This isn’t a surprise – eBay tested visibility from UK and German sellers to Italy six months ago, the main difference from the test however appears to be that only items from Top Rated Sellers in the UK and Germany will qualify to have their listings shown on eBay Italy.

Of course the item also has to offer shipping to Italy to qualify, and that’s where many sellers will miss out. Italy still has a low reputation for delivery reliability, although anecdotally couriers appear to have a higher success rate than trusting to the postal services.

Do you have items listed on eBay UK or DE available for sale to Italy, if so let us know if you see any uplift in Italian sales over the next few weeks.

Billsafe provide a service which German buyer love – the ability to purchase on invoice. Customers simply select the item they want to buy, and then they receive an invoice for payment after the item is received.

Waiting for customers to pay an invoice after receipt of the goods is likely to strike fear into the hearts of many online sellers, but in truth it’s not that bad a thing. Firstly eBay and PayPal have already run trials for top buyers in the US allowing them to pay on receipt. Secondly for many German sellers it also won’t necessarily be their problem on eBay – eBay are already running a trial in Germany and Austria where eBay handle the payment collection. Plus of course the cultural difference in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where payment on invoice is much more the norm than it is in the UK.

This acquisition is a move by eBay to strength PayPal’s offering in Europe and will enable eBay and retailers in Europe to offer more payment options. That’s a key deciding factor as to whether a buyer completes a purchase or abandons their shopping cart – It makes perfect sense to make as many payment options available as possible and leave the buyer to select whichever is the most convenient for them.

eBay are conducting the survey through Freshminds and want to give sellers a voice to businesses selling on their marketplace on issues that affect them. The survey poses a number of questions on themes such as Government policies, technology and business confidence, including:

• How confident do businesses feel about the next 12 months?
• Have recent recommendations by the Independent Banking Commission made it easier for businesses to access finance?
• What do businesses consider the biggest barrier to exports?
• How do businesses rate the performance of the Coalition Government in restoring economic growth?

The result of this consultation will enable eBay to identify trends and allow their business leaders to speak up on behalf of online businesses in policy discussions and in the media. eBay say that they understand this is the busiest time of year, but would really appreciate sellers receiving the questionnaire are able to find 10 to 15 minutes to participate. eBay will release findings from this consultation in 2012.

What are the biggest issues that you feel affect your business today? Is it one of the issues above, or are there other issues that affect you when sourcing products, selling overseas, obtaining finance, taxation, employment or something else? If you could get government to make one change to assist your business what would it be?

Turning over the best part of £1/2 million per month with some 18,000 sales every 30 days DTG dynamic-trade GmbH sell a wide range of products on eBay many of which are household graded returns.

Having traded on eBay since DTG dynamic-trade GmbH use ChannelAdvisor AuktionMaster to manage their sales with their listing design by Sell It Smart.

Congratulations to the team at DTG dynamic-trade GmbH on their achievement. Now keep your eyes peeled for the first seller to hit a million feedback in the UK.

With the Pilot once a purchase has been made eBay will request payment from the buyer and once eBay has the funds they’ll notify the seller that the item should be despatched. The seller then needs to ship the product and when they mark it as despatched this triggers the payment from eBay to the seller.

The big deal on this test is Buyer Protection. Currently buyers are protected for their purchases if they pay with PayPal. Under the pilot with eBay collecting the funds all acceptable payment methods will be covered under Buyer Protection. Buyers have the option to pay with Bank Transfer, PayPal, Skrill (the new name of Moneybookers) or credit card/debit card through either PayPal or Skrill.

As a side benefit the pilot will also ensure that a wider range of payment options are available to buyers on a consistent basis. All sellers participating in the pilot will have the same set of payment options offered on their items so buyers will always have the choice of using their favoured payment method.

All newly registered sellers on eBay.de and eBay.at will be included in the payments pilot. All of their items listed on eBay will have direct payment options to eBay which means buyers around the world buying from these sellers will see the range of eBay payment options.

Payments from eBay to the seller can be either through PayPal or bank transfer, and similar to current PayPal holds the frequency will be dependent on the seller status including if they are a business seller with an established trading history (immediate payout) or Business seller without a trading history or who are below standard (7 day payout) or Private sellers (14 day payout).

eBay say that it’s too early to say if the pilot will be rolled out to more sellers or in more eBay territories. They will of course thoroughly analyse the results of the pilot to determine if it has the desired effect of increasing trust on eBay, particularly for higher value purchases from newly registered sellers.

I do like the way the new payment model offers choice of payment methods to buyers and increases buyer protection. I’m not so sure that sellers with their own merchant banking facilities for accepting credit/debit cards or those who already accept bank transfer will welcome delays in receiving their funds.

However the most important data point from the pilot will be to see if it increase the frequency and value of purchases from buyers. If sales volume and value increase than any change in payment options is likely to be a secondary consideration and something we’ll all just have to live with.

The big advantage for French buyers is that they’ll see items from the UK and Germany without having to log in to eBay.co.uk or eBay.de. The experiment will almost certainly mirror other recent eBay International Visibility experiments by displaying inventory that is in short supply on eBay France.

Assuming the tests displaying products on overseas eBay sites is successful and made permanent it does bring into question the viability of paying for the International Site Visibility upgrade on listings.

photo credit: *_*

In eBay’s latest Seller Update they’ve said that if you specify International postage to the US, Canada and Australia your listings may appear in the standard search results for that country. This will start from late August.

eBay have already let sellers know that they are testing greater visibility for UK and German sellers on eBay Italy. In May this year eBay Australia started to display listings from the UK and the US.

So is it worth paying for the International Site Visibility listing enhancement? It only costs 30p for a fixed price listing or between 5p and 15p for an auction, but those fees all add up over the course of a month.

The dilemma is you “may” appear in search results on overseas sites whereas the International Site Visibility upgrade ensures that you will. There is of course the possibility that your listing would have appeared on overseas sites even if you hadn’t paid for the listing enhancement.

It will be interesting to see how eBay handle this one and if sellers get tools to let them know when their listing appears in search results on overseas site removing the need to pay for visibility.

If you don’t currently ship to what is often considered one of the worst countries in Europe for lost parcels make sure you have Italy excluded in your postage options. However if you’re happy to ship to Italy (and many are) then so long as you specify the postage costs and are top rated you should see more sales coming from Italy.

eBay say that this is a test and depending on the feedback received, they may, in time, expand this feature to other markets. However it’s worth remembering that the UK and US already have greater visibility on eBay Australia.

If eBay continue to expand the number of sites that listings appear on in natural search results it may be time to reconsider your use of the International Site Visibility listing enhancement.

20% of all eBay business world wide now involves cross border trade, that means if you don’t sell outside your own country you have a potential 25% uplift in sale by making your items available overseas.

Amazon shared a slide showing that just four countries – The UK, Germany, France and Italy – represented 69% of the estimated $122 billion online retail spending in Western Europe in 2010.

So how easy do marketplaces make it for you to sell overseas?

Amazon

Amazon allow buyers from anywhere in the world to buy from any Amazon site so long as the seller makes the product available for International shipping. If you use Amazon FBA then Amazon will take care of the shipping on your behalf which is probably the easiest way to make your items available worldwide.

However that relies on the buyer visiting the Amazon site that you list on – an item listed on Amazon.co.uk won’t appear on Amazon.de, if a German buyer wants to buy your item they will have to visit the Amazon.co.uk site.

For you to capture the maximum sales you will have to split your inventory and list directly onto Amazon.de to put your products directly in front of German buyers, and with Amazon expanding and adding a marketplace to Amazon Italy in the near future the number of sites for sellers to list on is increasing rapidly.

The complexity of listing inventory across multiple sites increases the overhead of management although software can simplify the problem. What software can’t do is help decide how much inventory to ship to each country if you have local warehouses or use Amazon FBA in each individual country.

eBay

eBay have a slightly different approach to Amazon. You can list on your home eBay site and make your product available world wide, and on some sites you can even pay extra for International Visibility to ensure your product appears in natural search results on selected other eBay sites.

Your items will most likely appear if the site your buyer is browsing has few or no search results, but in this case (as with Amazon) your item will appear listed in a foreign currency to the buyer.

To cater for buyers in countries where there is no eBay site eBay have their International Market. Fixed price listings from sellers who offer International Shipping. The big advantage is that the site will be translated into the local language with prices displayed in the buyer’s local currency. The only parts of the site that won’t be translated is the item title and description

In order to give the best shopping experience however eBay sellers need to list directly onto an overseas eBay site. There is a big difference in visibility for products “listed on” a site to those “available to” the site. This is where eBay’s solution falls down.

Currently your eBay account is held in your country of residence, and all the benefits such as fees, discounts etc are based on that eBay site. Whist you may have a featured shop and be able to list multiple quantity fixed price products on eBay UK for just £0.05 per listing, an equivalent listings on eBay.de will cost £2.00 or more to list.

eBay have over the last few years promoted to sellers that they will reduce the upfront risk and share in the rewards of seller success with low insertion fees and higher final value fees. eBay have yet to find a way to apply this to International transactions.

The opportunity

The UK is the biggest country in Europe for business to consumer online spending, we each spend around €1333 each year on the Internet. There are also plenty of competitors vying for our business, but in Europe the opportunities are just as good.

Germany is a bigger market, but they spend less per captia online than the UK, if you’re thinking of listing on overseas marketplaces then this is the first foreign language country to attack. France and Italy are also to big to ignore and Spain is the next country to put on your roadmap.

What is your international marketplace selling strategy? Do you list on your domestic eBay and Amazon sites and trust to luck that overseas buyers will find your products or do you actively list directly onto overseas sites? What is the one thing that eBay and Amazon could change about the internationalisation of their sites to increase your overseas sales?

Following the success of the US campaign, eBay UK and eBay Germany will be launching a similar coupon event to run between 16th November and ending on Boxing Day (26th December).

Around 80 sellers will be involved offering up to 15% savings off selected items. In the UK participating sellers will include Argos, DSG, Tesco, Ed Hardy, Dune, Office and Kookai and in Germany brands such as Redcoon, Medion, Speedo, Eastpak, Fila, Surf4Shoes and Triumph will offer discounts.

We’ll let you know as soon as we find the discount codes, but in the mean time watch out from the 16th if you want to save some money (or if as a seller you compete with any of the businesses involved!)

For UK sellers the iPhone app makes it really quick and easy to list CDs and DVDs as you can simply scan the barcode and eBay will use existing catalogue data to create the listing. In Germany they also have catalogue data for books so they can be listed with a barcode scan too.

If you want to sell something that’s not in the eBay catalogue or want to have additional pictures don’t worry – you can take a snapshot of your item during the listing process using the iPhone’s in built camera.

You can also use the app to research prices including highest, lowest and average prices. However I’m wondering how many people will use this whilst out shopping on the high street

and simply decide to buy in store rather than online if there’s a minimal price difference. Quick price comparisons will be great for sellers who buy wholesale at liquidation sales though – they’ll be able to know instantly what their likely profit margins will be.

As I’m on of the rarities who don’t own a single piece of Apple Mac kit (not even an iPod), I’m unable to play with the eBay seller app. If you do have an iPhone go to the app store, download it and have a play and let us know what you think of the app in comments below.

A spokesman for the bureau said that complaints against eBay were piling up. German eBayers use direct bank transfer much more often than British or American buyers do, and so the imposition of this new rule has caused outrage, primarily because it’s imposing more fees on sellers. Commenters on the eBay Germany sellers’ forum were unimpressed: “well that’s enough reason for me to say goodbye”; “eBay gets less and less attractive”. Sellers who are saying in their listings that buyers must cover the PayPal fees are having those listings ended.

An eBay spokesperson said that the company was “convinced that the introduction of PayPal as one of several payment methods for sellers with fewer than 50 feedbacks, is legally unobjectionable”, and that it was in communication with the bureau to explain what benefits the new policy offered buyers and sellers.

Der Spiegel has more info (in German).

eBay France has a one-day promotion on 18th February. Private sellers will be charged no insertion fees for auction listings regardless of start price: you’ll need to be French-resident to qualify.

eBay Germany has two days of free listings: the 18th and 19th of February. Again, private sellers can list auctions with no insertion fee: you’ll need to have a German address and be registered on eBay.de to qualify.

I have to say, having hated the emails to start with, I’m regretting that eBay have restored them, especially having worked out the best strategy for working with the new emails. Although the wording left a lot to be desired, not having to chase buyers for payments is something I’m in favour of (especially when it’s eBay that take the blame for sending the email and not me!). More than anything though, I just wish eBay would stop tinkering. In the run up to Christmas I should be getting on with the business of selling, not the business of change.

For now you need to go and update your SMP emails pronto the restored email settings will still have your old messages in place. If like me you probably edited them to inform buyers of the steps you were taking for deliveries during postal strikes emails will be going out with that information.

We’ll look forward to the re-introduction of auto-emails at some point next year when they’ll be implemented across the whole of Europe

Edited to add: It’s now been officially announced

click to embiggen

They’re also live for most Home and Garden categories on UK and Germany (the following categories will not have MVLs available: Kitchen > Small Appliances; Major Appliances; Cleaning, Laundry & Vacuuming; Clocks; DIY Tools; Garden & Plants).

If you list through the SYI form or SMP in a category where MVLs are available, you’ll now be offered the option to list with variants. Turbo Lister hasn’t yet been updated, but that should be coming shortly. Updated to add: Now available via Turbo Lister too.

eBay are keen to point out the advantages of listing with MVLs: lower insertion fees, saved time and more visibility; “as buyers start purchasing from your multi-quantity listings, your listings can appear higher in Best Match search results.” It’s certainly a feature that sellers have been requesting for years, though watching buyer reactions is going to be interesting; I’d like to see some proactive marketing of this new feature to buyers, otherwise for many of them, it’ll be too easy to miss.

If you’re using MVLs on your listings – or buying from them – let us know how you’re getting on in the comments.

A drop down allows buyers to select a reason for the return, although they can if they wish enter a message to the seller to expand upon why they’re returning the item.

The page kicks off with the message “Please use this form to make use of your right of withdrawal according to the Distance Selling regulations” (DSRs), although even eBay advise that the DSRs only apply to fixed price formats and not to purchases won on auctions. There is no option to differentiate between the returns policies for different selling formats.

Although many sellers (including myself) choose to allow returns on auctions as well as it makes good business sense, many do not. The page doesn’t mention that only business sellers are obliged to accept returns and that private sellers are under no obligation to offer exchanges or refunds.

The link to Easy Returns is from the drop down in My eBay and appears for 35 days from the sale of an item. After 35 days the buyer may still have legal obligations to offer returns but the buyer will have to contact the seller directly.

I’m wondering how long eBay measure returns for before they start to impose limits which can affect your account status. Possibly in the future if the number of requests for returns exceeds a certain amount it could affect Buyer Satisfaction Ratings and even Seller Discounts.

Currently eBay have given no indication that returns monitoring will affect your seller account status, but it’s almost certainly a metric that they’ll be measuring over the next few months. Easy Returns have gone live for purchases on eBay UK and eBay Germany, but expect to see them rolled out to other sites around the world in the near future.

eBay AdCommerce will enable sellers to bid on selected keywords and those that bid the highest may have an advert displayed at the bottom of search results, when a buyer searches for that keyword. Links from the adverts can only go to an eBay page – the sellers eBay shop or a particular listing.

The adverts consist of a title, a short description, and if the seller wishes an image. Similar to a Google Adwords campaign sellers can set a budget and a cost per click – they’ll only be charged when a potential buyer clicks on their advert.

Getting sellers to pay for keyword advertising is nothing new to eBay, a similar keyword program was launched on eBay.com in the summer of 2003 and retired in September 2006 due to low adoption rates.

The original program displayed adverts at the top of search results, but the new program will insert them as sponsored results beneath the main search results where Yahoo!, Google or Shopping.com adverts currently appear.

With the recent changes to selling formats and visibility from a combination of Best Match, Recent Sales and the new Featured First listing enhancement it remains to be seen if sellers are willing to pay for yet another shot at getting their products seen by buyers.

There are limits of two requests per month, and sellers can only make one request per transaction. Once a request has been made a buyer has 7 days to respond, if they refuse, fail to respond within 7 days, or simply ignore the request then the feedback will remain on the sellers profile.

This is currently available only on eBay Germany and is running as a pilot so details may be tweaked in the future. Mutual feedback withdrawal should however roll out across all eBay sites in a similar format by October. It’s a great move as it gives a seller a real incentive to look after their customers and resolve any issues even if a buyer leaves feedback in haste.

The most important change is that Shop items will be converted into a new fixed price format, which will be fully visible in search results. The listing fee for these will be between 1c and 10c which will include free Gallery pictures. There are now five different schedules of insertion and final value fees, depending on which category you’re listing in. I think this means that 30 BINs will now be available on eBay.de as they will be on .com and .co.uk, but the release just says “long running times” with no further detail.

For €299 per month, sellers can upgrade to a Premium Shop, which from 25th September to 31st December, will offer unlimited good-til-cancelled BINs, with no insertion fees.

Sellers will have to offer PayPal for the new BIN listings: eBay reveal the quite astonishing datum that only 70% of German sellers offer PayPal. And there is also a hint that PayPal fees are changing, to be “simplified … throughout the Euro area”, though this is sadly lacking any further detail.

Multiple item listings which have had sales will be advantaged in search results, so it makes sense for sellers to use this route to visibility rather than sticking with multiple single item listings to keep themselves at the top of “ending soonest” sorting. Auctions, however, will still be displayed ordered by “ending soonest” as a default.

As with eBay.com and eBay UK, these changes see eBay Germany moving strongly towards a fixed price format. The emphasis is on favourable conditions for business sellers, who are specifically encouraged to “list their entire inventory” on eBay.de.

According to the eBay Developer blog, the policy is also being enforced in Spain now too: I think we can expect this to become a universally-enforced policy on all eBay sites reasonably soon, so if you’re not already specifying postage in the postage field in your listings, now will be the time to reconsider that.

The problem for UK sellers is likely to be that those who use courier services cannot offer one single flat rate to the whole country, as the Highlands, islands and Northern Ireland are all surcharged by carriers. If eBay are going to require sellers to use the little postage box to specify rates, rather than just putting them within the body of the listing, they really need to allow for the reality of shipping too.

This is a sensible move and frankly should have been made across all eBay sites years ago. There’s no excuse for sellers not to be upfront about their postage costs, and this makes it much easier for buyers to find them, as well, of course, as feeding into a seller’s Best Match rating. What isn’t specified is whether this applies to just domestic postage, or to international costs too.

Many sellers are going to see this as a step too far by eBay. If buyers choose to purchase from a seller with a high shipping price listed, that is their choice; shipping prices are the one area where there shouldn’t be any surprises for buyers post-sale, so why would eBay interfere? In any case now, buyers who didn’t read the listing have the opportunity to mark the seller down on the DSRs anyway. The prices quoted will not cover insured shipping in many cases, nor will they take account that some items are heavier to ship than others: categories like Lamps & Lighting or Wholesale & Metalworking are likely to have a massive range of wildly differing items within them, and trying to standardise a shipping cost is a step too far into the Amazon.

Moreover, sellers who want to avoid the restrictions are likely just to list in a different category, so the whole thing seems rather pointless. Nevertheless, what’s done on one eBay is likely to spread, so expect to see this coming to other sites in the near future.

Vielen Dank to Horst from Shadesavers for the link.

The same changes were made on .com last month, so sellers on other countries’ sites might expect a wider launch in the near future. As eBay will undoubtedly publicise this very well to buyers, it’s worth considering if it’s something you could take advantage of, even if free shipping isn’t normally your style.