Confusion abounds over eBay's new International visibility offering

In late March, Stephanie Tilenius announced a new listing upgrade called the "International Site Visibility Upgrade".  At Catalyst I mentioned this to many sellers that I know have large sales outside the US and none of them had heard of it.  Those that had heard of it were confused (as was I) about how it works.

Background

In the past eBay has always fiddled with cross-site listing (second only behind stores listings).  If you listed in the US, sometimes your items would show up in the UK 'core results' and other times they wouldn't.  Lately eBay has stopped this practice and now puts non-local results below core results in a little box that's below core and then store results called something like "X items found from eBay international sellers like this for example (click to enlarge):

The "ebay international sellers" results only pop up when there are very few search results so the bottom line is that as a US seller you get very little UK exposure.

Any buyer can go into advanced search results and change those to see a more global view of the results.  For example, if we take the search from the above example done in the UK and turn on 'worldwide sellers' vs. the default of UK only (the other choice is EU), then we see the result that was previously in the "international sellers" segment fully integrated:

Because of the limited exposure of US items in the UK, many sellers maintain separate UK selling accounts.  This allows them to list in a more local format and also to provide better shipping information for UK buyers.  This last point is VERY important in the world of DSRs so let me be clear.  When you list natively to the US site and your item shows in the UK, eBay converts your price to pounds and then usually says 'see listing'.  I'm sure there's some way with the eBay shipping calculator to show shipping in pounds, but as I've said most sellers avoid the eBay shipping calculator like the plague so I don't see that as a viable option.

Enter the International Visibility upgrade
Now eBay is offering a new listing upgrade (one seller at Catalyst noted that this is kind of like listing in two categories and paying a fee for extra exposure, but this is for two eBay sites and not categories - which is a great analogy) that is tiered based on star price:

• 10 cents for items under $10
• 20 cents for items $10-$49.99
• 40 cents for items greater than $50

This upgrade is only available for US+Canada sellers that want to pay to show in the UK and to UK/IE sellers that want to show in the US/Canada.

Note that US items will still show up in canada and I believe that UK items will still show in IE, so think of this fee as working 'cross-pond' vs. 'intra-continent'.

How does this change your strategy?
This new feature goes live in May and my current sense is that it probably isn't worth it for most sellers because of the shipping and handling mess.  I'd say the strategy of continuing to list across two different seller IDs is probably the best strategy for now.  Also it's our belief that non US buyers rate US sellers at a .2-.5 lower stars so the nice benefit of breaking out your UK sales into a separate ID are that you can keep those lower DSR stars isolated to that UK ID and not pollute your US ID where you'll probably save more with the discounts.

What do you think?
This is a confusing new option - does anyone have questions?  Do you disagree with my assessment on the change to strategy?  If so, why? Sound off in comments.

Comments

[Rob Lewis]

Hi Scott,
day one of the new International listings offer and it seems its not working. I had all five of my test listings rejected for US/Canada exposure saying my items were not allowed on EBAY MOTORS.
Now I was listing trading cards and a necktie (not cars). My friends have had the same rejections and indeed others according to the message boards.
So it looks like its falling apart allready.
Rob Lewis

[Pat Sherlock]

Hi Scot,
We were one of the large international sellers you spoke to at Catalyst and whilst we had heard of this you are correct to say we were unclear about it couldn't really see this as being a realistic route to go to achieve sales of our products into the U.S.

We are a true 'international seller' on eBay - we don't just ship internationally from one account like many other but rather we have separate and unique accounts in Ireland, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. eBay's overall support for this type of seller is inadequate and is one of the things we are really hoping will change as they begin to focus more on promoting and rewarding large sellers. For example we do not qualify for a German account manager from eBay Germany even though we list on eBay DE with a separate account ( in German language and in Euro's ) and we dispatch products from Germany. Even though we're currently doing an annualised GMS of close to $2M on eBay DE - you'd think eBay Germany would want to support, promote and encourage us to continue to be successful in their marketplace. Many people don't believe this when I tell them.

So I'm just thinking of your suggested strategy of have multiple accounts and I do believe that will need to weigh up some of the 'cons' of that approach as well.

Interesting to hear your comment on the lower DSR rating for non-domestic sellers...we also feel that we see a corresponding effect of lower DSR's in Germany, Spain or even UK because we are not a resident company/seller from those countries but rather are an Irish company.

Finnaly, Catalyst U.S. was a great event....congrats on the success of that.

Pat Sherlock
LuzernTech