eBay is making a major announcement on Monday, CEO John Donahoe told Wall Street. This the second of two announcements this year that eBay is making that affect sellers - the first announcement was made in April and those changes rolled out in June. The second set of changes, called "SR2," will roll out in about 60 days, prior to the holiday shopping season.
Donahoe gave an inkling to Wall Street analysts about two of the upcoming changes during Wednesday's conference call on second-quarter earnings, and the Wall Street Journal published an article on Saturday outlining a number of changes its sources say are on the way.
AuctionBytes also heard from sources about what changes eBay has been considering, much of which we've reported in AuctionBytes over the past week. Today, we try to put it all together in a "cheat sheet" of what may be coming in Monday's announcement.
Changes to the PowerSeller program are significant and are likely to be the most controversial. The Wall Street Journal described Monday's announcement as "designed to help large vendors sell new goods in greater volumes," and longtime eBay sellers will likely feel that some of those changes disadvantage them. Indeed, eBay may restrict access to Featured First to Top Rated sellers only, and may even do away with other optional features that draw attention to a seller's listing.
The changes to the PowerSeller program appear to be, in effect, a fee increase, given that eBay is reducing discounts for many sellers. In addition, some may perceive certain policies as being unfair to sellers and also possibly requiring them to edit their listings yet again, a process that can be time-intensive.
There are lingering suspicions that eBay ignores or perhaps even manipulates low DSRs and negative feedback ratings for favored sellers and Diamond PowerSellers, resulting in lower fees and better exposure on the site to the detriment of smaller, long-time sellers. Monday's announcement may help fuel those suspicions among some users.
Some sellers will welcome the expansion of multi-variation listings and having more data in the new Search Visibility Report. Other policies may get mixed reviews, such as the new Unpaid Item Process.
Keep in mind that nothing is official until eBay announces it on Monday. The company will be hold a Town Hall meeting on July 29 at 3:30 pm PST to discuss the changes.
eBay will expand its
Multi-variation Fixed Price feature to more categories, which is currently available only
in subcategories of Clothing, Shoes & Accessories and Home & Garden
(http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/listing-variations.html).
Top Rated Seller
and PowerSeller Program
eBay will introduce
new PowerSeller requirements and will introduce a "Top-Rated Seller" designation
for PowerSellers.
eBay will raise the minimum DSR criteria for PowerSellers
from 4.5 to 4.6 and introduce a new requirement based on the percentage of low DSR
ratings.
A new DSR rate calculation based on the percentage of low
DSR ratings (1 and 2's) will classify sellers into Underperformer; Valued/Casual;
PowerSeller; or Top Rated. Only DSRs from domestic buyers will factor in the Low Score
calculation.
High volume sellers will be evaluated on a 3-month period,
all other sellers will be evaluated on a 12-month period, for DSR calculations - there
will be no deduping.
eBay will remove PowerSeller branding from buyer-facing
pages. Only Top-Rated Sellers will have a badge appear in listings and public pages.
Top-Rated Sellers will receive increased exposure in Best
Match and receive 20% FVF and 20% Free Shipping discounts.
PowerSellers will receive "neutral" exposure in
Best Match and will receive 5% FVF and 10% Free Shipping discounts.
Valued/Casual sellers will receive "neutral"
exposure in Best Match and will receive no discounts. Under-performing sellers will be
demoted in Best Match search and will receive no discounts.
eBay will outline
seller responsibilities, here are some of the provisions:
eBay will prohibit sellers from making certain kinds of
statements in their listings, such as asking buyers for high DSR ratings or saying they
are not responsible for the item once it has been placed in the mail.
To ensure product availability, sellers may not list
out-of-stock items or list an item they are selling outside of eBay.
When offering free shipping, no other fees related to
shipping, handling, insurance or packaging can be charged.
Sellers may not use stock photos for used, refurbished or
flawed items.
Sellers should use tracking, delivery confirmation or
signature confirmation, and if offered to the buyer, sellers must charge only what they
cost.
Sellers aren't allowed to use profane or offensive language.
Insurance Policy
(Part of new Seller Responsibilities policy)
Sellers will not be
allowed to charge a separate fee for insurance, although they still need to make sure
their item arrives as described. Sellers may incorporate any insurance fees into an item's
price or handling cost.
A new Search
Visibility Report will show sellers their product rankings and help them compare their
results with competing listings by category and by keyword.
The Search Visibility Report will display the actual page
number and position. Sellers will be able to download CSV files that will include a Best
Match Sort Order to help identify under-performing listings.
Sellers will be able to see the price range and shipping
cost range of all other listings for one of their products, along with the % of sellers
who offer free shipping and how many listings for that product are in auction format vs.
fixed price. They will also see the % of Top Rated sellers and the percentage of listings
that utilized Catalog product details.
The report will display Impressions; Unique click-throughs;
Click-through rate (an indicator of the listing's appeal in search results);
Sales/impressions (the % of search impressions resulting in sales, a score that affects
Best Match); and Sales/unique click-throughs - an indicator of an Item page's
effectiveness. It will also display the number of watchers.
eBay will implement an automatic UPI process for payments
for fixed-price items for sellers who accept PayPal or ProPay and use its checkout system.
The automatic UPI system would take days, rather than weeks.
A manual process would apply to all formats and payment
methods, and would have a timeframe of about 2 - 3 weeks.
Under the new UPI process, sellers' feedback would not be
dinged by non-paying customers. Additionally, eBay would block sellers from filing a UPI
claim when the buyer has paid via PayPal or ProPay.
eBay has a
PayPal/eBay Top Buyer program, and eBay will introduce a VIP program at some point in the
future as part of its eBay Bucks loyalty program for top buyers to receive special
customer service and special offers from eBay and its partners. (eBay executives'
compensation include Net Promoter loyalty criteria.)
New View Item page
eBay has surveyed
users on yet another View Item page redesign, this one limiting sellers to what
information can be included and where, see article for details (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m07/i16/s00).
This change may not be part of SR2.
Wall Street
Journal
The Wall Street
Journal published an article speculating on Monday's announcement. The newspaper,
citing sources familiar with eBay's plans, said the changes are "designed to help
large vendors sell new goods in greater volumes" and eBay will:
Limit communications between buyers and sellers.
Tweak its search algorithm to favor new products.
Allow sellers to include more and bigger photos in their
listings for free.
Do away with features that sellers have used to dress up
their listings.
Introduce a series of categories to describe an item's
condition.
Skip McGrath said on
his blog that advertising banners that appear at the top of search results will be
curtailed beginning later this year, according to a source inside eBay. http://blog.skipmcgrath.com/public/item/236549
Other Changes
eBay will introduce
more category-based changes, such as category-based fees, Shipping & Handling
maximums, and an expansion of catalog items.
In
addition, it seems possible eBay may do away with Store Inventory Format as they have in
other countries, such as they announced earlier this month in Australia (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m07/i15/s01),
but we have no insight into eBay.com's timetable.
About the author:
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.
eBay is making a major announcement on Monday, CEO John Donahoe told Wall Street. This the second of two announcements this year that eBay is making that affect sellers - the first announcement was made in April and those changes rolled out in June. The second set of changes, called "SR2," will roll out in about 60 days, prior to the holiday shopping season.
