We’ve broken out the main news for the first (links below), but it’s worth taking a look at why eBay are making the changes coming to the site in the next few months.
Online selling is growing faster than ever before, but with that comes more demanding buyers with higher expectations. That might sound like a line from the spin doctors at eBay, but in this case they’re right. Think about when you buy online (not necessarily on eBay). If you make a purchase today on Tuesday you won’t be particularly surprised if your items turns up in tomorrows post. If it arrives on Thursday you’ll be happy, but if it doesn’t arrive before the weekend the chances are you’ll be wondering where your item is.
Buyers want fast and increasingly flexible delivery and there are other things becoming the norm too. Buyers want great images with zoom and either rotate or views from multiple sides. Importantly they don’t want unpleasant surprises, they want and expect a superb buying experience to be the norm and this seller release is all about helping, cajoling and forcing sellers to provide that service.
Many sellers will be largely unaffected by much of this seller release – they’ll already be meeting most of the standards eBay are aiming for. For others there will be some work to do to bring their listings and service up to standard.
The biggest impact will be around Top Rated Seller standards and offering both free and 24 hour shipping (either free 24 hour, or one free option and one 24 hour option). There are some fee changes but there are also a ton of savings, both in direct fees and for third party services:
Nickel and diming
There’s not a lot to worry about as far as fees go in this seller release, but to bring all financial changes into one place they are:
- 12 Free pictures on all listings
- Basic shop cost rises £5, Featured shop fee rises £10
- 20 free listings for basic shops, 60 free listings of featured shops
- Top Rated Seller final value fees only on qualifying listings
- Picture Pack retired
- Discounts on third party management/listing tools
- Zero insertion fees on selected international sites for Anchor Shops
- Access to very competitive international courier rates
- Free listing visibility to buyers from emerging markets
- Initiatives to reduce unpaid items (BIN and Best Offers)
- Opportunity for free exposure on Google with Product Identifiers
- Ticket sales to be through StubHub
- Removal of minimum £1 donation for eBay for Charity sales
The New eBay (eBay Feed)
Hidden away in the seller release is confirmation that the New eBay and eBay Feed is coming to the UK in the near future. We’ll let you know when we start seeing it being rolled out.
5 Responses
How ironic that having sent us an email explaining the importance of a seamless online shopping experience, none of the links they provide actually work… the videos crash, the links crash…I despair.
If you’re going to tell Grannies how to suck eggs, at least get your own site ready before patronising us with advice on how to run ours.
Why on earth in the past week have i had alod of cases brought against me? what have they changed? ive gone from never having a case for lost item/description etc to ten this week. wtf?