eBay Mobile App Traffic Analytics Launch Stumbles Amid Technical Hiccups
eBay announced today that traffic and performance insights for sellers are now available in the mobile app experience, but in classic fashion the new features appears to be not ready for primetime and may be the cause of technical glitches reported last week.
Performance Insights are now live on the eBay mobile app for iOS and Android users as of October 14th. This update is designed to help you understand and improve your business performance directly from your phone.
What You Can Do with Performance Insights:
- View real-time traffic graphs
- Track listing views and impressions
- Monitor click-through rates
- Break down traffic sources
Why This Matters:
You can now monitor the performance of your listings on the go. Performance Insights provides the critical data you need to make informed decisions directly from your phone, wherever you are.Benefits:
The new Performance Insights feature is designed to help you, whether you're managing high-volume listings or tracking specific items. With this tool, you can understand traffic patterns and performance metrics, supporting you in optimizing your listings and enhancing your business performance.Take Action:
Start using Performance Insights today to enhance your efficiency. Make data-driven decisions to help boost your business right from your mobile device.To access Performance Insights, open your eBay app, click into the Selling tab, and scroll down to the Jump to… Performance button, with the graphs icon.
That all sounds great in theory, but one Value Added Resource reader says the feature is clearly not ready for prime time, showing either no information or clearly incorrect data in the app compared to the same reports in the desktop experience.
Here's what the new Performance Insights feature in the app shows for this seller when selecting Today, 30 days, and 90 days timeframes:
Compared to Today, 30 days, and 90 days for the same account on desktop:
But even worse than an embarassing not ready for prime time launch of a new app feature, sellers have been reporting intermittent problems with the traffic page in the desktop experience as well, prompting questions about whether tinkering for the new feature may have caused a technical issue there as well.
So the traffic page on my one site went 90% blank, my other site was ok for a while but then it went blank, it's the only page that is not working on ebay. It did come back last night for a couple hours then went out again, I have tried clearing cache ect. it's blank under any browser I use.
Everything on the internet is working great except this one ebay page. I have tried everything I can think of, need some more ideas.This is all I get, got to be my computer but it is the only page that does not work on the whole internet, I'm lost. It comes and goes right now it's gone.
So today, something felt off, so I tried to go in to check my traffic, the page won't load, when it finally did, after numerous attempts, I was surprised to see everything down over 80% over halfway through the day, of course CS says nothing is wrong.... I'm soo tired of all these bugs, glitches, and games...
I am not even getting the graph at all. Thought it might just be me. Rebooted and still nothing. Guess it is not just me!
It's not uncommon for technical issues and unintended glitches to occur when eBay rolls out new features, so while making a chance to add information to the app in theory shouldn't break the web experience, we can't rule it out as a possible explanation.
Sadly, it's also not uncommon for eBay to struggle with tech misexecution - it's a decades long battle that only seems to be getting worse as they attempt to plug modern AI into more aspects of the user experience on top of almost 3 decades of tech debt.
Previous CEO, Devin Wenig, faced tough questions about technical failures at eBay Open in 2018, with the interviewer for the live Q&A segment bluntly asking what he was going to do about all of the site glitches.
Here's the simple answer - unacceptable, unacceptable. And we're making a lot of changes. When you make changes there are times that things happen but that's not an excuse and it's not ok with me and this summer in particular there have been a number of issues that directly impacted sellers like people not being able to see their view counts and a few other things and it's just not ok.
I'm extremely proud of a lot of things we've done, I'm not proud of that and in fact I hold my team accountable and it's not important, it's an internal matter but, we made changes to people and teams because shipping product that isn't ready is not ok. It's not ok with me and it's not ok with my team.
So the short answer is it's not like we don't get it. We are making a lot of changes and I want to make those changes, we need to make those changes, but making changes and then having to back up and fix things is not cool and I totally get it. Most of the issues from this summer have now been remedied but I was pissed off.
A few months later, activist investor Elliott Management put a very public shot across the bow, calling out management failures at the company, including specific mention of technical problems and operational challenges that plagued the site (emphasis mine).
...As an online marketplace that provides a critical forum for millions of buyers and sellers, the efficient and effective functioning of the platform is paramount. Unfortunately, eBay has been plagued by technical problems and operational challenges for years...
...Fast forward to recent years and the platform still faces issues. In 2018, eBay sellers complained about countless technical issues including incorrect billing, lost photos, warped titles and many others. On this month’s end of year podcast, eBay senior management apologized to sellers and admitted, “This is a 2018 that we don’t want to repeat on a number of levels. And the technology issues that we have had with the platform is top of the list.”
We agree: The consistent reliability of the platform is central to eBay’s success, and management must do all that it takes to achieve it.
While innovative endeavors in new pursuits like machine learning and augmented reality are promising future technologies, eBay’s publicly touted initiatives in these areas will add little value if the core platform continues to have critical functionality failures.
Mazen Rawashdeh, who was Chief Infrastructure and Architecture Officer at that time, managed to escape a "pissed off" Wenig's wrath, not only keeping his job but somehow also being promoted to Chief Technology Officer 2019 - a position he still holds today.
Unfortunately, the site still continues to be plagued with technical issues, but rather than addressing them head-on or considering the possible need for a leadership change, eBay appears to be more interested in leveraging media connections and PR to gain positive press for Rawashdeh, "position eBay as a top-tier technology company" and "further the company narrative."
Liz Morton
Pro tip: if you want the world to think you are a top-tier technology company, maybe you should do the work to actually become a top-tier technology company, so you can reap organic earned media rewards for positive performance.
Are you seeing technical issues with eBay's traffic and performance reports either in Seller Hub on the web experience or the new feature in the app? Let us know in the comments below!
