eBay UK launch shopping basket beta test
eBay have launched the shopping basket beta and you can try the eBay shopping basket for real on eBay UK.
It’s great to be able to drop items into the shopping basket and then if you find a better deal or price you can simply click the remove button to take items back out of your basket.
When you come to pay you can choose to purchase everything in your shopping basket, or remove the check boxes to just pay for those items you’re ready to buy.
If you’re wondering how to get back to your shopping basket once you’ve items in it the easiest way is to click the shopping basket icon which 
appears next to the top right menu bar, or of course you can go to My eBay and pay for the items in the normal manner.
As expected the cart is a site wide shopping basket so you can purchase from multiple sellers. You’ll also find any ended auctions that you’ve won will automatically appear in your shopping basket ready for you to pay along with any other purchases you wish to make.
Fixed price items in your basket will be available to other buyers until you pay for them. The one thing that may put buyers off is if they see high delivery charges as shipping obviously can’t be combined for items from different sellers, so to keep your items attractive consider free shipping or at least make sure your shipping costs are competitive and offer combined shipping discounts.
Click to embiggen
The only thing that’s missing is the “Carry on shopping from this seller” link in addition to the “Continue shopping” link. Currently “Continue shopping” appears to default to items from sale from the seller’s items you first added to the cart which is frustrating if you want to search a different sellers items.
I’ve made some purchases using the shopping basket and everything appears to be working as it should. This is a change that many sellers (and Sue in particular) have been asking for for years so it comes as a very welcome upgrade to the site.
You can opt in or out of the shopping basket experience on eBay, but personally I’ll be keeping it.
Sue Bailey says
6:19 pm on 03/08/2010
Woo, and may I also say, hoo.
Sue Bailey says
6:22 pm on August 3rd, 2010
Could do with a “add everything on my watch list to my shopping basket” button, however.
John Pemberton says
6:45 pm on 03/08/2010
Simply fab
David Brackin says
6:47 pm on 03/08/2010
You’re going to have to think of something else to ask for now, Sue.
Sue Bailey says
6:50 pm on August 3rd, 2010
I know… Biddy’s Button + shopping cart… that’s six years of my life I won’t get back
How about enforcing the law on business sellers?
Martin - The Whirlpool Bath Shop says
8:16 pm on August 3rd, 2010
How about a “Share this” button.
jimbo says
9:16 pm on August 3rd, 2010
How about a “F— this” button.
Martin - The Whirlpool Bath Shop says
11:34 am on August 4th, 2010
haha
dave says
11:41 pm on 03/08/2010
talk about overdue!!!
northumbrian says
11:18 am on 04/08/2010
wondered why everything on ebay is buggered up this morning ,checkout is skew wiff half, the items that only finished minutes ago have unpaid item flags on them ,etc etc etc
Warren says
5:45 pm on 04/08/2010
What happens if someone is paying by cheque or postal order?
john says
5:49 pm on 04/08/2010
well I guess they would have thought about that, they will only allow it if the items are PayPal only surely??? But on the other hand you are only really adding them to a shopping basket, so you have not actually bought them yet
Reg says
7:56 pm on 04/08/2010
The only thing I like about this is that you can pay for several items with one transaction. With BUY IT NOW items you could lose the chance to do that if it is hanging about in your SHOPPING BASKET. Perhaps ADD TO BASKET could be an additional button?
JD says
11:48 pm on 04/08/2010
As an inveterate luddite I will lurk awhile before opting in.
Around 50% of my sales are to International Buyers, am not sure how these will be plugged in to the basket.
Nonetheless, a welcome move by eBay.
JD says
12:07 am on 05/08/2010
Ah! Just cottoned on that it’s not a seller opt out!
Sorry, that’ll teach me to read Tamebay before reading the eBay Announcement.
Eric says
3:00 am on 06/08/2010
So, um, how long can I keep the shopping cart open before I have to pay for everything? Hours? Days? Weeks? And what happens if over a period of time I put items from several different sellers into my cart that I want to go together, and then when I go to pay, I find that one of the items is no longer available? What then is to stop me from dropping everything else from the cart and refusing to pay?
Sue Bailey says
5:56 am on August 6th, 2010
Eric – not sure about longevity of the cart, will try and find out.
And for your last question, there’s nothing to stop you doing that. You say “refusing to pay” like you’re a non-paying bidder, but the whole point is, at that point, you’re not: you haven’t bought the items, you’re under no obligation to the sellers and they’ll never even know you changed your mind.
Sue Bailey says
6:32 am on 06/08/2010
I’m loving this but I have one tiny whinge: “add to basket” from your watch list doesn’t add it to basket, it takes you to the view item page. They need to fix it so the action and the link text match.
DBL says
6:05 pm on 06/08/2010
I heard on a Channel Advisor Webinar last night that CA items will have to checkout separately after the shopping basket.
Has anyone any experience of this?
BigPoppa says
7:37 pm on August 6th, 2010
Not pesonally, but based on the way that CA work that makes sense.
JD says
11:33 am on 07/08/2010
Anybody know what if:
Buyer adds 30 day BIN to basket 30 mins before the listing ends naturally, continues shopping and then goes to checkout 40 mins later?
Item still in basket or gone?
If gone, any alert to that effect to customer?
Normal shopping baskets only have to cope with stock outs, not time outs.
Sue Bailey says
11:35 am on August 7th, 2010
That’s a very good question. I’ll see if I can get someone to answer it!
Sue Bailey says
6:15 pm on August 8th, 2010
“Item not available”: buyer has option to delete or add to watch list (where they would see a relist).
JD says
6:59 pm on August 8th, 2010
Thank you Sue.
There is some chance of misunderstanding here, especially for buyers who are not also sellers who may not appreciate that sellers do not know when items have been placed in baskets.
JD says
12:57 am on 17/08/2010
The first link in the article seems now to go to an eBay info. page about the shopping basket.
Curiously I cannot find where the info. page is linked from the eBay site.
This appears near the end of the info. page:
‘If the seller does not post to your country.
Some sellers may indicate that they will not post items to certain countries. If you still want to purchase the item, you will need to provide a different postage address’
Seems a rather incongruous suggestion.