eBay insights at ChannelAdvisor #EUCatalyst

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eBay revealed insights from their top 50 retailers at the ChannelAdvisor Catalyst conference. They covered the top pain points as well as the top five things that retailers wanted to learn and were hoping to pick up from Catalyst. Surprisingly the top 50 retailers have almost exactly the same issues as I as a small seller have.

Top five pain points of selling on eBay

  1. Fees
  2. International Selling
  3. Seller Protection
  4. Detailed Seller Ratings
  5. Stolen goods/Counterfiets
  6. Item Specifics and Multi-Variation Listings (especially in the fashion categories

There’s no real surprise that eBay fees are the biggest pain point as they are at the highest level ever in eBay’s history.

International selling is something that eBay really need to crack. David Brackin of Stuff U Sell told me “We do sell Internationally, but we could probably sell more if we could market properly. People buy from our eBay shop on eBay.co.uk, but we can’t open a shop on overseas eBay sites on the same eBay ID to fully market our products. To open a store on say eBay Germany we would have to open a brand new eBay ID plus there are different policies and legislation in different countries which means you’re more likely to fall foul of eBay Trust & Safety than sticking to eBay UK“.

The big surprise for me is that Item Specifics weren’t highlighted as a bigger problem, but it’s no surprise that it’s on the list. Recently Littlewoods highlighted Item Specifics as one of the greatest barriers to trading on eBay.

So now we know what the biggest problems are on eBay – what are sellers looking for and hoping to find at Catalyst.

Wish lists for top 50 eBay retailers

  1. New tools and Services
  2. Competitive landscape, what are their competition doing well
  3. Account Management, the opportunity to meet their account managers
  4. Guidance on Shipping best practices
  5. Information and updates (and preferably more!) Seller and Buyer protection

That’s the wish list of the top 50 eBay retailers and the biggest pain points they have. What would be on your wish list and what’s your current biggest pain point in selling on eBay?

6 Responses

  1. Interesting that search was not in the top 5 so maybe the top 50 sellers benefit from the best match default and the way ebay manipulates its search result.

    Maybe the top 50 sellers are experts at listing and manipulating their listings in such a way that they can beat the ebay search algorithm?

  2. Oh the irony.

    I get home from Catalyst to find that we’ve had a listing removed — for a second-hand pair of headphones because we’ve offered international shipping but the Brand owner has taken exception to that.

  3. The fact that I have now had 3 listings removed and was even banned from selling at one point because competitors report my listings and Ebay remove them without looking to see if they break any rules. I have had no help from their customer services, 3 emails that I was told to send have gone unanswered, one adviser told me there was nothing wrong with my listing (which there wasn’t) and an hour long argument on the phone resulted in me being told to email. So round the circle we go again. I found it strange how they could remove one listing because it broke rules when another virtually identical listing (only the colour was different) was perfectly fine, as were the other 6000+ listings that were very similar also listed at the time. I now only list half the amount I used to, and will eventually be moving away from Ebay completely. I don’t see why they deserve my hard earned cash when they don’t treat their own customers in the same manner they say we should ours. Double standards I think they call it.

  4. New tools and Services

    That should almost never be on anyone’s wishlist. If eBay doesn’t provide a service you want find someone who does. And if no one does pay someone to develop it for you. The only exception to this is when eBay leaves certain site functionality private.

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