eBay June Seller Check In
Note from Liz - this post is not meant to be an exhaustive synopsis of the June eBay Seller Check In. I've chosen to highlight sections I personally found interesting, but I always encourage watching for yourself to get the full experience.
0:01 - 2:25 | Welcome – Rebecca Michals, Director, Seller Engagement and Community
2:25 - 8:27 | Seller news roundup and seller offsite marketing tips — Andrea Stairs, VP Seller Community and CMO, North America
8:27 - 21:45 | eBay’s Buyer Experience strategy — Bradford Shellhammer, VP, Buyer Experience & GM, eBay New York
21:46 - 36:06 | Leveraging structured data for SEO and Search — Mohan Patt, VP, Core Product Experience
36:06 - 52:46 | Onsite marketing promotions strategies and demos — Harry Temkin, VP, Seller Experience
Seller news roundup and seller offsite marketing tips — Andrea Stairs, VP Seller Community and CMO, North America
Andrea first touches on eBay's Reopen Report, eBay Authentication for Handbags, and a recent seller spotlight.
She went on to share tips from eBay sellers for offsite social media marketing as well as onsite marketing like Promoted Listings and Seller Initiated Offers.
eBay’s Buyer Experience strategy — Bradford Shellhammer, VP, Buyer Experience & GM, eBay New York
Bradford starts out with an explanation of eBay's buyer strategy. It's clear eBay is still pushing the "vertical" approach, but also focusing on new buyer retention.
Next he talks about some of the new experiences that have rolled out as part of eBay's multi-year tech led reimagination of the platform, giving the example of the eTag for Sneaker Authentication as a magical experience that delights buyers. I'll just say my experience with the eTag was less than magical and I hope it works better for other buyers.
Another example given was eBay's recent efforts to improve options for personalization. Hopefully they are also addressing some of the issues with this feature, most importantly the limitations of using eBay messaging to pass the personalized info which may be blocked if it contains email addresses or phone numbers.
Encouraging repeat buying - eBay is introducing the ability to search purchase history in My eBay as well as prompting buyers to add a seller to their "saved sellers" list if they leave positive feedback.
Leveraging structured data for SEO and Search — Mohan Patt, VP, Core Product Experience
High Quality Listings
- Focus on titles and aspects, using eBay recommended title and item specifics
- Use the new video in listing feature to showcase the item
- Use clean images with white background
Mohan highly recommends using the background removal tool. I have to wonder if he's tried using it himself? I've tried it both in the app and on desktop and found it to be a very clunky experience that doesn't produce great results. I've also seen some live on site examples that leave a bit to be desired.
Post Transaction Experiences
One interesting note here is eBay seems to be bringing back handling time to the listings, at least for same day or one day handling times.
We also started showing sellers who do same day shipping, next day shipping. This is a signal we have on the view item page so buyers understand that this inventory is quickly handled by the seller and sent as fast as it can be. So if you can do those, utilize those because we are going to promote those as really positive signals to our buyers.
eBay stopped showing the actual handling time on listings years ago, much to the dismay of many sellers.
Even worse, often eBay will ignore the actual handling time set by the seller when calculating the estimated delivery date, instead using "average actual handling time" instead. This means if you normally ship in 1 business day, but have 3 business day handling on some items, eBay will often us the one business day average when calculating the delivery date shown to the buyer.
It's refreshing to see eBay reversing course on this at least slightly and recognizing that it benefits both buyers and sellers to show the handling time on the listing.
Speaking of handling time issues, Mohan also talked about the "Free in X Days" badging that replaced the previous "Fast & Free" signal for buyers. Several sellers reported issues with this new feature showing "Free In 4 Days" on items that had a 10 day handling time - so there may still be some kinks to be worked out here.
Onsite marketing promotions strategies and demos — Harry Temkin, VP, Seller Experience
Harry starts out with a high level overview of the main promotional tools available to sellers.
Harry's demo was mostly just showing how and where to find the different promotions, not much new here.
There are some new updates to the sales reporting functions. You can now go back and view a full year of sales data as well as filtering sales by Promoted Listings or Offers To Buyers.
Instead of the usual Q & A section to close out this seller check in, Andrea made the announcement that Harry Temkin will be leaving eBay to pursue other opportunities. No date or other details have been release at this time.
Liz Morton
