eBay displaying other sellers' items on your live listings
19/01/2010 at 11:39
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.) Here’s the announcement.
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, here are the instructions on how to do so.
Richard says
12:11 pm on 19/01/2010
This has been on the back burner ever since they changed to the new listing design/layout.
How long before you can’t opt out I wonder?
Why would anyone pay an insertion fee, create a great listing, research keyowrds then have someone elses listings done without any care dumped onto there’s?
File this one under “Which idiot thought this one up”. I dispair some days at the idiotic ideas eBay come up with.
Sue Bailey says
12:14 pm on January 19th, 2010
How long before you can’t opt out I wonder?
My thought also.
Question: would you feel differently if there were no insertion fee to pay?
Gary says
12:23 pm on January 19th, 2010
I would feel differently if I got some reward for helping to boost the traffic of others. Listing fees are pennies so that is not a big enough carrot. A cut in final value fees to 5% and I may be motivated to opt in. Or a 5p fee credit for each time a click through takes place on my live listings!
It will be interesting to see how the sellers with some muscle (Outlets?) reeact to this.
Richard says
12:29 pm on January 19th, 2010
The possibility of zero insertion fees is one I’ve long thought may happen, there’s been more than enough tests of various configurations for private sellers in the past few months to make me think this is something eBay are seriously considering too.
If it was free to list without paying shop fees either then yes of course, it’s a no-brainer. If they want a shop fee up front then possibly. But I suspect eBay would become even more flooded with product than it already is.
Quite frankly eBay is a sad mess of tinkering and stupid ideas and gets worse every day. I keep wondering what they’re coming up with next. I really do wonder why so many struggle so hard to keep on top of this monster anymore, I’ve all but lost interest with it as it implodes on itself.
Simon says
3:41 pm on January 19th, 2010
Insertion fees cost us over £100 a month, and I doubt I’d lose that in sales if such a scheme were implemented. So, I’d be up for it, sure.
However, if they DON’T scrap insertion fees, I wonder if they’d consider a commission based system? For example, someone lands on my listing, doesn’t buy my item, but instead buys the advertised item. After all, they’re advertising on my little bit of paid-for eBay!
David Brackin says
12:44 pm on 19/01/2010
I assume the other way of looking at this is that my listings will be appearing on other people’s live listings so I’ll get more traffic that way to my listings.
Does this sloshing around benefit me? Well yes if it raises the overall rate at which buyer purchase, I expect to see some benefit from that.
But the real question is How does eBay choose the listings which appear on the bottom of the page, and Does this really improve the buyer’s likelihood of purchase.
Is it eight outlet sellers who appear, eight people who pay for AdCommerce, or eight top-rated sellers? Given that the buyer found my listing through Best Match, does showing him the results he’s just seen really help?
whirly says
12:53 pm on 19/01/2010
Total lack of inspiration, buckets of desperation, and its only January.
Richard says
1:13 pm on January 19th, 2010
eBay will release fourth quarter and full-year 2009 earnings on January 20, 2010. Should be interesting to see just how desperate. As for eBay and inspiration in the same sentence, that’s a good one.
Sue Bailey says
1:16 pm on January 19th, 2010
http://gigaom.com/2010/01/18/ebays-turnaround-is-in-jeopardy-what-now/
Predictions not good, but we shall see tomorrow.
Nigel says
1:13 pm on 19/01/2010
As a buyer, this really can’t come soon enough. I was doing some browsing on eBay yesterday and thinking how retarded it was that I’m not shown other, similar items on the view item page. This is really eCommerce 1.0 and eBay have danced around this for far too long.
I’m far more likely to leave eBay in frustration at not being able to find what I’m looking for if not shown alternatives (that might be more like what I need).
Bring. It. on.
Sue Bailey says
1:18 pm on January 19th, 2010
Nigel, agree with you that something should be shown – but think it should be under the control of sellers, rather than automated by eBay: the old system where we could choose which Store categories promoted each other was perfect.
Having other sellers’ items show on your listings is going to make more sellers turn off this feature, so it’s a completely retrograde step AFAIC.
Richard says
1:26 pm on January 19th, 2010
Cross-promoting other sellers of your choosing was actually a good idea. eBay stopped it because according to them few sellers used it. I did and with good results for all concerned.
The other thing that I think should be mentioned is that if eBay’s search and best match actually worked properly there should be no need for this botched kludge of an idea.
Sue Bailey says
1:28 pm on January 19th, 2010
Again, “of your choosing” being the point.
Rich Brady says
1:28 pm on January 20th, 2010
Nigel there are numerous other eBay pages where you will have been shown alternative products.
You wouldn’t expect to go to a sellers website and see direct links to a competitor at the bottom, without some sort of compensation.
To a seller it’s the fine details of this move that is key and it’s those details that aren’t clear.
Sue
“Having other sellers’ items show on your listings is going to make more sellers turn off this feature, so it’s a completely retrograde step AFAIC.”
I agree, so why introduce it?
Just a theory:
http://rich-brady.blogspot.com/2010/01/promote-your-competition-another-ebay.html
Savvy Paul says
1:26 pm on 19/01/2010
For me, the purpose of the listing page is to sell that item (I’m simple like that) ;-, not distract from it. I moved from a flashy Frooition template with lots of cross-sell side boxes to one that concentrates on selling the item on the listing, with very successful results.
I don’t see the value to the buyer or the seller. This proposal is naive and lazy, first generation e-tailing. Out in the ‘wide world’ things have moved on, unlike eBay (wot no shopping cart ’til 2011??!!
)
RichardRR says
2:26 am on January 21st, 2010
“eBay is opening a new sales channel later in 2006
eBay Express can help your business flourish
eBay Express is perfect for professional sellers because it offers a conventional online shopping experience for buyers. The site is contemporary and products are attractively presented through top quality photography. With just one click, buyers can place each new product in a SHOPPING BASKET and then proceed to checkout”
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/businesscentre/ebayexpress/index.html
whirly says
1:31 pm on 19/01/2010
If Best Match returned the results that people actually wanted to see they wouldn’t need to bloody bother with this.
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38&_nkw=black+nintendo+dsi
Q. Did I tell eBay I wanted to view a silicone case protector?
A. No.
Q. Did I tell eBay I wanted to view a black eva carry case?
A. No.
Q. Did I search for a black aluminum cover for a DSi NDSi?
A. No.
Q. Did I ask for 10 bloody stylus pens?
A. No.
Chuffing nora, how many clues do you have to give best match these days.
Sue Bailey says
2:03 pm on January 19th, 2010
Yeah, I tried to buy an ipod a while back – same kinda deal. Gave up in the end and went to Big River.
whirly says
2:28 pm on January 19th, 2010
Imagine if eBay had a high street store.
“Hello Mr Shopkeeper, I would like to buy a black nintendo dsi”
“Excellent choice sir, here we are..that will be £1.99″
“£1.99? thats extremely cheap”
“Yes Sir, at eBay we pride ourselves on giving value”
“Excellent,thank you. Keep the change”
“Thank you sir”
“Hang on a minute, this isn’t a black nintendo dsi, its a packet of lemon flavoured bonbons”
“You don’t want the bonbons sir? I can assure you they are very tasty”
“I wanted a black nintendo dsi, why did you give me a bag of sweets?”
“We call it ‘Best Match’ Sir.”
Russ says
3:58 am on January 20th, 2010
That bonbon comment is sooo funny and also alarmingly true.
I have regularly tackled eBay about the fact their searches just don’t work, not the regular one or the best match.
They suggested to me that customers that had previously searched for the same keywords I was, had gone on to buy these other random items that were displayed. They were totally confident on numerous occasions that this was the case, what a load of twoddle.
The reason the searches doesn’t work is actually very simple. It’s down to the item specifics at the top of your listing. If you fill these out ‘to help the buyer’ then you will loose out because that is what is not working. Lets say you are selling a shirt that is white, nice simple item. You fill out the specifics to say that it is white. The item will appear only when the buyer searches specifically for shirts in white. Ok, that’s no problem right…
Wrong, if you don’t put a colour in there at all, your item will show in every colour choice they make as the system assumes that you didn’t pick one so it could be white. It actually could be red, could be yellow with pink polker dots.
eBay need to enforce filling out the item specifics, as they use that as a huge part of the best match and search criterion. Until they do that, it will never ever work.
This adding of the other items…
I agree that you put in all the hard work to get someone on your item, then eBay send the customer somewhere else. That’s just a joke tbh.
ebuyerfb says
2:20 pm on 19/01/2010
Several months ago something like this was rolled out on .com . I think it was the top 5 watched listings from the same category were shown.
We were told that you could opt in or opt out but if you opted out then your listing would never show. We were told it was in our best interest to opt in and everyone was opted in automatically. Funny thing is that I went to one such listing and then went to every promoted listing that was displayed. One of the promoted sellers was clearly opted out yet their listing was appearing in everyone else’s listings. Considering this and my general distrust of eBay’s implementation in general I’d suggest opting out.
Elvis says
2:45 pm on 19/01/2010
No doubt it will just be “outlet” stores listings which will be adverstised on the small independent sellers listings. We (us small traders) probably won’t get links advertsied elsewhere, just links for listings to outlet stores plastered all over ours!
Rich Brady says
1:41 pm on January 20th, 2010
That’s an interesting point. eBay are very keen to promote outlet stores and TRS, so will they take precedent or will it be totally random…
*scratches head*
SinBad says
7:01 pm on 19/01/2010
Hardly anyone bothers scrolling to the bottom of the description pages anyway so I don’t think it will do too much, unless people get into the habit of scrolling to the bottom to find cheaper alternatives. I would be angry if they put other peoples’ items above mine though.
What ever tweaks they do they are still going to lose market share to alternative sites. They should stop running around like headless chickens and give us sellers a bit of stability so we can actually plan for the future otherwise we’ll simply jump ship completely.
Sue Bailey says
7:59 pm on January 19th, 2010
That’s a good point, SinBad – how often do we complain buyers don’t read the whole listing, but just click the button at the top? LOL
Richard says
9:25 pm on January 19th, 2010
It’s a big assumption that other items will appear at the bottom of live listings, look at where they are for completed listings.
Do people really think eBay care whether it’s your listing or someone elses sells, they win either way.
Sue says
9:53 pm on January 19th, 2010
I think it’s a reasonable assumption, Richard – it is what the announcement says.
SinBad says
10:56 am on January 20th, 2010
Yes, thats a rare case where a problem can turn into an advantage
ebuyerfb says
12:55 pm on January 20th, 2010
Along those lines … this will create the potential for buyers to purchase the wrong items. I can’t tell you how many eBay buyers type something into search and then click a paid ad of mine, end up on one of my websites, and then complain to me about some glitch on eBay and how I need to fix it. None of my sites look like eBay in any way yet these people seem to have no idea they’ve even left eBay.
Now imagine unleashing that same plague on your listings for a similar item. No doubt you’ll get the canceled order, SNAD, or neg.
Rich Brady says
1:56 pm on 20/01/2010
Here’s a thought (the second one I’ve had today I’ll have you know), what if eBay are gearing up for:
Option 1: Opt Out
Option 2: Opt in via Adcommerce
Ensuring that all/any cross promotion is paid for?
ShaGGy says
3:59 pm on 20/01/2010
Considering the mentality of some buyers who use eBay this could also be damaging to the original seller.
What happens if buyer buys from sellers A with ‘A’ good reputation, high DRS’s TS’s etc then is offered an item from seller ‘B’ in the same listing which the buyer then chooses to buy (may thinking seller ‘A’ as recommended this seller in their listing only for seller ‘B’ to give shoddy service that the buyer blames seller ‘A’ for?
Look how many free postage sellers miss out on TRS due to low DSR’s for P&P.
Gary says
4:51 pm on January 20th, 2010
You would think that only sellers who achieve a certain standard would be promoted in this way. It would be entirely unreasonable for a “standard” seller to have a promotion spot in a Top Rated Seller listing. The reverse is of course entirely reasonable!?
Rich Brady says
11:18 am on 22/01/2010
Has anyone seen a test page in Action yet?