Everyone who sells on eBay should be taking a look at the slides from today’s investor presentation, one of the first views of how eBay will move forward after the split from PayPal.
First up is eBay’s mission statement: “eBay will be the world’s most vibrant marketplace for discovering great value and unique selection”. Note they say “will be” and not “is”, there is work to do.
Next interesting stats are that 75% of sales are business to consumer, 76% are new items and 80% are now sold in the fixed price format. 52% of sales are now “touched” by mobile, even if the sale is completed on a desktop mobile comes into play for more than half of all sales on eBay.
eBay’s core customers
eBay categorised 3 core customers in their investor presentation:
Core Buyers
Attributes: Enjoys Shopping; Loves Great Deals; Wants Unique Selection
SMB Sellers
Wish List: Sales Velocity; Business Intelligence; Fair Standards
Consumer Sellers
Wish List: Easy to List/Sell; Price Realisation; Secure Payments
What’s interesting here is that in recent years eBay has put a lot of effort into attracting large merchants to sell on the marketplace. It turns out that they aren’t eBay’s core customers regardless of how much GMV they bring. The core sellers are the small to medium size retailers (i.e. the majority of Tamebay readers).
Structured Data
Expect eBay to move towards more catalogue listings and insist on GTINs amd MPNs in an ever increasing number of categories. As each individual eBay listing is created by an individual seller, eBay need data points to identify products for effective marketing.
eBay’s Future Direction
eBay gave five key indicators to their future direction. Have a think about how they may impact you and your business:
- Focus on our core buyers and sellers
- Showcase our spectrum of value and unique selection
- Leverage data to drive a better user experience
- Invest in structured data to improve discoverability
- Create engaging, multiscreen product experiences
17 Responses
While the larger merchants weren’t their core customer, having household, high street names on the site has helped improve eBay’s image.
Yey ebay want my business again. They should have thought of that before they gave it to the chinese!
They finally seem to have cottoned on to what buyers and sellers have been saying for the past 2 years. Cautiously optimistic but most my sales these days are through another dedicated site and physical cabinets. Theyre going to have to work hard to get folks back onside.
Some glossy speak in the presentation but there are certainly challenges ahead with the Seo and search. They want a catalogue but they want unique items?? Hmm.
I really don’t care what they do. They will never have my business again as a buyer or a seller.
Translation:
We’ve cocked it up so badly that large volume sellers are abandoning us.
So let’s ditch the few that remain and focus on smaller sellers who can be bullied and fleeced.
I am in a different position to most other sellers. I want to clear my stock so I can retire. I would be very happy to be able to list many more items. But my sales on popular lines have almost disappeared and I find myself wondering about where the buyers have gone. ebay should immediately re-instate the Free Listing Weekend and indeed increase the numbers of items that can be listed during such a weekend from 100 to perhaps 1,000
Then and only then will I be convinced that ebay really wants to attract back the small seller.
Perhaps they should make up with Google and get listings back on the search engine.
Ebay has faults but its miles better than Amazon.
After 11 years on Amazon with a 100% record my account was closed down by Amazon.
Reaon: Auto-bot flagged my account because not enough of my buyers left feedback after purchase.
Despite no problems and happy buers –
No claims, no defects and everything posted with tracking – My account was suspended then shutdown within 10 days.
Worst customer service I have ever experienced.