eBay UK Summer Seller Release

One line summary

Some good stuff (Seller Protection), a few niggles (Item Specifics and Category Changes), a bit of a shocker (Featured First ending), but everything is overshadowed by a tremendous cross border trade opportunity.

eBay Summer Seller Update

Cross Border Trade

In today’s seller updates eBay have announced that from November for the price of an Anchor Shop you can list on all of eBay’s European sites as well as eBay Australia for free. Plus you get low 3 cent listings on eBay.com as an added bonus. Our quick calculation at Tamebay HQ says that you only need about 100 listings that you want to sell Internationally to make this a great deal. There’s also International Shipping updates and Listing Translation to make cross border trade easier than ever before.

Search Changes

There’s some not so good news for those that use Featured First listings, they’re going to be discontinued this Autumn. The Duplicate Listings Policy will be extended to include Auctions with Buy It Now, and the listing process will be a little more onerous due to new legal requirements.

Seller Protection

Better news is that eBay have listened to the 100s of sellers who wanted protection from the odd dodgy buyer. They’re to introduce a “Report a Buyer” feedback option and they’re going to make buyers communicate with sellers before they can open frivolous buyer protection cases.

Category specific changes

There are tweaks coming down the line for Clothes Shoes & Accessories that you’ll want to be aware of if you sell in that category. If you’re a tech seller you need to be aware that listings for CPUs/Processors, Server CPUs/Processors, Motherboards and PC Desktops & All-in-Ones will need to be matched against eBay Catalogue. There are also a few category changes.

Finally some housekeeping changes

• You’ll be able to choose whether to show the checkout comments box or not by deselecting the option in My eBay

• You’ll be able to add more details about the condition of items.

• You’ll also want to add product identifiers to your listings to appear in Google Product Search (Google Shopping).

• The business policy tool enabling you to edit all of your policies in one place has been delayed and won’t be available in the near future.

• My Messages will copy replies you send from your email client directly into your eBay My Messages sent items.

Tamebay’s Take on the Seller Update

There’s a lot to digest in this update, but most of it won’t affect your day to day business. A few more item specifics to complete and product identifies to add covers most of the boring stuff. Unless you used Featured First the search changes won’t affect you – just carry on doing what you’re doing to ensure your listings get found.

The big news and the only thing that really matters is the cross border trade news. Although an Anchor shop may look expensive, when your crunch the numbers it’s a bargain. Up until now it wasn’t worth paying for an Anchor shop unless you had over 6,000 live fixed price listings. With the cross border trade deal that number drops to around 100 active listings and upgrading to Anchor will save many sellers significant sums on their overseas insertion fees. If you’re not already selling overseas this should be your incentive to start!