eBay releases Seller Dashboard (lite) for tracking those DSRs...

It's alive!

Sellers were a little perplexed when the seller dashboard didn't go live when Lorrie's post said it would, but starting very late Friday night and into Saturday, it has appeared for most sellers.  To find it as a seller, login to eBay and go to My Ebay, then My Account, "Seller Dashboard".

Not every reader is a large seller and I'm sure there's a lot of curiosity around what this looks likes as DSRs are such a hot topic with the community so I thought you may enjoy a little walk through.

Keep in mind this is what eBay is calling the lite version of the dashboard and more is coming in May.

Here's a screen shot of what it looks like for a real live titanium powerseller.

I've marked up this screen shot to highlight some things:

• First, I masked the seller's user ID.
• Then in box 1 I wanted to highlight how this works.  What you do is select the criteria you want to measure yourself against (5%/15%)
• When you do that in box 1, box 2 changes to tell you if you are a powerseller and also if you can meet the X% criteria selected in box1.
• Finally in box 3 is the meat and potatoes of this whole thing.  The 30-day trailing average (it updates daily) and how you stack up against the requirements.

In this example, the seller is clearly making the 5% discount tier and now thanks to this 30-day data, sellers can start to change some things and test to see if the 30-day average starts going up or down based on their changes.

So for example, with this seller we now have a much clearer path to the 15% discount.  If we can work and get the shipping time and charges DSRs up .1 then we can get there.

Why do/should sellers care about DSRs?

The 5+15% discounts in the US are pretty widely known, but now that BestMatch is live, we're seeing conversion rates pop as much as 15%-30% for those sellers that are being advantaged.  One point I've been making to some sellers that say: "well I'm going to stay at a 4.5 and not really be advantaged or disadvantaged and keep charging high $ rates." is that in a world where sellers are being advantaged, if you are not being advantaged that in itself can effectively be a disadvantage.

For example, let's say you are selling shoes and are at a 4.6, but some of your larger competitors are at a 4.8.  It's not only possible, but probably that you are now pushed off the front page of listings even if you have a high saturation strategy.  Start doing some searching with BM selected and you'll see what I mean. 

Think of it this way:

• Page 1-2 of BM search results - advantaged sellers
• Page 3-5 - sellers that are neither advantaged or disadvantaged
• page 6+ - welcome to disadvantage-ville!

The moral of this story is sellers that take selling on eBay seriously need to work to get to the 5% level short-term and long-term think about what it takes to get to 15%.  If you don't you can say hello to page 4 and maybe even page 6.

How to improve your DSRs

In Mid Feb, we ran a webinar on DSRs and came up with 11 best practices here.   One thing sellers have been constantly leaving in the blog feedback is that eBay wants them to do free shipping but eBay isn't paying for it.

Well what these folks aren't listening to is that we keep saying that our data says that sure cost does play a roll, but what's equally important and sometimes more important are options (do you offer combined shipping,expedited shipping?) and communication.

With some tweaks to communication alone we've been able to move seller's 30day DSRs .1-.3, so it's more about setting expectations and living up to them vs. giving away shipping free.

To those readers who hate DSRs

Everytime I write about DSRs I get about 10 comments from sellers (most of them the leaders of the recent boycott) that fundamentally argue the system is flawed, evil and the work of satan.  Their argument goes something like this:

"eBay tells buyers that 4 is good, but then they require sellers to be a 4.5 which is above good.  Why does eBay require sellers to be better than what they are telling the buyers?"

I'm being kind here, there's usually some reference to communism, a class action lawsuit or some such kind of thing.

This makes me think back to one of my first engineering classes at the wonderful University of South Carolina (go Gamecocks!).  This was a weeder class and super hard.  I was really proud on one of the first tests to get a 95, but somewhat perplexed to see the grade marked with a 'B'.  The professor went on to explain that he was free by the university to grade on a curve and according to the bell curve, enough fellow students did better than I did such that I was now in the 'second quartile' and a B.  Well I can tell you that got my attention and I certainly started to strive to not only get above the 'A' rank which is usually a 93, but to get in the top quartile of my fellow students.

This is exactly what eBay is doing to sellers.  Sure they are telling buyers that 4 is good and 5 is excellent.  Then what they are doing is putting all of the sellers in a distribution curve and it turns out that when you do that, you end up with the buckets that Brian Burke outlined a long time ago. 

So there really is no correlation to what ebay tells the buyer and where they draw the lines for advantage/disadvantage/carrots/sticks, what matters is where you rank against OTHER SELLERs.

Sellers that are stuck on this aspect of DSRs need to move on or be forever relegated to page 6 (and really what's the point at that point?).

Finally a message for eBay (need seller's help here too - call your TSAMs!!!)
While the seller dashboard is a neat app and give sellers some new data, we believe that third parties like ChannelAdvisor could do some innovative things with this data, but alas eBay has not made it available via any API.  We have literally thousands of sellers using our free DSRWatch utility, and would love to add some advanced charting/trending/alerting around the 30-day data, but eBay has this data locked up in it's servers and isn't providing access to anyone but eBay.

Disclosure for SeekingAlpha: I am long Google.

Comments

[Vytautus]

Lets get get some of this straight here. The reason ebay is falling by the way side is the focus on silly unimportant projects like this. DSR are fine if they were insured to be fair and unbiased and fact based. Instead, ebay is providing a forum for slander because most of the ratings are a matter of opinion. Slander when it hurts some one financially is illegal. The way to implement a policy like this is by way of a vote.
My personal problem with it is the shipping time DSR. All of my auctions have a stated shipping time of 15 business days due to other obligations and where I live. It is stated in the auction. buyers never rate my shipping by what is specified in the listing they rate it by what they think is fast. I can not work my 50 hour a week job and find things to put up and ship them in under 15 days I am one man. The problem is all who planned this never used the system or know how it works. I need the extra money that was what my Christmas was based on, now its off because some jerk who did not read my shipping time and gave me 1 star based on what he thought he should get the item in. Merry Christmas thanks for ruining mine I hope you are proud of your accomplishments and the destruction of others lives who are less fortunate than you.

[Yep!]

I predicted a long time ago that eBay's policies were geared toward running off the small sellers and pandering to the Mega Sellers. I was right.

It is Pareto's Law: 20% of the sellers make 80% of the money for eBay while 80% make 20% of their profit. Pander to the 20% who give the biggest return and send the others packing!

By the way, after two emails that I could now view my seller's dashboard, I have yet to have one available to me. The latest one was today. When I clicked on their link it said something about that information not being available in that area.

I always ship the next business day or sometimes the same business day, and still have buyers rating me as slow on shipping! I also charge less S&H than it actually costs to ship, and they rate me as charging too much! I give descriptions that they ignore, and they rate the items "Not as described"! And, finally, I email as soon as I can after a sale (usually minutes, not later than a few hours if I am away from the house), advise as to when I will ship, then follow up after shipment with a confirmation number, and still get folks complaining that my communication is poor. All of this through the star rating system, of course.

I can't leave these losers a neutral or negative, although they sabotage my ratings!

[shthar]

this is why you have to sell stuff that 20 million other people aren't selling, so there ain't that many results when they search.

then it doesnt matter what the dsm, dmz or dum is

[Fish Noir Foul]

The Bell Curve thing is disingenuous.

The problem is 4 is NOT good. Veteran ebayers know this but newbies think they are being generous by giving 4.5s when the seller did everything as perfectly as could be but the only way a newbie would go with a 5 (if 4 is good) is if they got their item the day after they paid for it.

So you can have 2 sellers who performed exactly the same but get 2 different ratings solely because one buyer is savvy & one is taking Ebay's guideline as a benchmark.

4 is not good. 4 is failing. and for Ebay to give buyers the wrong impression screws up the works.

It's that simple.

[Nancy]

Joined ebay June 1998, been a seller all those years. My feedback is 99.6% stars are 5.0, 4.9, 4.9, 4.9. A casual seller, selling less than 1,000 items annually.

Interestingly, with no INR or disputes filed against me, with obvious meeting the criteria to get a good pull in the search, I'm not. The Best Match algorithm is not working if based on the criteria we've been told. We are not being told everything obviously. From what I've been able to determine on the category I sell in, it's more based on volume of listings by a seller than it is good DSR's and feedback/pricing/shipping costs.

I beat out many who are above me in the search pull by Best Match, the only difference I can see is they have more listed than I do.

Ebay is not about to release the total mess that goes into the real search pull under Best Match, for it would reveal a bias they have instituted in their algorithm and it's geared to volume sellers, I feel very certain. That is the ONE thing I can find every time I use Best Match in searching a category I know very well and my competition in that category.

Ebay has lost their collective minds.

[Tony P.]

Hey Scot,

As BILLSTUFF stated, your analogy is a bit off-base. What your professor did was allow the students to set the particular Marks, and then he just filled in the letter-grades. If the smartest student had scored an 83, then that would have been an 'A'. (a true weeder class shouldn't use a curve - that defeats the whole intent of the class- but that's another topic)

If ebay was sincere in their carrot policy, they would have followed the Curve Procedure and not just said that's what they're doing. Such a move would have much more merit as a true incentive plan for seller performance improvement.

To fit your analogy, the discount marks need to be set by the sellers' numbers, not by ebay's outside-the-norm numbers (which, by the way, is contradictory to a curve system). Whatever the highest DSR's attained by sellers, then THAT is the top tier.

Top Quatrile - 15% discount
Next Quatrile - 10% discount
Next Quatrile - 5% discount
Last Quatrile - No discount

Now that, is an incentive plan, progressive carrots included. Anything less, is a Stick plan.

[Bill]

Scott,

I remember the bell curve very well but it was a long time ago. We had it as an option at UofI.

The dashboard on my site comes up as page not responding and it is happening to a lot of other people. I hope they get it fixed soon.

Bill

[Maggie]

Nice spin, of course that's what they're paying you for. Your relation of this to a college bell curve is a bit out of joint. For one thing, you would kind of assume that most college students are taking all the tests, or making them up; that tests are geared toward those that an average student should be able to pass; and that the college professor has absolutely no ulterior motive in creating the curve (i.e., doesn't profit from it).

In the case of the DSR's, on the other hand, the playing field is NOT level as it is in a college classroom.

For one thing, the sellers do not all sell the same sort of items, so shipping DSR's are greatly affected (i.e., 1st class postage, or Priority mail, vs. media mail or large packages going UPS - both of which take longer to deliver and are difficult to calculate ahead of time as some items can't be prepacked).

Secondly sellers who sell new items are much more likely to get repeatedly better scores in Item as Described, than those who sell used items, mainly because some buyers don't fully read listings and also because there's just so much more to fully describe with a used item.

Thirdly, Very high volume sellers who's numbers are up in the hundreds of thousands stand a much better chance of benefitting from a bell since it is easier for them to maintain a higher percentage in their DSR's even though they may actually be worse sellers thant the little guy who sold 500 items and got one negative.

Why? In college, the median score in the curve is usually somewhere between 70 and 79, or in the "C" grade range. By taking the average of the course, the instructor can divide and distribute the grades among the class; the higher-scoring students will greatly benefit from the curve, with the lower score students picking up between three and five points over their actual score on the assignment.

In the case of ebay - the majority of sellers are well below what the median is set at - therefore they will never benefit from the curve as it is, and will indeed suffer from it - Therefore, we can only assume that Ebay has set the curve in this way so that most of its sellers of used products such as antiques, collectibles, clothing, handmade goods (in other words the people who made Ebay what it is today) will, in fact be driven off and Ebay will be left with a bunch of mega power sellers.

[Benelli]

What's your advice regarding I18N selling? Are I18N DSRs still averaging .5 lower than domestic? Is eBay planning to bias I18N DSRs?

As you point out, sellers are competing with other sellers more than ever for ranking... if selling I18N leads to disadvantages should we stop selling I18N or is that somehow compensated for in eBay's grading scale?

[BILLSTUFF]

Hello Scot. My current 30-day DSRs entitle me to a 15% discount. Nonetheless, I say your analogy of the Bell Curve is apples and oranges. Your engineering professor didn’t decide a 95 was a B until after everyone took the test. eBay decided the DSR benchmarks for discounts and PowerSeller eligibility when it established the program. They are just arbitrary lines in the sand that were determined prior to performance, not afterwards. Furthermore, the fact that we are all judged by the same standard and are all in the same proverbial boat doesn’t justify using inaccurate or misleading terminology as part of the testing criteria. eBay is capable of designing much more unambiguous customer service rating system language. All you have to do is look at the most recent one it has designed for polling its Skype customers.

[BILLSTUFF]

Hello Scot. My current 30-day DSRs entitle me to a 15% discount. Nonetheless, I say your analogy of the Bell Curve is apples and oranges. Your engineering professor didn’t decide a 95 was a B until after everyone took the test. eBay decided the DSR benchmarks for discounts and PowerSeller eligibility when it established the program. They are just arbitrary lines in the sand that were determined prior to performance, not afterwards. Furthermore, the fact that we are all judged by the same standard and are all in the same proverbial boat doesn’t justify using inaccurate or misleading terminology as part of the testing criteria. eBay is capable of designing much more unambiguous customer service rating system language. All you have to do is look at the most recent one it has designed for polling its Skype customers.

[Fruity]

Sorry Scot, its an HR tool. Its not different than employee ranking. Its a system that will continue to reward the top tier with no room to reward based on contributions or value added. Since larger volume sellers will continue to be able to get a quicker amount of qualified numbers their ability to maintain will be higher. The lower volume seller will not and so a single lower star will impact them greater. Sure its about ranking you against other sellers, but the greatest flaw is rewarding you(or not) against others that are outside of your pool. One who sells handmade low volume items cannot perform or maintain comparable capacity against someone who sells 500 widgets a week. And all it takes is a few dings to a competitor and a larger volume seller can maintain enough padding to stay at the top. I dont think its a shock that there's alot of those mega sellers now splitting up their massive inventory into multiple IDs. I counted a dozen sellers early this month split up on 2, some of them 3 IDs. Of course with that much volume they can afford to pay for tools that allow them to do this. Smaller volume , ordinary or average sellers do not have that luxury. They actually have to stay within 1 ID. But then again, even I am going to split it up because there's no reason to have a brand on ebay. So when there's no need to build a brand or a rep, then you dont have follow what the DSRs were intended to produce. You dont have to charge nice prices anymore, because you know you'll soon abandon the ID and get dings.. so why bother.

You know what happens to employee reward/ranking systems. You eventually utilize that to determine who to fire. So what you are explaining it fits in the current state, but everything ebay implements lends itself to something else in a long range plan.

ps I'm not leading or part of any boycott but it sounds like you're a bit miffed about them. You know that the smaller volume sellers are gonna have more difficulty, they always do. Meggies have some of the very worst feedback, it's always been the smaller sellers who cared about their feedback. never seen a megaseller bat an eye to their crummy feedback. So it shouldn't be any surprise that they are internalizing this more than other types of sellers. Sometimes I wonder about you Scot. Sometimes I wonder if it's just about page views

[tj]

Lets look at the big picture, all this is going to do is flood the first 3 pages with items that buyers are most probably not even looking for….then those buyers go away & say eBay’s cr@p you can’t find anything (oh but that’s already started to happen now>>>?)…then traffic starts to drop, eBay get all nervous & change the logarithms’ of best match & it gets all messed up again …a complete mess & those mega power sellers out there will soon start shouting at eBay when their conversion figures drop down to the 20% area….and they will…people spend less time on ebay now than they ever did, mostly because they CAN’T FIND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR…what has best match linked to DSR done to address that simple fact..NOTHING

[Tim]

I was not "perplexed" when the promised enhancement did not go live when eBay said it would... were you? Really? The only thing eBay does when it says it will do it, and without glitches, are fee hikes. Everything else runs behind, or if launched on time, is buggy from the get-go.

OK, DSRs are not the work of Satan... but combined with the lousy communication to buyers regarding the scores on eBay's part, the purposeful misleading of buyers, and the one-sided feedback rule that is coming... well, DSRs are just not fair to sellers. I know, I just used the 'fair' word. Life isn't fair. Business isn't fair. Waaaaaa. OK, I get it... but I don't have to like it... and I can do things to lessen my reliance on eBay and their unfair methods. That's me being fair to me.

My rolling 30 day average according to the late-but-at-least-it-is-here seller dashboard is 4.9 across the board. I am doing what eBay wants, but I am tired of playing in eBay's sandbox. Today I am a good seller, doing just what they want... tomorrow? Who knows. They may really find more and more sellers hitting the doors. Of course, they'll be pushing API inventory uploads to the big guys soon and so they won't need us little guys. Then they'll be just what they want... to be just like like Amazon - but without the control and with a feedback and DSR system that shows their new favorite big sellers to be the slow/costly sellers that they are.

I agree with you Scot, eBay needs to share more of their data with their customers... DSR data and other kinds of data.