20 July, 2006 | 07:10AM BST
Hello there. I’m Doug McCallum, the managing director of eBay (UK) Ltd. This morning eBay announced changes to the pricing and visibility of Shop Listings on eBay.co.uk and also made some other tweaks to the pricing. You can find out all about these changes here.
eBay understands that changes such as these have an impact on your trading activities and businesses and many of you will require thought and time to digest and make amendments to how you’re operating on eBay. I want to explain a bit more about these changes and also give you details about other developments at eBay.
Shops Changes
Earlier in the year we made changes to the way Shop Listings were displayed in Search and Browse results. It was a bold change and we have been monitoring it closely. The team and I have also spoken to hundreds of you, buyers and sellers, to ascertain the effect it’s had on your buying and selling. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to share their views and experiences.
Over the past few months it has emerged that the change had two unintended consequences. Firstly, buyers found the greater abundance of items a bit bewildering. Buyers find it difficult to hone in on the item they want when presented with lots of choices (on average, search results doubled!). Secondly, because Shop Listings last longer than other formats, it has become apparent that the sales velocity for which eBay is rightly famous is under threat: your products have been selling, but not as quickly. This has obviously affected the vibrancy of the marketplace.
To rebalance the marketplace eBay is going to reduce the visibility of Shop Listings in Search and Browse. Shop items won’t disappear entirely from Search and Browse results: whenever a Search returns a small number of listings, we’ll present Shop Listings to the buyer. But when that does happen Shops Listings will have their Gallery image showing to help buyers – the poor experience offered by lack of images was another key piece of buyer feedback.
Needless to say, we’re going to keep an eye on this over time to ensure that it’s working in the way it should.
eBay Express
Moving on to other developments: I’m thrilled about the progress we’re making with eBay Express for the UK and hope that you’re as excited as I am about it. If you haven’t heard yet, eBayexpress.co.uk will be a new marketplace built to complement eBay.co.uk. eBay Express will be open to professional sellers, selling new items at a fixed price. For buyers, it will feature a new way to search for items, a shopping basket and easy checkout. We’ll be launching it later in the year, in time for the Christmas rush.
If you’re already selling on eBay, the launch of eBay Express will give you the chance to offer your products on the new site at no extra charge. That’s right. If eligible items are listed on eBay.co.uk, you can opt to add them to eBay Express without incurring an additional fee.
Tens of thousands of sellers should already have received a pack in the post explaining how they can get involved with eBay Express. We’ll be providing lots more information over the next few months so keep an eye out for updates. If you haven’t received a pack and want to request one, or just fancy a quick look, you can check out this page: www.ebayexpress.co.uk.
Motors Classifieds
On Tuesday Clare, Head of eBayMotors.co.uk, announced a new development for buyers and sellers: a classified ad format for eBaymotors.co.uk. You can find the announcement here.
For those of you who might not have thought about buying or selling a car in eBay I can personally attest that it’s easy and effective: I sold my own car very successfully on eBay Motors! I’m confident that this new format will make eBay Motors an even better place to trade vehicles and give buyers and sellers more choice. This new service will be of particular interest to Motors dealers who can take a look at www.ebaymotorspro.co.uk.
Trust and Safety Updates
We’ve been working hard on Trust and Safety and we’ve made some good progress further improving the safety of the site. I know it’s a topic of huge importance to most of you and it’s a key priority for us at eBay too.
I’m pleased to let you know about some changes we’re making to how we enforce the Excessive Shipping Policy.
Excessive Shipping
Excessive shipping has become a serious issue: it sets up unfair competition through fee avoidance and search manipulation. It is also eroding buyer trust in the eBay marketplace and reflects badly on decent, honest sellers who are abiding by the rules.
We’ve been very reluctant about telling our sellers what they can charge for shipping and handling, not least because eBay sellers despatch everything from Jukeboxes to beads. But it is also obvious that some sellers are clearly taking advantage of the system. You know the listings I mean: £1 Buy it Now items that charge £25.00 (or more) to post when we all know the actual cost of postage, packaging and handling is nowhere near that.
As always we’ll be grateful for your reports and help but in addition we are going to proactively target the worst offenders. We’ve already made a start on this, and we’ll be ramping up our efforts over the next month or so.
Now please understand -- if you’re charging simply to cover your actual shipping/postage, packaging and overhead costs, you have no reason to be concerned. If you offer special postal services that are more expensive, just say so in your listings.
Multiple Item Listings Policy
We’ll also be amending our Multiple Item listings policy in the near future. Currently sellers can list up to 10 identical items. We’re going to raise this to 15 and also further clarify the policy. Keep an eye out for more information from Garreth, our Head of Trust and Safety, soon.
Law Enforcement Relationships
We’ve also been doing a lot of work behind the scenes and one thing I’m particularly proud of is our good relationship with the police. In the past year we’ve been reaching out to police forces and officers from all over the country to make sure they understand what eBay is and ensure that if they need to contact us, they can. Over 1,000 police officers have been trained over the past year either here at the eBay offices or at police venues. Work such as this largely pre-emptive but hugely worthwhile, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
Report This Item
Many of you will also want to know what’s happened about the ‘Report this Item’ button on every listing that we promised earlier in the year. We haven’t forgotten but it’s taking longer than expected to implement, and we expect to be able to give your more information later in the year.
Thanks
It’s a privilege to work for eBay and serve such an inventive and hardworking community. All the members of the eBay.co.uk team and I are grateful that so many of you choose to sell and buy on eBay every day. You are all valued customers and I speak on behalf of everyone here at eBay.co.uk, and in our Customer Support centre in Dublin, when I say that I hope you will continue to use and enjoy eBay for many years to come.
Regards,
Doug McCallum
On behalf of everyone at eBay.co.uk
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