Authorised reseller

eBay are displaying a “Manufacturer’s Authorised Seller” logo on some listings. Buyers are told that the authorised reseller benefits are “Products from authorized resellers typically come with full manufacturer warranty” and that “Authorised resellers receive training and product knowledge from the manufacturer“. Given that the stock image in search results is also replaced by the authorised seller logo this looks as if it could result in a big boost in sales for seller that qualify for the logo.

“Compare at” price

The second feature that eBay.com are testing is a strike through compare at price along with a monetary and percentage saving displayed to buyers. eBay say that “A ‘compare at’ price is the price (excluding shipping and handling fees) this seller has provided at which the same item, or one that is virtually identical to it, is being offered for sale or has been offered for sale within the last 90 days by another online retailer“.

I’ve yet to see either of these features available on eBay UK and even if they do make it onto sites other than eBay.com it’s unlikely that most sellers will ever be able to access them. Expect features like these to be reserved for eBay’s Enterprise and Outlet sellers who in the main are the large high street retailers.

Today Tamebay reader David explains what it means to him. Whilst we don’t necessarily agree with all his points, but he makes a very good case for being allowed to enhance images with additional information.

The Gallery Photo – The all important “Money Shot”

eBay’s decision to eliminate explanatory text and graphics in the gallery photo is a devastating blow to all experienced and professional eBay sellers who have been using these powerful communication tools to differentiate ourselves with a unique brand and a highly effective aid to all eBay searchers in quickly finding the goods and services that they are looking for.

After 40 years (13 years on eBay) as an inventor, manufacturer and marketer of professional technical products with sales in the multi-millions of dollars, I have a very deep understanding of human perception as it applies to marketing and conversion – the process of finding potential customers and converting them into paying customers.

My time (and 50,000+ sales) on eBay has taught me and every other eBay seller that the majority of eBay lookers and buyers prefer not to read anything! How many emails have you received from eBay buyers with questions regarding your listings that are already and clearly answered in the photos, title or long description?

A few months into my eBay adventure, I realized that if I wanted to communicate to potential customers salient or important information about the product or terms of the sale, I needed to spell it out in the gallery photo because that’s the only thing these buyers were looking at.

In my case, the gallery photos for all of my listings include the words: “GUARANTEED PRODUCTS” and “CALL OUR FREE 800# LIVE HELP LINE”, both statements clearly communicate that I’m a seller that stands behind my products and is customer service friendly. These eight words immediately improved the number of hits to my pages and continue to allow me to sell my top quality technical products at prices far higher than other sellers.

Think about how most of us search on eBay: we select key search words, hit enter and quickly scan the returned gallery images looking for what we want–and just maybe we glanced over at the price. After clicking on a selected thumbnail and opening the listing, the larger image has to tell the rest of the story in less than a half a second. This is where the term money shot comes from – a clearly defined and comprehensible image with words and graphics that instantly communicates to the potential buyer: THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR!

Did we read the title? Did we read the long-desciption? Very unlikely until we have actually decided to purchase the item. Now we need to find and carefully R-E-A-D all the additional terms and conditions of the sale seemingly placed every-which-way in eBay’s confusing and poorly designed listing page format that utilizes various fonts, graphic styles and colors that we can’t change!

This is another example (in a never-ending stream) of eBay management’s lack of understanding of how the site functions at the buyer/seller transaction level, because the folks who run eBay are not engaged at any significant level in the labor intensive and restrictive process of selling on the site.

Apparently this new restriction is being implemented because eBay’s “bots” that are programmed to look for various taboo words on the site were not able to effectively find these dangerous hidden messages in the photos so now all of the honest and hard-working sellers and buyers have to suffer.

Editors note: More likely eBay’s reason are to have clear photos which they can use for catalogue images and to ensure that terms and conditions are in the correct places on the eBay View Item page, but the loss of the ability to add information to images will certainly take away the advantages many sellers have enjoyed from enhancing their images with text, graphics, logos and borders.

They say that “This enhanced display will appear in a more consistent manner on the global footer of search results pages and active item pages. Buyers who have shown an interest in a seller’s item will be encouraged and reminded to purchase. A direct link will allow quicker and easier access to the items.“.

I really like this, I often look at items on eBay and often see them displayed on the eBay home page, but anything that encourages buyers to revisit these items and possibly bid on them or place a fixed price offer or purchase is good news.

eBay say that depending on how feedback from the test goes they may make it a permanent feature on the site – I’m crossing my fingers that it encourages sales and works for buyers because that means it works for sellers.

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The completed listings page still has an overview of key details related to the listings that has ended, though now the Item Specifics and Seller Description are split from the header information and are towards the bottom of the page.

In the middle of the page are links to alternative listings from the same seller, similar items from other sellers and sponsored listings.

Importantly right at the top of the page above the product image is a link to see the original listing so if a buyer does want to refer to the page they purchased the item from they still can.

Depending how the testing goes this page might become the default completed item page on eBay so it’s worth taking a look to see what your buyers will be seeing.

Your Lifetime Transactions

You can now view your total lifetime sales for your eBay account – both as a monetary value and the number of transactions. You’ll also see the date of your first eBay sale displayed. You can also choose to split the transactions by “Global”, “United States”, “United Kingdom”, or “Germany”. Generally for the UK or Global (if you’re registered on eBay UK then you’ll see your total sales in pounds sterling. If you select US sales then values will be in dollars or Euros for Germany.

Seller protection actions

The second feature available in the Seller Dashboard when viewed on eBay.com is actions that eBay have taken to protect your account. These include the number of feedbacks buyers left for you that eBay have removed, the number of opened buyer protection cases that eBay have removed and no longer count against your seller standing, and the number of times an unpaid item credit has been applied to your account.

We don’t know if either of these features will be rolled out to the eBay UK Seller Dashboard, but it doesn’t really matter – you can access them simply by logging in to eBay.com.

This is not the normal Markdown Manager sale available to all eBay shop owners on fixed price listings that have been running for longer than 28 days. This is a discount feature that appears to be available from day 1 on listings for a selected few sellers.

As an added bonus the strike through pricing isn’t just displayed on the seller’s listings, it also appears in search results in addition to the added bonus of the Outlet shop’s own logo.

Whether it is a new site feature available to Outlets, or whether it’s a pilot test with just one or two sellers which will be trialled and then may disappear again from the site, we don’t know. However I’m thinking that for any seller offering deep discounts on eBay this would be a very attractive feature to have access to and probably something you’d like to enable on your own eBay listings.

The reasons for this is that they’re going to be upgrading My Messages and not only will it make the message console run faster but will introduce new features such as enhanced search functionality and a new auto-archive function for easy email organization.

If you want to save messages older than six months you’ll need to forward the messages to your own email client, or save the messages to your computer.

Quite frankly I don’t think I’ve ever referred to messages more than a couple of months old – certainly you can’t reply to messages after about 90 days. However if you do need to access your message history for longer than six months you’ve got just over a week to save them for the future.

This solves the dilemma of how to ensure your items aren’t removed by eBay, as well as filling in holes in eBay’s catalogue. If your product is released in a later model or a new colour you can simply add it and carry on listing as normal.

There is of course a word of warning, make sure that if you do add a new product it really is new to the product catalogue. For example just because a device has more memory doesn’t make it a new product if memory can be upgraded. This would then simply be an item specific – if you create new catalogue entries and you are the only person to list against that product then your item isn’t likely to fair well in search as eBay will probably surface the more popular item. Also ensure that the data is 100% correct and as complete as possible to give buyers the maximum (and correct!) information.

We’ll let you know if this comes to the UK or if we see more categories added where you can add new entries to eBay’s product catalogue data.

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In search results you’ll see a blue arrow when you mouse over a listing and clicking anywhere in the item information (apart from title or picture) will open up a sidebar showing gallery images, pricing, seller details and in some instances a Buy It Now button.

I have to say with a few reservations I like this new Preview Pane. When I’m buying consumables like printer toner or jiffy bags I don’t necessarily need to see the View Item page. I don’t need to read reams of information that the seller may feel important such as about their company or their detailed terms and conditions of trading – I just want to buy the product and get on with my day.

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Buyers may choose not to purchase from the search results page and so this may never roll out site wide in it’s current format. However it will still be useful as eBay can display information buyers often visit the View Item page for such as Item Location and Seller Feedback. These details can be displayed in the Preview Pane enabling buyers to rule out a particular search result or decide that the product is indeed worth further consideration.

The new feature will also alter the basic search results page layout. The information will no longer be presented in columns, but details such as Price, Bids, Postage and the Top Rated Seller icon will appear in a triangle beneath the item title.

There are some interesting considerations for sellers for example eBay gallery pictures will be displayed in the Preview Pane. In Clothes Shoes & Accessories up to 12 gallery images are free, but there’s a charge for gallery images in other categories. Many sellers have a sidebar embedded on the left hand side of their product descriptions or large headers, sellers will need to evaluate their usefulness compared to having item information prominently displayed in the Search Results Preview Pane.

The tests will run for several weeks while eBay evaluate the results. Whilst you can’t opt in or out of the test if your account is included in the tests you’ll be able to give feedback comments from a link in the Preview Pane.

Don’t wait to give eBay feedback though, tell us what you think in comments below – Will you purchase direct from the search results page and do you want your buyers to have the ability to do the same?

eBay have released the Expedited Shipping Filter which segregates orders which need to be shipped as a priority on next day couriers. It’s in the form of a simple drop down filter and enables you to print out orders with expedited shipping separately.

This might appear a small change, but I’ve missed a buyer who upgraded to priority shipping and sent it standard post in the past. Being able to identify any items which need priority shipping makes a lot of sense.