Little disappointed by eBay’s lack of innovation this roll-out. A shopping cart – think that was tried and buried with eBay Express… I’m glad that the eBay employees who used it liked it – and hope it offers buyers an easy way to pay – but from feedback I’ve received from new buyers on eBay – that’s not the problem. PayPal is the problem, with it’s difficult and confusing rules and regulations for the casual buyer.
About that clumping listings together in catalog. EBay will be more like Amazon, where individuals sellers are stripped of their unique selling propositions and the sale becomes only about price… Does it work for the small sellers? Check out how many items are a penny on Amazon. Can we afford to sell our goods for total bottom dollar (plus free shipping)? No, unless you have the buying power of Buy.com or ToysRus.
Which brings me to my point, eBay please stop playing catch up and start innovating!
Asking what I think might help? Here’s a few things that would help my business on eBay:
- How about giving sellers more ability to communicate with OUR customers? eBay seems to be going in the opposite direction – blocking us for direct communication. This is great for big sellers who don’t want to pay for the additional customer service but terrible for the micro seller who can benefit from direct one-on-one communications with customers.
Examples:
- Provide us with coupons to our store listings.
- Allow us sellers to set up shipping parameters that will give buyers free shipping after a certain purchase amount – determined by the individual seller.
Right now if I offer buyers FREE shipping when buyers purchase $25 or more I have to refund the shipping amount through paypal if the buyer doesn’t wait for a manual invoice – very clunky and a bookkeeping nightmare! And, with the new shopping cart – undetermined whether we can continue to send manual invoices for purchases.
- Improve the store newsletter feature – stop blocking us from selling and promoting OUR business.
EBay grew on the power of the individual seller, give us back some of that freedom. I need to be able to use HTML to code photos and links back to eBay and provide my buyers with a professional looking newsletter/flyer/ sales tool. Right now it seems like eBay distrusts sellers so much that all but the very basic functions are blocked in the newsletter.
Lastly: – Based on tradtion eBay sellers have come to expect fee and site changes to be rolled out the first of the year. EBay added to our unease by simply not announcing until three months into the year…. sounds like they knew when they would announce these rollouts months in advance… why not share the date with sellers? We’re depending on a stable platform to sell on – not knowing what the schedule is doesn’t help. Especially nervewracking after the fairly major duplicate listing surprise during our busy season last year.