Hello Canadian eBayers,
Welcome to our weekly chat. Please go ahead and start posting at your convenience, I'll join you at 1 PM Eastern as usual.
Good morning Raphael.
For the last month or so, like other members I noticed a growing number of American posters who find themselves on eBay.ca (Canada) in error. They do not know how they got here.
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/User-to-User-Help/Ebay-changed-my-country/m-p/300852#U300852
etc...
Is there a bug somewhere in the system? There are too many instances reported recently to be a member error.
@pierrelebel wrote:
Good morning Raphael.
For the last month or so, like other members I noticed a growing number of American posters who find themselves on eBay.ca (Canada) in error. They do not know how they got here.
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/User-to-User-Help/Ebay-changed-my-country/m-p/300852#U300852
etc...
Is there a bug somewhere in the system? There are too many instances reported recently to be a member error.
Hi PIerre,
Without more details on how these users got there, it's hard to comment on this. I can tell you there are no automatic redirects in place or anything like that. One way this could happen is if the US member was looking at items from a large Canadian sellers with a custom storefront (usually a large brand like Lowe's Canada for example) where the custom store code has all the store category links pointing back at eBay.ca. In this case if the US member browsed around the store then they would unknowingly have ended up on eBay.ca.
There are probably other ways this could happen but it's a bit moot because even if a US buyer would end up buying an item from .ca instead of .com, they would enjoy the same coverage under eBay's Money Back Guarantee and even be able to use a better shopping cart! As you know, we are very welcoming in Canada and as femmefan1946 pointed out, we have nanaimo bars! 🙂
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Good morning,
I wanted to talk about Product Identifiers again. With every new listing, I dutifully add UPC as a custom Item Specific and have noticed something which I am afraid puts Canadian sellers at a disadvantage in my field. (I sell primarily toys.)
With something like Disney Cars where the specific character in the offering can make the difference between a selling price of 99 cents versus 99 dollars, all product identifiers are not created equal. Because there is a Mattel Canada and a Mattel USA, the UPC on the exact same product is different.
Worse than that, ALL Disney Cars characters in Canada have the same UPC whereas their American counterparts each have a different one. Do you understand what I am saying? This is going to make a mess of searching for a character by UPC. If the product listed is from Mattel Canada, the UPC search will result in a pile of non-related items. It will be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Is your team aware of this? What advice do you have to share on it?
Thank you,
Maureen
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Here is an example. This is a Cars character named Mama Bernoulli. I have her available in my store on both a USA card and International card because to some collectors, that is a big deal.
This is the Canadian version; it is international. The UPC is 746775035372.
This is the USA version. The UPC is 887961016420.
There are few if any buyers who will know to search for a MPN. You can't scan that with your mobile device, either.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
p.s. If you search her by name only instead of UPC, you come up with 96 results, instead of one. Or three.
Hi Maureen,
The purpose of having UPC codes on the listing is more for search engine optimization (SEO) goodness and for standardizing the way identified products look to buyers (when the eBay catalog has the product) as opposed to allowing buyers to search by UPC code. It's unlikely that buyers would actually do that; they will continue searching via keyword as they always have.
In other words, the reason for requiring product identifiers are more related to the search backend.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Thank you for your reply. You answered my question last week (or perhaps the week previous) about custom Item Specifics and UPCs, and how it is NOT the way the ebay Product Catalogue is populated but I'm still struggling a bit to understand whether or not anyone will find my listings from a web search. If I have to create my own UPC and then it doesn't actually match what the buyer wants when they're using a web browser to start searching for it, will it be found on ebay.ca? I'm thinking.... no. How is the product catalogue populated?
So what I would say is, as per my own testing with the UPC codes you provided last time, and as per the information you shared today regarding the US vs CA versions of Disney toys' UPC codes, it looks like the eBay Catalogue is under populated for your particular niche. In your case, this become kind of a formality to include the UPC in your item Specifics because it is going to be required to be able to list. It's just a habit to take.
As for how will buyers be able to find products via Google, I am not 100% sure but I think there are connections made in the Google backend that will match keyword searches with identifiable codes like UPCs. What this means is, if I was to go to Google and search for "Disney Cars Speed McQueen", Google will know to associate that search with any page it sees that has the corresponding UPC code, your eBay listing with them.
Last week, on this board, you suggested that the old recommendation from eBay.ca to list in US$ may no longer be valid. Canadian sellers may in fact benefit from listing in Cdn$.
I started a thread on the subject in "Selling on eBay":
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Time-to-list-in-Canadian-Dollars/m-p/300364#U300364
As you can see, different Canadian sellers have different perspectives on the subject.
Your comments would be appreciated. 
@pierrelebel wrote:
Last week, on this board, you suggested that the old recommendation from eBay.ca to list in US$ may no longer be valid. Canadian sellers may in fact benefit from listing in Cdn$.
I started a thread on the subject in "Selling on eBay":
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Time-to-list-in-Canadian-Dollars/m-p/300364#U300364
As you can see, different Canadian sellers have different perspectives on the subject.
Your comments would be appreciated.
As I said last week, we are still working out what numbers we can share about this. We definitely will expose the numbers behind our reasoning, but we aren't fixed on what we can share and how yet.
With that said, keep in mind that there are many different ways to look at something like this. One seller's personal experience may not align with what we calculated when we looked at the whole Canadian seller base. The figures usually vary by category, price tranche, size and status of the seller, etc.
This concludes our weekly chat for today. Thanks for your questions and see you next week!
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