eBay Live Keynote highlights and reactions...

Tonight's eBay Live keynote was pretty long and featured Meg (on eBay Inc), Rajiv (PayPal) and Bill Cobb (eBay.com/marketplaces).

Here are my rough notes of highlights from the event:

Meg

• Talked about eBay winning the Webby award (interesting note, eBay chose ChannelAdvisor customer, Lanny Morton at sportscloseouts to receive the award - congrats Lanny).  Meg mentioned their 5 word acceptance was: "Bidding starts at 99 cents".
• Then she covered some stats, did the feedback game and the usual stuff.
• There was a good GivingWorks video (Note: we are big supporters and the top sellers in the program are CA customers).  Meg then handed the event over to Rajiv

Rajiv

• Talked about the big outage last week, I wasn't clear on the message here - something about the OS?  I didn't get warm-fuzzies from that one.
• PayPal is taking the keyfob (I'm a big keyfob fan so this is AWESOME) out of beta and making it available to all paypal+ebay sellers.
• Losses due to chargebacks are down 20% due to the resolution center
• New payment review feature coming out that will flag potentially dodgey transactions and put them in limbo until payment clears, then you are covered.
• Seller protection - they are going to try and get all addrs confirmed

Cobb

• eBay Express Update:
  • An item in cart every 4 seconds
  • Every 60 secs apparel item sells
  • 9/10 EE buyers met/exceeded expectations
     
• No fee increase in July!  (Some sellers I talked to took note of the careful July mention, not leaving out Aug-Dec)
• Trust and Safety
  • Recapped Feedback 2.0/DSRs, counterfeits, (didn't mention SMI), etc.
• Played a video about the boring dullness of shopping and then introduced some new language (Some of this was tongue in cheek, but came off pretty cheesy):
  • "We put the Shazam in Ca-ching"
  • I could have sworn the video said: "take a risk, buy something on eBay" - hopefully that won't make the cut into a commercial or anything.  I wanted to check, but a different ad is playing on the keynote site.
  • "Rockin Deals"
  • Ever been to cloud ten?
    
  • And this one seems to be something we're going to hear a lot more of:
  • Windorphins
  • eBay has an entire microsite here. around Windorphins.  they even have a little graphic where Windorphins are these little sometimes one-eyed, sometimes two-eyed, eBay-colored tribble-esque thingies:

• They he talked about some of the fun things coming down the pike:
  • eBay countdown - web2-ish countdown thing.
  • Some changes to the homepage
  • One click bid thing so you don't have to refresh the listing
  • Myworld2 (adds guestbook and counters)
  • Markdown manager in stores
• A bunch of other things around the powerseller and store programs (support and discount on anchor, volume criteria for powersellers, etc.)
• They now have 90 TSAMs in SLC
• Pampering powerbuyers
• Finding changes (these could be good, waiting to see more)
  • Checkout playground.ebay.com
  • Advantaging powersellers in bestmatch search results (this could be good - some positive "carrot" feedback vs. the fee "stick")
• UPI insurance for powersellers (this is good) where you get feature fees rebated (what about listing fees?)

Finally and most importantly, Bill announced a "summer relief" program, they are lowering the first tranche of FVF fees on core from 5.25% to 4.5%.  Working through the math on that for your average $50 item, the typical FVF fee is: $1.31 (tranche1 - 5.25*$25) + .81 = $2.12.   With the discount you're at: 1.13+.81=$1.94 for a .18/item sold discount or for the $50 item it takes the FVF take rate from 4.24% to 3.88%.  That's about a 10% discount on the FVF which is better than a stick in the eye!

Will this accelerate listings?  I don't think so, but sellers still appreciate it.  More on listings coming soon.

Comments

[Tony P.]

Scot,

No mention of what Ina reports in AuctionBytes..."eBay will add an eBay Stores tab to the newly designed header" ?

THAT, has to be the best thing I've heard in a long time!