eBay has announced that for eBay.com listings it will become a in all listings. For new sellers this will be an immediate requirement and roll out to all sellers in the near future.
Shipping costs will become part of the Best Match requirements, if a shipping cost is significantly higher than for other products in a particular sub-category the listing is could be disadvantaged in search.
This will have implications for how sellers list product, for instance if you’re offering a product which is heavier than competitors products you could be disadvantaged in search. Sellers offering products from abroad could also find their listings appearing lower down in search results due to international shipping costs.
One area this will impact is sellers offering multiple items – it’s not clear if will be taken out of the average price shipping calculation, although arguably these products should be in the although many sellers will list in a second category for maximum exposure.
Sellers need to be aware that offering the cheapest shipping option may not be the best tactic to adopt. Whilst buyers may often select the default cheapest option they’re not likely to remember this when ranking sellers with Detailed Seller Ratings.
Offering fair postage options at realistic prices and most importantly communicating exactly how long transit times are will become more important than ever. If you do offer several different postage services ensure you set out clearly in your listing what they are along with the associated costs.
Gaming best match is going to be an interesting experiment and one that sellers are bound to attempt cracking. The chances are high however that the best sellers need to do little other than carry on giving great service, if you’re not gouging on shipping costs you’re unlikely to be disadvantaged in search based on postage costs.
7 Responses
It’s going to make life very difficult for me if it comes to the UK.
Gosh: eBay have learnt the meaning of ‘interventionist’.
next step is to dictate the postage cost
Amazon do it,,,,it’s just another hoop.
I like the idea as I am charging one of the lowest prices in my category (though I sell in the wholesale category as well, so I hope eBay will go easy on that).
Overall, it seems eBay is stepping up and finally taking a move to stabilize the site and to get the confidence back from buyers.
As a seller, I don’t like all the changes eBay is doing. I know it will take sometime for buyers and sellers to get used to the new changes and eBay is going to have to modify some of the changes they are doing, but I believe eBay is doing the right thing.
hi chris,
” Sellers need to be aware that offering the cheapest shipping option may not be the best tactic to adopt ”…
too right, especially considering…
paypal only recognise more expensive recorded delivery proof of postage, when deliberating over a buyers ‘item undelivered’ claim, sellers are indeed best advised to not use cheapest option.
ebay are currently promoting/highlighting free postage listings – isn’t this deceptive, surely it can’t be free, it’s built into purchase price, unless the sellers gone bonkers, they own royal mail, or are only selling downloads ?
ebay are shining the promo’ spotlight on least expensive shipping too.
how about ebay making some effort to inform buyers that cheapest is not always best – especially where shipping is concerned – nice to see that in the ”how to buy on ebay ” tour for new buyers.
all this free and cheapest shipping promo’ we fear will lead to bad buyer expierience, will ebay take any blame for that?
or, as ever, will it be sellers bearing the brunt, penalised thru dsr and feedback ratings disqualifying one from discounts ?
hmmnnnn who can profit in that 😉
best regards,
J.T.
Scot Wingo has pointed out that specifying shipping costs for US sellers using 3rd party listing tools effectively bars sellers from using the eBay shipping calculator as the API doesn’t allow access to this tool.
The shipping calculator allows sellers to offer different postage rates according to which State the buyer and seller reside in to reflect actual postage rates charged by UPS/USPS