My Wish List: Get Rid of The DumbBELL and Bring Back......

[momcqueen]

I think that these notifications with the bell (the dumbBELL) have got to go. They are a nuisance and an annoyance to me. I turn it off and it returns. It shows me I won something from a week ago. Go away. I do not need you. You are wasting my time and creating a distraction. 

Bring back the 'Print' feature on the item listing page. I used that to create a permanent record of the details of the items I sold EVERY time I listed a new item or revised it significantly. (I assume the same could be said of buyers who wanted to keep a permanent record of their purchases.) Bring back the Store Categories on the left-hand side of the page in the Listing Frame that is part of the reason I purchase a monthly store subscription. That was also very important to me. The new-look for stores look great to me but please fix the misshapen logo to go inside of it on the listing frame too. 

Fix what is broken but please leave alone what is not. Anyone else want to wade in?

Get rid of the bell? Yes or no?

Bring back (fill in the blanks)?

What's on your wish list of things to fix on ebay.ca? 

[pocomocomputing]

I will take all of the changes and "improvements" if they bring back the sales I had just a couple years ago.

[momcqueen]

Fair enough. Do you have theories as to what affected your sales?

[pocomocomputing]

The eBay Password fiasco last spring and the Google changes to eBay visibility affected sales immediately in May June and onwards. Some items I could list and know they would sell in days just don't and sit for weeks/months now.

[momcqueen]

I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't really notice a drop in sales from the password hack because I'd already experienced a significant drop in sales from the shopping cart fiasco. I know most of the focus here on that is due to ebay.com being incompatible but it started with my customers in the UK many, many months before that when their bag/basket was rolled out. My combined shipping orders have plummeted and I know people come to me because I have a large selection as opposed to the cheapest prices. They are looking to economize on shipping, even international shipping. I have to work a lot harder for my sales now and I am losing them to other sellers on ebay.com and ebay.co.uk. eBay is minimizing the problems this creates for Canadian sellers. 

I hate to be a hater but the stuff I use and need here keeps disappearing only to be replaced by junk like this ridiculous bell. Even the Watch list doesn't work 75 per cent of the time I go to look at it. 'Unavailable' and 'try again later' and this has been the case for weeks now, perhaps a month. Others have reported it as a Site Issue on the boards but it keeps getting moved to Buyer Central as if it affects only affects buyers. First buyers can't combine purchase to consolidate shipping and now they can't even find what they wanted on their Watch list? 

And I need those Store Categories in the listing frame on item pages. And the Print button. My fear is that eBay is trying to dumb down the desktop experience so that it matches that on mobile devices. If I wanted to be treated like a souless seller clone, I'd go sell by The River as opposed to Down By The Bay. 

[lukey9]

All the time and effort they put in to the annoying Bell would have been better spent on fixing the Shopping Cart on ca. I sell allot of Free Shipping items now so that helps a little as it pretty hard to mess that up. I can not really judge my sales compared to last year as I closed the Store out in December and just have a few listings now. I seldom sell much out side of North America and my Europe & UK sales have gone all together. I think the Breach or Hack was the big killer for me. I buy very little here on E-Bay now and with the GSP in the States I refuse to buy any thing from any seller using it.

[momcqueen]

As a buyer, when I find a seller offering GSP, I have it shipped elsewhere within the USA and do the 'importing' myself.

The hack didn't phase me much as a buyer since this kind of thing has affected so many other retailers: Target in the USA and Kmart and, oh, who else...? Winners a few years ago here and there's been plenty.

As a seller, my multi-item orders had nosedived months prior when UK rolled out their bag. They dried up completely when the .ca cart came along because I think it coincided roughy with that whole 'immediate payment' deal on ebay.com. I knew that was going to be trouble from the start.

I try to offer as much free shipping as possible but it's not always possible. 

[momcqueen]

The eBay Password fiasco last spring and the Google changes to eBay visibility affected sales immediately in May June and onwards. Some items I could list and know they would sell in days just don't and sit for weeks/months now.

If I may ask, pocomocomputing: what changed with Google visibility? Was it something across the whole platform?

[pocomocomputing]

Do a Google search on keywords "eBay Google visibility" and read articles on the changes made by Google to their search engine results in the new Panda version of Google search. Dates of articles should be in the May 2014 range and slightly after.

To be fair, eBay seems to have figured out before how to pad their SEO results to manipulate their listings higher in search. But that is what SEO optimization is all about. Manipulating search to be first, LOL. SEO consultants are paid to get your company first in Google search and other search engines, LOL.

Not just eBay was hit by these Google changes either.

[momcqueen]

Ah, I see. When I look back at the 2014 year-in-review, it was March and April and May that my monthly sales vanished. January of 2014 was very strong, and February was too although to a lesser extent. Everything evaporated in March and didn't resume until June BUT in my segment of the marketplace the demand for what I sell follows a peak and valley along what is readily available at retail.