eBay UK has announced a new test this morning, which will see “seller merchandising” displayed on live listings:
Starting on 20 January, we will be running a test on displaying merchandise at the bottom of view item pages for a small percentage of active listings. You may begin to see relevant merchandise including merchandise from other sellers on active view item pages during the next couple of weeks.
(Emphasis mine.)
This will be, presumably, similar to the cross promotions that run at other times: when a buyer has bid or bought, in emails and on ended listings. Currently, for example, on an ended listing, there are
- 8 “recommendations”, which are normally from other sellers and may or may not have something to do with the ended item or other things you’ve bought (they’re giving me size 10 strappy tops at the moment, which for anyone who’s ever met me, you’ll know is as much of a “no” as you could ever get for my shopping), plus
- 4 “more from same seller” which does what it says on the tin
There is, it should be said, no way to restrict items that are shown. You either opt in to cross-promotions and have other people’s items shown on your own listings, as well as yours on theirs, or you opt out altogether.
As eBay will doubtless point out, this is only a test on a small number of seller’s listings. But I think we’ve all seen enough tests to know that this week’s test is next week’s roll-out for everyone. If you’re one of the sellers with cross-promos on your listings, leave us a comment (and a link if you like). How do you feel about this? And is it affecting your sales?
Until now, I’ve always plumped on the side of “keep them on eBay” with cross-promotions. I can live with other people’s items on my closed listings. But on live listings, I’m less keen. Going through all that work to get seen in Best Match and to get a buyer to click to the point where they can buy, only to have them distracted by a whole bunch of other merchandise, is painful. What do you think – will you be allowing cross-promotions on your listings, or turning them off?
If you want to change how cross-promotions are displayed on your listings, .
33 Responses