The timing of eBay's seventh user conference was good in some ways, because eBay heard directly from sellers about how recent changes were affecting their businesses. It had only been one month since the radical changes to feedback were made. But on a public-relations level, it was not so good. Attendance was down noticeably, and sellers voiced a lot of negativity, which received attention in the press.
Still, with users playing catch-up from the last wave of changes to platform and policy, eBay used the event to announce even more changes.
If you haven't read the June 20th Announcement Board post, do so now, and also read the AuctionBytes blog post about the changes. There is a lot to absorb, including requirements around specifying return policy (and if you have a return policy, specifying Who Pays for Return); specifying handling time; and specifying item condition.
Remove any links to 3rd-party sites to stay in compliance with recent updates to eBay's Links Policy (Read our previous announcement).
Specify shipping, return policy, item condition & handing time in the specified fields. This information will be required soon so now's the perfect time to get started.
Remove any email addresses from your listing descriptions by September.
The specified shipping and no-links policies had already been announced, but eBay has yet to clarify its no-links policy.
eBay is anonymizing email addresses from bidders until a sale is completed
There are many questions about how to cope with all of the changes announced at the Developers Conference and at eBay Live. Many sellers want to know if they have to revise hundreds or thousands of listings now to comply with changes going into effect this month, only to have to make revisions as more changes roll out over time.
For example, one question on eBay's FAQs about the June 20th announcement is, "When will critical item information become required?" The answer is, "Shipping cost and service will be required in July. Handling time and return policy will be required sometime in or near October."
Some sellers are also concerned how the new Item page might affect their listings and templates. One reader wrote me, "I would love to see a live listing with the new format. Ebay has not been at all helpful each time I have asked. Most template designers, created all their templates for 800px and so now none are going to fit so who knows what is ahead for everyone when they try to load in an "over-sized" template into the space allocated."
It appears there may also be tweaks to policies as well as a fee change before the holidays. Specifically, it appears eBay is considering some form of feedback withdrawal mechanism, though not as broad as the former Mutual Feedback Withdrawal policy. Despite changes to make it easier for large sellers to sell on the site, there were also a lot of reassurances from executives at the conference that eBay still wanted small sellers on the platform.
On the last day of eBay Live, I put some thoughts together in a blog post entitled, "Disconnect at eBay as It Moves toward Amazonification." Wall Street analyst Scott Devitt of Stifel, Nicolaus & Company wrote about the shift in a recent research note, "In structured content categories, eBay may shift to an Amazon "buy box" format rather than the listing format default."
eBay is making changes this year that encompass Trust & Safety, Search (finding), Feedback, Shipping and financial incentives. But I did not hear eBay share their overall vision. And the sellers who make eBay a vibrant, unique place really needed to hear the long-term vision in order to get them through this rough period.
eBay has an army of book authors and education specialists that could be a major part of its public relations effort to restore buyer and seller confidence in the site. But the few I spoke to at the conference were not engaged and in fact seemed disheartened. They seem to be joining the mass of sellers who are looking, not necessarily to abandon eBay, but to expand beyond eBay to seek additional opportunities.
Last month, we started a discussion about multi-channel selling with a column called "EcommBytes - Let's Talk Storefronts." It generated some excellent discussion on the Blog, please keep it going.
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
