Nine top insights from eBay for agile sellers

Mark Freidin

9th Jun 2016

eBay is still a dynamic marketplace and an important channel for online and multichannel retailers. With more than 7 million visits a month it’s a serious consideration yet it requires a lot of input to get listings correct to rank properly. To set and forget your products on eBay will be at your peril. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it offers opportunities for smaller agile retailers. On a recent visit to Catch Of The Day, we were informed that eBay doesn’t perform as well as it could because all products are automatically listed via data feeds and no attention is given to optimising each product listing. This is good news for agile smaller retailers who have the initiative and hunger to improve listings and rank higher in eBay search for their products, translating into more sales.

Below are some tips and insights from the 2016 Internet Conference

• Globally, marketplaces will make up 40 per cent of e-commerce in the near future.
• In China 90 per cent of e-commerce is from marketplaces.
• eBay has designed new apps that are visually different for iPhone and Android users as research has shown that the users of each operating system have different browsing habits.
• 70 per cent of sellers are now adding product identifiers to their listings.
• More sellers are using promotions to drive more traffic to the site. 
• Negative Neutral feedback no longer counts against a seller, this is huge.
• An improved and shorter listing flow will be introduced shortly.
• A new seller hub is also coming soon with a better overview ready for Christmas.
• So what does the future hold? eBay is backing Virtual Reality, recently partnering with Myer to launch the virtual reality department store. 

READ MORE: eBay Australia outlines 2016 plans