Hello everyone,
Welcome to your weekly session. Today I'll leave the thread open likely until the evening and come chat with you as time permits.
Here are the issues I am currently tracking:
- Full shipping FVF charged on combined orders with discounted shipping (dutchman48)
- Notifications reappearing in the header (pocomocomputing)
- UPC codes suddenly not recognized on live listings (mjwl2006)
And the issues for which I have had news:
- Listings allowed to go live without a photo (rose-dee) - This is a known bug that is being worked on.
- SYI stripping the weight off when switching back to USD on an item that was originally in USD and set up with calculated shipping (block36) - bug has been logged and work should begin soon.
- SYI preventing relist and Sell Similar if the original listing had a non compliant photo (pierrelebel) - problem has been identified and I am engaging with the relevant team to address.
Good morning.
As a public company, I understand the eBay staff in Toronto cannot give us confidential information. So I will use public information posted by eBay Inc on its eBay.com site.
Let's take a good look at https://static.ebayinc.com/static/assets/Uploads/PressRoom/eBay-Factsheet-Q2-2015.pdf
According to eBay, "mobile velocity" results in the following:
one pair of ladies shoes in Canada for 42 pairs in the USA
one ladies handbag in Canada for every 36 in the USA
one tablet in Canada for every 37 in the USA
Since the population of the USA is about 10 times larger than Canada, how do you account for Americans purchasing about four times more than Canadians (pro rated) on eBay using "mobile velocity"?
Is it much smaller penetration of the marketplace by eBay in Canada?
Is it a smaller "mobile velocity" in Canada?
Is there another reason why Canadian buyers do not buy from eBay using "mobile velocity"? (please do not suggest ladies in Canada purchase fewer shoes or handbags than Americans. I have seen Mary's closets. I know better!)
Are the ratios about the same for regular purchases through desktops?
Finally how do you explain a much better market penetration in Australia, a country with a much smaller population (about 23 million) than Canada?
Hello Pierre,
@pierrelebel wrote:
Good morning.
As a public company, I understand the eBay staff in Toronto cannot give us confidential information. So I will use public information posted by eBay Inc on its eBay.com site.
Let's take a good look at https://static.ebayinc.com/static/assets/Uploads/PressRoom/eBay-Factsheet-Q2-2015.pdf
According to eBay, "mobile velocity" results in the following:
one pair of ladies shoes in Canada for 42 pairs in the USA
one ladies handbag in Canada for every 36 in the USA
one tablet in Canada for every 37 in the USA
Since the population of the USA is about 10 times larger than Canada, how do you account for Americans purchasing about four times more than Canadians (pro rated) on eBay using "mobile velocity"?
Is it much smaller penetration of the marketplace by eBay in Canada?
Is it a smaller "mobile velocity" in Canada?
Is there another reason why Canadian buyers do not buy from eBay using "mobile velocity"? (please do not suggest ladies in Canada purchase fewer shoes or handbags than Americans. I have seen Mary's closets. I know better!)
Are the ratios about the same for regular purchases through desktops?
Finally how do you explain a much better market penetration in Australia, a country with a much smaller population (about 23 million) than Canada?
Keep in mind that what you are looking at is just the mobile buyer activity, which proportionally is really close in Canada as it is in the USA (what I mean is the percentage of eBay users who use mobile is almost the same in Canada as in the US). What is different is the proportional amount of people who shop online. E-commerce is much smaller in Canada still today, which suggests that the figures shown on the fact sheet are accurate.
So it's not because Canadian ladies buy less shoes and handbags than American ladies, it's that they buy less of those online. And because we are looking at the mobile share of e-commerce, those figures also appear lower.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about Australia to comment on your question, other than size of population and size of e-commerce isn't necessarily connected or proportional.
@jt-libra wrote:
Good morning, Raphael.
I know that you have as a pending issue the matter of UPC's not being carried over when re-listing or selling similar.
I just thought I would provide an example which might illustrate the problem more clearly. Currently I have many listings which do not have a UPC in the Item Specifics. These same items, a couple of months ago, did have the UPC shown, but they have not been accepted the last few weeks. The identical item sold by a U.S. seller, however, does include the UPC. Both items were listed on .com
My Item: 262061288940 (UPC 3147758155099)
The second page of the SYI form indicates:
Select listing enhancements, then review and submit your item.
UPC has an invalid value of 3147758155099. Enter a valid value and try again.
U.S. Seller's Item: 221247138997 (Identical UPC shown)
I had read somewhere that UPC's should only be 12 digits, not 13. I tried deleting the first digit, and then the last digit, but this didn't change anything. Nor does it explain why items with 13 digit UPC's were accepted until recently and why they are still shown on many listings.
My primary concern is that, without a UPC, which is a mandatory specific, I might drop in search visibility. I have been selecting "Does Not Apply" but I wonder whether that automatically drops you in "search" when compared to the same items with a UPC.
Hi jt-llibra,
This is a really good question that I will take to my meeting with the RPI team tomorrow. Please look back here for an update to this post shortly after.
"the mobile buyer activity, which proportionally is really close in Canada as it is in the USA"
Thank you Raphael. This confirms what I have read on the subject.
"E-commerce is much smaller in Canada still today, "
Yes, most reports on the subject indicate that e-commerce in Canada does not yet have the same proportionality it has in the USA. However, we are looking at 25% to 50% less, depending on the reports one reads.
So that leaves the question open? Why do buyers in the USA buy substantially more shoes, purses and tablets on eBay as Canadians do?
Is it a matter of much lower market penetration by eBay in Canada? Or is the answer the result of (perceived) excessive shipping costs to Canadian buyers? Do domestic taxes (high in Canada) come into play?
@pierrelebel wrote:
"the mobile buyer activity, which proportionally is really close in Canada as it is in the USA"
Thank you Raphael. This confirms what I have read on the subject.
"E-commerce is much smaller in Canada still today, "
Yes, most reports on the subject indicate that e-commerce in Canada does not yet have the same proportionality it has in the USA. However, we are looking at 25% to 50% less, depending on the reports one reads.
So that leaves the question open? Why do buyers in the USA buy substantially more shoes, purses and tablets on eBay as Canadians do?
Is it a matter of much lower market penetration by eBay in Canada? Or is the answer the result of (perceived) excessive shipping costs to Canadian buyers? Do domestic taxes (high in Canada) come into play?
My personal take on this is that the size of the e-commerce "pie" is just smaller in Canada. eBay could have a similar share of the respective Canadian and US pies (ie. market share) but because of the size difference, in actual numbers, those two slices of pie are not at all the same size. Also, just to make things simpler, don't forget that there are quite a bit of Canadian buyers who eat off the US pie and vice versa. Then there are bakers from elsewhere in the world who come sell slices of their own pies on the CA site.
OK now I'm hungry. 🙂 Anybody else wants pie?
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Also, can you offer comment on how eBay Canada buyers and sellers were affected by this? An industry blog says certain people have received information from eBay stating delivery estimates were incorrect through half of September. Can you tell us where and the reason?
(I'm posting from a mobile device so my options are limited.)
http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y15/m09/i22/s02
Hi Maureen,
I don't have much to offer on this as I was not aware of the issue. However based on the email posted in Ina's article, I can assume the following:
- eBay was able to identify & fix the problem
- All impacted listings and transactions were also identified
- All impacted sellers were notified
- All impacted transactions were corrected, meaning that if the seller suffered a defect as a result, that defect was removed
It's also safe to assume that if a seller didn't receive that email, none of their listings and transactions were impacted by this issue.
With that said, I've reached out to the Shipping team who owns the delivery estimates to see what else I can find out. If I get anything new, I'll update this post.
@rose-dee wrote:
Hi Raphael, hope I'm not too late to get a question in.
I noticed the following warning popped up when I was creating a new listing on .com using "Sell Similar". I'm trying to wrap my head around how to work with this (I'm aware of the IPR requirement on .com) and yet set up my automated shipping discounts properly, since as you know, Canada Post's charges to the U.S. are based on weight and dimensions.
This means of course that I can't set up a discount without knowing the weight/size of the second or subsequent item purchased. I'm wondering what you might suggest to make paragraph 3 workable, from a Canadian seller's point of view, keeping in mind that I list items with a variety of weights and thicknesses (i.e. not all can go by Light Packet to the U.S.). I don't recall that the automated shipping discounts include parameters dependent on size/weight, and for various reasons I'd rather not use calculated shipping.
Hi rose-dee,
First off, as a Canadian seller, you cannot use calculated shipping on eBay.com because it will never work with a ship from address located outside of the United States.
Canada Post does set their rates according to weight and dimensions but the rates aren't incremental to the point where a small variation always means a different price. What I mean is, there are volumetric "buckets" that can be figured out. For example (and this is just an example, I'm making these numbers up), a parcel the same size will remain at the same shipping price from 0.5kg to 0.75kg, jump to the next rate up from 0.75kg to 1kg, etc. All you have to do is test out the rates you get for different shipping scenarios to get an idea of where the lines are and go from there.
Even easier than this would be to build the shipping price into your item price and offer free shipping on everything. This way there is no need for combined shipping discounts.
@rose-dee wrote:
The other question I have is this: are U.S. (.com) buyers obligated to add items to the cart in order to purchase more than one item? This seems to be what para. 2 is saying, but I thought it was still possible for .com buyer to purchase one-at-a-time and pay each individually, using Buy It Now?
If a buyer pays for each item individually via Buy It Now, that's not a combined order, that's many individual purchases. The only way to combine purchases into one order on eBay.com is to use the shopping cart.
