Yesterday, that Stores’ listings appearing at the end of search results will be enhanced a little: Gallery pictures will now be shown, and up to 50 listings will be shown (instead of the current 30). It’s only a small change, though I think that the Gallery change in particular will do a lot to make these items more attractive. But I wonder if this indicates changing hearts towards SIF listings in general?
It’s now since eBay banished stores’ listings from search results, increased SIF listings prices and promised a “back to basics” return to emphasis on core listings. Since then stores’ and shops’ listings have been the poor relations of eBay auctions and BINs, hidden away and left to sellers themselves to push.
But despite eBay’s emphasis on core listings, many sellers, myself included, find SIF to be an essential part of our mix of listings. If this is the beginning of a thaw in eBay’s attitude towards SIF, it will be very welcome.
7 Responses
Interesting that they’ve given them gallery on SIF in core search results – that’s something we’ve always had in the UK that the US didn’t. Really is about time eBay realised gallery sells and should be free on everything!
Sue, they will eventually get rid of insertion fees, except for Featured Listings and raise the FVF to 15%. Then it won’t matter if its Core or SIF.
Stephanie Tellenius alluded to that in yesterday’s Town Hall. She said their goal is to only charge for successful listings (my paraphrase)
BTW, eBay is launching the Seller Dashboard next week sometime in the US
Randy, bring it on! That would work beautifully for me. Sadly I think your “eventually” may be a way off yet.
There’s a certain eBayer who shall remain nameless (Steve are you listening? 😉 ) who says be careful what you wish for.
The problem with totally free unsuccessful listings is that either there’s a whole load of unsaleable junk listed or great products at unreasonable pricing, or eBay have to come up with a method to dissuade sellers from listing those unsaleable/badly priced products. The dissuasion methods could hurt more than the current model of listing fees 😯
Thanks Mountie, I’m completely aware of that. I see the dissuasion method in place already: I think it’s defending us from piles of crap even now. Remember all the categories I sell in are vulnerable to having Far Eastern manufacturers dump thousands of lines on eBay: I still say bring it on. I can and do compete entirely successfully with those people.
Chris, the whole point of Finding 2.0 and Best Match from what I gather is to surface the most relevant product listings so in theory, it really won’t matter how many cheap junk listings there are because nobody will ever see them. I don’t see listing fees going away entirely for awhile as Sue said. Even a 5 pence fee for SIF adds up with a ton of listings.
Exactly – the dissuasion method is already in place.