eBay testing reduced store visibility

Sellers are reporting that eBay either has some unusual bugginess or they are doing some A/B testing on store discoverability.  On eBay search engine results pages (SERPs) you typically have two places for consumers to find store listings:

1. Store discoverability – If eBay Core returns < 20 items, then up to 20 store items that match the search criteria are shown.
2. “Shop eBay Stores” is a little box typically at the lower left that suggests eBay stores that carry similar items to those being searched.  An example of the shop ebay stores box is below.

For the last two weeks, sellers have been speculating something is coming because this page changed.

Under the “Promote Your Store” section, it used to offer more exposure to higher-end stores and now as you can see, there is no increased exposure on eBay.

Then I started to get reports that sellers store traffic was dropping. Then sellers started to notice that the “Shop eBay Stores” box was not showing up on some SERPs (I unfortunately don’t have a screen shot of this).   Still others have reported that instead of sponsored listings showing up on null search results they have replaced store discoverability (I have not seen that or a screen shot of it).

Finally, a seller yesterday was able to get a screen shot that showed an interesting twist.  eBay had replaced the store discoverability with eBay Express listings. eBay Express already advantages core (fp/bin) listings over store listings so this gives stores some visibility, but it’s greatly reduced.   Also, I don’t understand how this improves the buyer experience to see eBay/EE listings all jumbled together. There are sure to be duplicates and confusion around the intermingling of the brands.

 Here’s a screen shot:

Of course sellers are speculating that this move indicates eBay is desperate to get traffic to EE and is willing to sacrifice store traffic to get there.

It’s not clear which of these tests will stick or not, but there’s enough going on around reducing store exposure that sellers are getting concerned.  In fact, eBay really has two levers they can pull to slow down the SIF format:  Increase fees and decrease traffic.  It looks like they maybe pulling the second lever instead of the first as I had incorrectly speculated a couple of weeks ago. 

Readers are you seeing a decrease in traffic to your store listings? Any other testing that you are seeing?

Comments

[Roo]

Definitely seeing a reduction in hit's on stores, and a reduction in hit's from the states, never mind buyers!

Can eBid and Tazbar really make an effort to break the monopoly and get some competition so ebay pull their fingers out and benefit buyers as well as sellers?

[Gotta Ride Bikes]

Benelli and others -
Hiding Stores is not about selling more items, just as ending SIS was not about "buyer complaints" as eBay claimed. SIS last winter was a massive miscalculation on management's part - it caused a seismic shift in listings as sellers learned that they could sell in Stores for less than in Core (due to the reduced listing fees). Core listing totals plummeted, Stores went up. Even after SIS ended, this trend continued. This is why Stores were targeted for the large price increase last summer, but it STILL hasn't had the desired effect of increasing Core listings.

Why are Core listings so important? This is one of the major metrics that Wall St looks at. If eBay falls short on the metrics, the stock gets hammered. Did you wonder why they had so many listing promos last winter? Yup, it corresponded to when Core listing totals were low.

Bottom line - eBay doesn't WANT stores to do well, unless Core is growing, which it's not.
This is just another move to make Store listings less viable, all in the hopes that sellers will stop listing there and move to Core instead.

[Billoment]

Store sales are down. eBay sales in themself are down. But, we have been shifting our main inventory to our website as we are just going to be using eBay now as our inventory liquidation platform. Right now we are running about 20% of what used to be our inventory levels on eBay. Our sales have dropped in half on eBay so all in all we are not doing that bad cosidering. The key to having a store on eBay as it was before and always should be is to have precise titles with no fluf and the proper key words. We also feed Google base and when we look for a particular item in Google search we are usually near the top if not at the top. The economy on a whole is soft. Our regulars are only spending about 20% of what they normally would be. The good thing is they are still buying.
eBay has been having difficulties in one thing or another on their program since at least 2002. This is nothing new and they always are experimenting. What is dependant on the seller is to diversify your exposure points or as Scott calls it Muti-Channel marketing. A good businessman also recognizes that buying patterns are always shifting and has to know how to change to be able take advantage of those shifts.
eBay is not what it used to be a couple of years ago since it has gone back to the garage sale type of platform. Peopel want it cheap and those are the ones who are doing the buying. They had an opportunity to make it a complete sales platform but they blew that chance starting with the changes they made starting in 2005 and through 2006. I recieved a flyer last week in the mail on the eBay Live in Boston offering 40% of the registration fee. That gives a person a good clue as to where things are going.
If people think that all they have to do is post something and the money will come in I can tell you now your far better off getting a part time job at the minimum wage and it won't cost you to get your money. You have to be smart and put in hard work in order to get sales on eBay and especially in an eBay store.

Bill

[K L]

I simply do not understand why eBay continues to hide the Stores. While eBay continues to "tinker" with the search and display my efforts on Amazon, Pricegrabber continue to improve. Those sites have had a very stable platform for a year. The business the other web sites are getting could easily belong to eBay if they would stop bastardizing the stores..

[HarleyGlasses]

eE Hint: Make sure every store title has a UNIQUE title for maximum eE exposure.

widget small round Black 1
widget small round Black 2
widget small round Black 3

or

widget small round Black A
widget small round Black B
widget small round Black C

or

widget small round Black !
widget small round Black @
widget small round Black #

not:

widget small round Black
widget small round Black
widget small round Black

These last two items would be hidden behind the first one and not shown to buyers on eE, 2 other items, most likely your competitors, would be shown in their place.

Unfourtunately the eE shopping experience sucks and eBay has decided to force it upon us. The writing is on the wall. I would have liked to keep my business on eBay but I am shifting it to Amazon and the funds that would have been spent on eBay will go to our website.

[Gotta Ride Bikes]

Our Store traffic (and sales) dropped dramatically in the last month. We're at less than half of what we had historically seen for over a year. We were wondering why the bottom fell out, and now perhaps we have the explanation.
Yep, how do they get items back to Core - not by improving that product, but by making Stores even less attractive. Great marketing, guys!

[Benelli]

I have seen a decrease in traffic and sales recently but thought this was due to the eBay Sale items in Core blocking the Store results in search or just a normal summer slowdown.

EBay is showing Express items instead of Store items... I don't see the point. Express is clearly a dog and if it was going to work, they wouldn't have to shove it down users throats like they are trying to do. It would take off (like Store's did when they came back in Core search results in Feb of 06'). My sales went up nicely then.

I've been in Express from day 1 with 20,000+ new items with only a single digit number of sales from Express each month.

If eBay wants to sell things, all they need to do is open Stores up to Core search and we will be all set. Why they cannot figure out how to make money this way is beyond me, especially after the Store's fee increases.

I'd like to suggest that eBay RETEST showing Store items in Core search results. Finding a way to make this work will be a win-win for eBay and sellers.

I hope putting Store items back into Core search results will be a topic of discussion at eBay Live this year.

[Beyond the Treeline]

"For the last two weeks, sellers have been speculating something is coming because this page changed."

... and yet ...

http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/featuredexposure.html

(Point being that an omission from one page does not equate to a sea change on the horizon. Link above makes that abundantly clear -- unless of course, more speculation is due that page hasn't *yet* changed. There is, however, no evidence that this is in play.)

As for eBay doing some "tinkering", sorry, this is not new, and is an observation that is at the least, several weeks old.