an item out of the marketplace and that's not gonna be the case anymore.
Changes To Picking Flow
When you are a seller and you need to pick items out of your inventory to ship, we've made some improvements to how that flow works. Now, historically we've had the web and then we had the mobile device. And the mobile device of course is to me it's the perfect tool.
If you have a large amount of inventory, you need to walk around and carrying that device is a great way to do it. I heard from a lot of sellers the same that they use their mobile devices and one of the points I heard a lot of is they need to be able to see an enlarged view of their items, images when they're pulling items to ship...
...It used to be that it took, and I counted this, you're on the screen, that's where your items are paid and ready to ship nine taps to get to a zoomable item image on the mobile device.
And then you get back to the original screen and now it's at the top of the screen. You have to scroll down again. It's one of the things that frustrated me the most as a seller and fortunately as an eBay employee, I've also been able to influence and share the need from sellers that this is something we needed to address.
So the good news is currently, at least on iOS and on the web, you should see when you go to the screen that lists all your items to be shipped a small icon in the upper right corner of the thumbnail image for each item. Now one tap on that icon will get you to a quick view of the enlarged image gallery along with the quantity of the items sold and the custom SKU all clearly displayed.
And then the image, you can swipe through all the images for that listing. You swipe left and right, you can see them all. You can also tap and zoom in and see a closer view if you want. Now from there you can just dismiss the whole view just with one tap and then you're back to the exact same place on the listing screen that you were before.
Griff also announced the podcast will be changing name soon from the eBay for Business podcast to the eBay for Sellers podcast to be "more inclusive" - which may strike some sellers as off, considering the recent announcement that the monthly community chat is being discontinued, cutting off a critical opportunity for sellers to engage with eBay.
Liz Morton
Marketing Operations Event Coordinator, Kayomi Kayoshi, will also be taking over co-hosting duties as longtime eBay seller experience and community engagement manager Brian Burke is retiring March 1.
