From the Financial Post - Must read for eBay Sellers

[pierrelebel]

http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/ebay-aims-to-transform-shopping-experience-t...

[hlmacdon]

The last quote in the article is a good summary of the issue.

The rest serves to highlight the identity crisis that ebay has. For the mainstream products where they compete with other marketplaces the structured initiative makes sense, for the remaining 20% of what they sell it makes little sense. That 20% is the only USP offered really, so how they address that moving forward is going to be interesting.

[lucitabby]

Interesting article - thanks for posting the link.

[ypdc_dennis]

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@hlmacdon wrote:

The last quote in the article is a good summary of the issue.

The rest serves to highlight the identity crisis that ebay has. For the mainstream products where they compete with other marketplaces the structured initiative makes sense, for the remaining 20% of what they sell it makes little sense. That 20% is the only USP offered really, so how they address that moving forward is going to be interesting.

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?? The last quote in the article is:

Disorganized listings, while viewed by some as eBay’s Achilles’ heel, might not bother its regular users, said Jim Danahy, CEO at Toronto-based retail consultancy Customer Lab.

“Even if eBay were able to group these items with heterogeneous identifiers, to some degree that undermines the treasure hunt element of (the site). They would have to have very sophisticated category management. Replenishment isn’t their game — offering something unique every day is.”

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[snoopwiz]

Thanks for posting this.

[hlmacdon]

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@ypdc_dennis wrote:

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?? The last quote in the article is:

Disorganized listings, while viewed by some as eBay’s Achilles’ heel, might not bother its regular users, said Jim Danahy, CEO at Toronto-based retail consultancy Customer Lab.

“Even if eBay were able to group these items with heterogeneous identifiers, to some degree that undermines the treasure hunt element of (the site). They would have to have very sophisticated category management. Replenishment isn’t their game — offering something unique every day is.”

-.-

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Half the fun on ebay for a lot of buyers is browsing through listings to find a bargain. With a move to structured listing, pricing is going to be the primary form of discovery for many categories. You are going to see less of those bargain opportunities assuming sellers are using the product identifiers properly, as customers are going to be guided towards the lowest prices for an item. Think of it as a more brute force approach to best match.

It's also going to be problematic as you'll have buyers entering wrong UPC's, MPN's, etc. Then you also have to account for multiple MPN's for the same parts (retailer specific variations, bilingual/trilingual/multilingual variations). If you have been involved in ecommerce environments where you have multiple supplier EDI feeds being imported with US and Canadian product you'll be familiar with the chaos that can cause. That is what Danahy is referring to with category management. Retailers employ people that are highly knowledgeable in given categories to manage this, as well as having distributors and brands involved on the supply side maintaining that info.

Ebay is essentially crowd sourcing that function, relying on sellers to do the same job. Given the range of sellers you have, you are going to potentially see a bit of a mess unfold in some categories. The approach is really only applicable to the 80% of their marketplace which are new, current items where MPNs/UPCs/etc are useful or present at all. You'll have that semi-structured approach with the remaining 20% of listings interspersed. I think they need a better way of separating out the two site wise or brand wise.

[westernstargifts]

Thanks for posting the article Pierre. 

I read it in our local newspaper and didn't get a thing out of it.  The reason?... They only printed the first part of the article...not even half of it, leaving me wondering what it was all about until I read the whole thing from the link you posted.

[hlmacdon]

Ecommercebytes has an article on the same subject here

Interesting part:

What's worrying is what eBay said about Product Cards in 2012, when it removed them from search results: "We have made significant improvements in our item-based search experience in recent years, and have learned that eBay can generate more sales for sellers like you by launching the item-based search experience everywhere. For that reason, we are removing the consolidated view experience (often referred to as "product cards") at this time."

What was old is new again.

[pocomocomputing]

I can understand the UPC idea but what is really wrong is that search sucks badly. Non related stuff and suggestions that are so far wrong that it is a joke. The problem is the lousy ebay search.

When I use google to research things (for details on a used items), it comes up with relevant items or a simple addition another keyword based on what was returned gives me what I want. If my Google search does not have anything relevant, it shows nothing or very little.

eBay search just goes on and on giving more garbage as you try to refine the search.

Interesting if I look for something on Amazon using their search, I am zeroed in on the item I want in the first search attempt or one refinement. This ability has nothing to do with UPC or MPN on Amazon since I never entered such info. It may bring up other items based on these UPC or MPN links but I got what I wanted on the first try.

So my one and only conclusion is eBay search is terrible. I just do not but on eBay.

[i.am.vivian]

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@pierrelebel wrote:

http://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/ebay-aims-to-transform-shopping-experience-t...

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Only 20% of what is sold is the vintage/used variety.  That was a surprise.  I knew a lot of what was sold on ebay was new, especially all that junk from China, but I would have thought the "vintage" department worldwide sold higher than that.

Learn something new every day.

[i.am.vivian]

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@pocomocomputing wrote:

search sucks badly. Non related stuff and suggestions that are so far wrong that it is a joke. .

eBay search just goes on and on giving more garbage as you try to refine the search. 

So my one and only conclusion is eBay search is terrible. 

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Couldn't have said it better myself!  🙂 

[hlmacdon]

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@pocomocomputing wrote:

eBay search just goes on and on giving more garbage as you try to refine the search.

Interesting if I look for something on Amazon using their search, I am zeroed in on the item I want in the first search attempt or one refinement. This ability has nothing to do with UPC or MPN on Amazon since I never entered such info. It may bring up other items based on these UPC or MPN links but I got what I wanted on the first try.

So my one and only conclusion is eBay search is terrible. I just do not but on eBay.

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The thing I hate about the amazon search is it allows for keyword spam in listings. In a lot of categories you search for a brand then get inundated with house brand, private label etc junk spamming results. I haven't listed on there before so I'm not sure if that is algo based results or non-visible fields sellers are populating to get hits off competing product. When you start throwing in other variables based on ideas like customers also bought, also search etc all you do is annoy the people who actually know what the are looking for.

The UPC an MPN on ebay is just there for SEO and to allow grouping of products on to the product pages and price comparisons, establishing semi-permanent product pages that will be indexed for the long term. Still not convinced a lot of people will bother shopping like that outside of seasonal or hot new release products. In the meantime I find automating all searches through RSS feeds to be the single most useful way to shop ebay.