eBay e-commerce forum live blogging Keynote IV

BestMatch

Rolling to the site in March.  Now linking search results with seller performance.  Algo includes time ending soonest, but also exposing the most trusted sellers more prominently will help make buyers have better buying experience.

Feedback

The final straw for many buyers is retaliatory negatives.  Sellers are leaving it 8x more frequently than buyers.

Sellers can only leave positive feedback for buyers. 

Crowd reaction is literally - WHAT?!!  Cobb has What?! slide.

Seller protections against inaccurate feedback:

• remove UPI negs (if buyer doesn't respond)
• suspensions removed

If sellers have a good record, will not allow a negative in first 3 days.

Feedback % will be based on most recent 12 months, negs roll off.  But the number will be lifetime.

Feedback credit for repeat customers - 1 per buyer per week

Encourages retention of buyers.

Cobb is encouraging sellers to think about the overall package. You may not like one change, but think about them all.

Cobbs top 10 reasons to be excited about eBay:

11. seller dashboard
10. rolling 12 mo feedback
9. repeat feedback credit
8. unlimited paypal protection for PS
7.no confirmed any more
6. all countries
5. reduced featured-plus
4. pricing discounts for PS'ers
3. increased listing exposure for all sellers
2. free gallery
1. reduced insertion fees in core+stores

Conclusion

Working on the partnership with sellers.  This is a lot of change and change is never easy. Great service will make the difference at eBay in 2008 and it WILL be rewarded.

Comments

[Josh]

I almost like the fee changes - however, the math seems a little off to me...

The way I look at it, "good sellers" - with reasonable conversion rates - got a modest fee INCREASE

...and

"bad sellers" - with low conversion rates - got a modest fee DECREASE

...seems backwards to me. I would have liked to have seen FVF rebates for not just feedback but high conversion rates - and the rebates need to be larger.

Since the made a different fee schedule for Fixed Price vs. Auction, I would have also liked to see the auction insertion fee schedule be much cheaper (close to free) for the lowest starting price and they could have kept it higher at higher starting prices - i.e. they could have done more to encourage low starting price auction listings (which is what the best sellers already do)

That all being said, I was so so glad to see them take a step in the right direction with fixing (mostly) the Stores pricing change disaster - glad to see both the reduction in Stores insertion fees and the significant and perhaps somewhat unnoticed but really important reduction in Stores High-ASP Final Value Fees.