eBay

happy_pigeon · ‎02-27-2018

Hi all,

As you’ve probably seen by now, the 2018 Spring Seller Update was released today. We’re sorry for the delay—we prefer to launch our pages as soon after the US pages as possible, but technical issues prevented us from launching the pages earlier.

Please use this thread for feedback and questions about this latest release. I have a good familiarity with the content (having diligently and painstakingly pecked the pages out with my beak), and should be able to either address any questions or clarifications as needed, or pass them on to the right person.

As always, feedback is welcome. I may not address your feedback directly, but I’ll be collecting the most salient points to pass along to the Seller Release team at large.

For my own purposes, I’d also love to hear back about how you find the structure of the update, from a Canadian perspective. Is it simple or challenging to differentiate between what’s available to Canada and what’s available to the US? Is the language plain and easily understandable? Is the information simple to navigate and digest? This type of feedback helps me make future Seller Updates better.

Here’s some supplemental reading to go with your morning coffee, for those interested. Some of it is linked from the Seller Update, but in case you missed it:

Structured Data: The types of structured data, how to use it, and how it interfaces with the eBay catalogue.
eBay catalogue: What the eBay catalogue is, when to use it, and detailed instructions on how to use it.
eBay Seller Protection Policy: A simplified view of how sellers are protected when they choose to offer free returns.

Sincerely,

Pigeon

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎03-04-2018

Loss of search ranking is not necessarily due to the product-based shopping experience.

At the end of the day, .com is a US site designed with US buyers and sellers in mind, and we can't fault it for that. It is working as designed. It is not the eBay.com's initiative to surface all sellers equally; it's the site's initiative to surface the best results for a US buyer. At the end of the day, if all aspects of your item are competitive with the available assortment, it's going to surface. But as international sellers, it is sometimes very difficult to compete with US sellers if the buyer is located in the US.

These are truths that must be considered alongside many of the reasons a Canadian seller may choose to list on .com.

I find it a little disheartening that this information was accepted as stated. And to date has received 2 helpfuls??? Doesn't sound really that helpful or welcoming to Canadian sellers. As Ebay sellers on the Canadian side of things we are still generating income for eBay as we attempt to sell with the continuous number of issues that keep cropping up that seem to be low on the priority list slowing us down and make our items even more difficult to locate and sell. Advising us that we had to list in Canadian Dollars last year caused a number of us reduced volumes of business and was very time consuming. Then to later inform us we would be much better off to list on dot com to improve our visibility. Due to the available shipping methods(No Canada Post/Free shipping) for a lot of us it is very difficult to actually list on dot com. Just my 2 cents Canadian rounded up to 5 cents.

-CM

momcqueen · ‎03-04-2018

Ebay.com is a US-site for US shoppers and sellers.

Ebay.ca is a Canadian site for Canadian shoppers and sellers.

That's the reason there is a site for Canadians. It's for Canadians. Same as The River, W-Mart etc. Each major retailer has one site for each side of the border. This is industry standard.

momcqueen · ‎03-04-2018

The problem, to my mind, is that Grouped Listings are not grouping in a logical or optimal manner for shoppers and sellers. The data is inherently flawed and it's being presented in a way that isn't helping buyers find what they want. That interim testing in late February would have revealed this by now.

The last time I looked at selling as a third-party merchant on the other two websites I named, it became clear from my cursory research that a listing on one site, the Canadian version, did not show on its USA-based counterpart. ebay is unique in that it shows buyers items from sellers all over the world, providing the shipping component is identified. This has, to my mind, been ebay's biggest strength. Here, a listing on ebay.ca could be guaranteed exposure to shoppers on ebay.com but elsewhere on other selling venues that is absolutely not the case. If you want to sell on The River USA, you list there. If you want to sell on The River Canada, you list there. The two listings will never meet in the same search, period.

travis7s · ‎03-04-2018

They are doing a disservice to US buyers if they are hiding the best Canadian deals from them though. I always make sure I beat the .com prices by a wide margin.

momcqueen · ‎03-04-2018

I don't disagree with your statement. If the new Grouped search is not showing all the deals available to all the buyers in a specified location, then it's not a good search. We have come to expect that cross-border visibility, ebay cannot go changing the rules for it without warning like they did. Buyers and sellers expect it.

reallynicestamps · ‎03-04-2018

They are doing a disservice to US buyers

They being AZ or eBay?

Remember that with AZ the seller is also competing with AZ itself.

So there are two points in eBay's favour.

Worldwide visibility and non-competition.

But AZ (perhaps because the execs are more entrepreneurial and not just in it for the paycheck) also does a lot more publicity.

I wonder how many people believe that AZ delivers everything by drone rather than using Canada Post?

travis7s · ‎03-04-2018

eBay, it was in response this employee's quote:

"At the end of the day, .com is a US site designed with US buyers and sellers in mind"

ypdc_dennis · ‎03-04-2018

@rose-deewrote:
... One other factor that I believe was a watershed moment was eBay's going public. I don't recall now exactly when that was, probably also around 2012, but from that point onward, eBay's driving force has no doubt been to earn more and more income to keep its insatiable shareholders from barking at its heels.

Off by a decade -- 2002

https://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-roars-into-public-trading/

...

eBay has never paid a dividend to shareholders. The shareholders did do some barking to get PayPal split off into a second company giving them more shares to play with.

-..-

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎03-04-2018

If a Canadian goes to a US Walmart they don't get a different price. Or vice vera. Ebay is a cross border platform or entity. Just like a Walmart. Designed for buyers to be able to shop anywhere to find items at the price they want and from any eBay seller they so choose. And for sellers to have access to all markets. It's rules and regulations should be set up the same way. We are only a Canadian entity for fees so that we could have taxes applied. When we call the help desk we get someone in the USA or elsewhere. Doesn't really appear to be a Canadian stand alone office. Except at maybe tax time. All Ebay locations should be supported equally.

-CM

momcqueen · ‎03-04-2018

I cannot agree with anything you’ve said there, and I’m not going to attempt to explain all the many reasons for that. We’re simply going to have to agree to disagree.

happy_pigeon · ‎03-05-2018

@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

If a Canadian goes to a US Walmart they don't get a different price. Or vice vera. Ebay is a cross border platform or entity. Just like a Walmart. Designed for buyers to be able to shop anywhere to find items at the price they want and from any eBay seller they so choose. And for sellers to have access to all markets. It's rules and regulations should be set up the same way. We are only a Canadian entity for fees so that we could have taxes applied. When we call the help desk we get someone in the USA or elsewhere. Doesn't really appear to be a Canadian stand alone office. Except at maybe tax time. All Ebay locations should be supported equally.

-CM

But... but I'm sitting in the Canadian office right now!

rose-dee · ‎03-05-2018

@hlmacdonwrote:
I don't think the Chinese sellers ruined ebay per se. I would make the argument that the reduced success of sellers has as much to do with ebay completely ruining their relationship with google through spammy blackhat practices and killing their external traffic. That lines up with the time frame and coincides with ebay making changes to reporting tools to hide your ability to see where your buyers were coming from.

You have a point there, although I still believe the "Chinese invasion" was, in the larger picture, a failed plan. The relationship with Google certainly added to the problem. I loved having Omniture, it was a great help with targeted marketing and decision-making in terms of what items to list to appeal to which customers. I always believed though that eBay really removed it, not for the reasons they gave us ("you'll get a better feature"), but rather, as you say, to prevent sellers from knowing where their buyers originated. As a "service provider" to its subscribers (we store owners), I thought that was a pretty cheesy step on eBay's part.

As far as the shopify bit goes it is just low/no cost acquisition of listing inventory. I see it as more of an extension of their current affiliate marketing, but it is also an admission that they have trouble attracting merchants to the platform. I don't think you'll see a ton of uptake there.

Yes, I agree, they have been mining every possible source for new sellers. First it was the Chinese, then any greenhorn who happened to buy a $2 item on the site, now this. I think the success or failure of this latest idea may depend on what blandishments eBay offers. I presume eBay is getting some sort of sweetener from Shopify for this deal, so they may be able to offer new sellers from that stream some special perquisites. Maybe the increased store fees for existing sellers will help to pay for that too.

rose-dee · ‎03-05-2018

@ypdc_denniswrote:
Off by a decade -- 2002

https://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-roars-into-public-trading/

eBay has never paid a dividend to shareholders. The shareholders did do some barking to get PayPal split off into a second company giving them more shares to play with.

(LOL) Well, I guess I've been around here longer than I realized. I am aware eBay has never paid dividends, but that doesn't change the fact that shareholders want to make money by turning their shares over at a profit, which means pushing for ever-increasing growth and income from its cash cow. Most these days aren't shareholders in the traditional sense of "investors" anyway, but gamblers expecting a return. Which means the company's primary raison d'être shifts to creating constant growth and a higher bottom line to fuel share pricing, and not necessarily to ensuring the best possible value and functionality for its site users. This shift may not have happened overnight, but it's certainly in full gear by now.

rose-dee · ‎03-05-2018

@momcqueenwrote:
Ebay.com is a US-site for US shoppers and sellers.
Ebay.ca is a Canadian site for Canadian shoppers and sellers.
That's the reason there is a site for Canadians. It's for Canadians. Same as The River, W-Mart etc. Each major retailer has one site for each side of the border. This is industry standard.

I would submit that eBay.ca has always been primarily a facility for Canadian sellers, not for buyers. I expect most Canadian buyers still go to the standard eBay.com to shop. Where of course they will find listings by Canadian sellers mixed in with a whole lot of U.S. listings, but all prices displayed in $Cdn.

The interesting point is that, as a buyer, I rarely find there's a significant difference between what I see when searching for the same item on .com and .ca -- Canadian items don't seem to be given any sort of preference on .ca. A buyer has to use the location filter on either site to accomplish that. Whether this will also be the case when products are automatically grouped by eBay and shown to Canadian buyers remains to be seen. I wouldn't even be surprised to see the "Canada only" filter disappear, to be replaced by "Ships to Canada".

As for the specific tailoring of eBay.ca to Canadian sellers' needs, those perquisites have seriously dwindled over the past few years. I wouldn't say it's necessarily industry standard to have separate sites for the U.S. and Canada. That may be the standard for retailers who actually have control over inventory and pricing in each country. But there are online selling platforms that are .com only, and/or on which sellers can only list in $USD.

travis7s · ‎03-08-2018

The most convenient thing about buying on .ca is it auto filters out any items that won't ship to Canada.

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎03-16-2018

@happy_pigeonwrote:
@katlover1952wrote:
Am I to understand from your comments that .ca stores will not get any free listings on .com?
I cannot confirm or deny this, because I truly don't know. Our Product Managers are still hammering out the details for the Canada-specific changes.

A couple of folks have asked this now, and I will be the one building the webpages for the product when it is ready, so I'll be sure that this is addressed in the materials as I see that it is a point of concern for many.

(My apologies if this was answered already, I just don’t want to miss my opportunity to quote this as I slowly read through this thread)

I would love to know this as well. If the $5/month (annual contract) Starter Store will include 100 free listings on BOTH .ca and .com (100 + 100 = 200 listings) then I’d definitely be interested in subscribing for a year. But if the 100 listings is only going to be for .ca, then I’m not interested. Right now all users get 50 free listings on .ca and .com (50 + 50 = 100) so there would be zero incentive for people like me to pay $5/month just for store features.

happy_pigeon · ‎03-16-2018

I have been summoned!

Don't apologise, take your time; this thread will be here until everyone's done with it and it falls lifelessly to the end of the list!

Our Stores currently offer the ability to use listing allowances on both .com and .ca, and I don't see that as changing or being different for the new tiers.

In all honesty I haven't got my hands on the exact details yet, but I'd be verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry surprised. That sort of thing would require programming changes on the back end, so I would likely have heard of that by now.

ians_vintage · ‎05-24-2018

Seeing similar results with my items too. No where to be found, and sales have cratered recently.

ians_vintage · ‎05-24-2018

Thanks for this post. It's like you reached into my brain and pulled out my thoughts in a coherent manner. Bravo!

momcqueen · ‎05-24-2018

"I would submit that eBay.ca has always been primarily a facility for Canadian sellers, not for buyers. I expect most Canadian buyers still go to the standard eBay.com to shop. "

That might have been the case ten years ago but today's Canadian ebay shoppers are smarter than that. Especially given the value of the Canadian dollar against USD.