Last year saw many changes to eBay.co.uk designed to make it simpler, safer and more fun, resulting in more buyers coming to the site than ever before - 15.2m in November 2007 alone (unique visitors, Nielsen / Netratings).

The majority of buyers are able to buy what they want, at a great price, from a trusted seller with great service, and this helps keep them coming back again and again.

However, a small but unacceptable number of buyers continue to have bad experiences when they make purchases, and end up buying less or leaving the site altogether. Although these bad experiences come from a minority of sellers, the impact is unfairly felt by everyone.

As a result, this year we will be introducing exciting changes that will reward and support sellers who provide buyers with a good service, giving them better access to those buyers.

Similarly, the minority of sellers who give bad service will be disadvantaged, with less access to buyers and lower visibility. On eBay.co.uk, we have already reduced the visibility of sellers who offer unfair postage and packaging charges. See previous announcement.

Using Detailed Seller Ratings

We’ll increasingly use Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) as the mechanism to recognise sellers who offer good service, and will be launching a new way for sellers to monitor and act on their ratings. In the meantime we encourage all sellers to review their DSRs on a regular basis. We’ll also continue to educate buyers on DSRs and how best to leave these ratings.

We look forward to explaining these changes in more detail in the coming months. Ultimately, the more good experiences that buyers have from good sellers, the more they’ll return to shop again, and the more successful sellers will be.

Best wishes for 2008.

The eBay Team