Episode 146 || Seller Tools And Features Update w Harry Temkin

[podcast_team]

This week, Harry Temkin, eBay VP of Seller Experience rejoins Griff to talk about what’s new in the seller product universe. Gabe Parma shares the “how” and “why” of the recently announced sunsetting of the legacy PowerSeller program. Brian and Griff answer submitted seller questions.

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Brian: This week on the eBay For Business Podcast:

Harry: "We built something and sellers are seeing conversion from those tools. There's nothing better than that. And I say that sincerely, because we know how much our sellers rely on the platform. And that's why your feedback is so important. When we launched coded coupons, the feedback was just incredible. How many sellers engaged it and were like, I'm getting sales right away. Or when we built seller initiated offers and it immediately drove conversion. There's nothing more exciting than that. It's what gets the team going every day."

Brian: I'm Brian.

Griff: And I'm Griff. This is the eBay For Business Podcast, your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace. This is episode 146 and I turn and I look and behold, who's back? It's Brian Burke. Welcome Brian.

Brian: Thanks Griff. I am back and it's great to be back.

Griff: Ask me how I'm enjoying my sabbatical.

Brian: How are you enjoying your sabbatical?

Griff: It's great. I have to look forward to the future because we're actually recording this episode on May 28th and I'll be gone for the month of June. So I have to imagine the future. Ask me what I'm doing.

Brian: What are you doing?

Griff: Well, I'm in the backyard and I'm tending to the tomato plants.

Brian: I think being back in your backyard, doing some gardening would be a wonderful thing to be doing in the middle of June.

Griff: Yeah. Another thing I should be doing at this moment while you're listening to this, as I'm in my garage, dealing with, you know how some sellers have death piles. Yeah. Well, I have a death garage. It's just one big death pile.

Brian: So maybe then during your sabbatical, you'll you won't be doing any eBay work per se, but maybe you'll be doing a little more listing.

Griff: Let's put it this way, right now in the middle of my sabbatical while you're listening to this, I am definitely listing. But enough about me in my predictions about stuff that I probably won't do. Brian, who have we got waiting in the green room this week?

Brian: Do our listeners know what a green room is?

Griff: Everyone knows what a green room.

Brian: Well, I didn't know until like 2007, when I was at eBay Live.

Griff: Yeah but you are behind on the times with everything.

Brian: I just peeked in and I saw Harry Temkin, eBay VP of Seller Experience. He's on deck to talk about recent updates and the launches of seller tools and features and sitting with him is Gabe Parma. And I'm not sure exactly why he is here, but I figured we'll find out.

Griff: He has some news.

Brian: Care to tease?

Griff: Nope. You'll just have to listen. Gabe is on in just a minute. So you'll, you'll learn what the news is soon.

Brian: Okay. I can do that. I'll be back at the end to help answer a few questions. That is, if you need me.

Griff: Of course I do. And don't be late.

Brian: Am I ever late?

Griff: Do you want me to answer that? I don't think so, but first let's find out what Gabe has to tell us.

Griff: Back a long, long time ago in eBay history. I remember a day when Pierre and company came up with an idea called Power Seller, and it's been still around in some way, shape or form since then, we're talking over 20 years, but there's going to be some changes to the Power Seller Program and here to help explain what those changes are and when they're coming is the eBay policy owner for Power Seller Seller Standards and Service Metrics, Gabe Parma. Gabe, welcome to the podcast.

Gabe: Good morning, Griff. Thanks for having me on today.

Griff: First question is going to be for those who aren't aware, what is a Power Seller?

Gabe: Well, as you alluded to Griff, Power Seller is something that has been around for a very long time. It was started in the late 1990s. It was a way eBay developed to distinguish our high volume sellers.

Griff: And if I remember correctly, there was a structure to the Power Seller Program.

Gabe: Yes. It started with Bronze, Silver and Gold tiers, which the more volume and transactions you sold on our site, you could move up in the Power Seller Status. Over the years, we added Platinum and Titanium as well, as well as some other requirements, like 98% positive feedback requirement. The Power Sellers would start around $3,000 of GMV. And as you moved up in that GMB volume, you would get up to Silver, which, you know, I think today is around $35,000 of GMV and all the way up to Titanium, which is well over a million dollars of GMV a year. And so it has been around a very long time as you said, in some shape or form.

Griff: I want to remind our audience who are sellers, who do that regularly on eBay.

Gabe: Yes, yes, there are.

Griff: And the discount that it provided, we don't have to get into what those discounts were because they're no longer in existence, but those discounts were based on volume.

Gabe: That's correct. Years ago, before the launch of our Top Rated Seller Program, there were discounts up to 20% off of your final value fees. That got replaced in the mid two thousands when seller standards came live, and you'd be familiar with those. You could be rated as above standard or a Top Rated Seller in that program as well, which I manage. There is a Top Rated Plus Distinction, which today that's where the discount now resides. You can receive 10% off of your final value fees if you achieve that status. So it's been associated with seller standards now for well over 15 years, I'd say.

Griff: As a brand, Power Seller was very popular with sellers, even to the point today where although the program doesn't exist as a standalone, there are still many sellers who will refer to themselves as Power Sellers.

Gabe: Yeah. I was on a call just a few months ago with sellers who really still take pride in that badge. And we really appreciate sellers feeling that pride in eBay because it is a big accomplishment to sell that much on the site. And you still hear sellers talking about it even after all these years, even though it's slowly faded in the background some of you long eBay sellers still remember and value it. We appreciate talking about that today.

Griff: We kept aspect of the program alive and it was for the new Top Rated Seller Program. What was the reason and what benefits does a seller get today if they qualify for Power Seller?

Gabe: There's kind of three things I would talk about with that. One of them is that in some of the major markets on eBay, meaning US, UK and Germany, there are discussion boards, which still active where power sellers can log in and have discussions with similarly large sellers. Alot of the sellers, if you're using it, the feedback I've gotten is it's a really wonderful board to use because you're not talking about, Hey, how do I list and how do I ship? You move into some of the more advanced topics like what's really happening in Payments 2.0? How do you manage some of these issues I've had, who do you know in eBay that can help with this problem?

Griff: Or just, how do you run a big business? Or a big small business?

Gabe: As you grow, a lot of sellers have found value in this Power Seller Board, even though the Power Seller title may be changing in the future, these boards will still live on. So there's more to come on that.

Griff: That is excellent. Why is it going away and why now?

Gabe: It's going away because as we've alluded to, it hasn't really been in use for some time and it causes particular friction for new sellers coming on the site. They don't know, do I need to be a Power Seller? What are seller standards, how do I do it? Then you add a layer of complexity because Power Seller is still required for countries outside the United States to achieve top rated seller status. As you grow your business on eBay, you'll want to start thinking about selling internationally and you have to worry about Power Seller in all the countries you wish to sell into. That gets really confusing once you go into Canada or Europe or Australia. Pulling it away now will really help international growth and sales as well as for new sellers coming on board. I think another perk too, is Power Seller still has this positive feedback element in it, where to be a power saw you need a 98% positive feedback. And I think every seller can talk about times when buyer left on fair feedback and to have that feedback impact your standards in other ways, we've heard a lot from sellers that this is just unhelpful when trying to grow and expand on eBay.

Griff: We decoupled feedback from seller standards in general, a few years ago.

Gabe: That's true in the United States, but it is not true for most of the other eBay marketplaces actually. So that's true in the United States, in England and in Germany, but nowhere else. So you still need to have feedback, a feedback score to be a Top Rated Seller and for the sellers in the US, the United Kingdom and Germany, if you sell in other markets, then you still need to have that. So yeah, the decoupling is going to be completed now, as we pull away from Power Seller.

Griff: Are there any benefits that we'll be offering sellers post Power Seller sunsetting?

Gabe: Yeah, absolutely. You may or may not have been aware within Power Seller there is a seven day negative neutral feedback protection. The intent was to allow sellers to resolve issues with their buyer. We're going to be moving that now as a new benefit in the Top Rated Seller Program. So as you achieve Top Rated Seller, you will be able to enjoy that benefit now where buyers can't leave that feedback until seven days after the transaction.

Griff: Are there any benefits If I sell internationally?

Gabe: Same story. Seller standards has four different evaluations that the sellers can keep track of. I've alluded to them already. There's the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and then what we call the Global Program, which is any other markets. And so if you’re in those markets as well, that benefit applies to transactions where buyers live in those countries.

Griff: Finally, after 14 years, we're going to sail Power Sellers off to the sunset. What's the schedule for this project?

Gabe: Power Seller is officially going to be turned off on June 20th, 2021, but you'll start to see it on May 20th. It'll be shut off and the trending status, if you go to your dashboard where the seller standards are. If we evaluated you today, which our status would be in seller standards, that will actually begin to reflect all the changes without Power Seller, being a requirement in the global markets.

Griff: Right and to avoid any confusion. Actually, we did record this just about a month or so before you're hearing it now. That's what Gabe means about coming May 20th. Right today, May 20th hasn't arrived, but by the time you hear this May 20th will be in the past. I think a lot of sellers will probably know about it by then because we'll have sent emails as well.

Gabe: Absolutely. The emails will be coming out in May as well. So you will have seen that when you hear this recording.

Griff: Now, Gabe, you were kind enough to come on and tell us about the sunsetting of Power Seller. And I know that, and I won't say anything, but I, I know that your team is working on a lot of new initiatives when it comes to trust and policy specifically for sellers. Would you be willing to come on to the podcast and talk to us about these in the months ahead?

Gabe: Absolutely Griff. We're constantly in conversation with sellers around seller standards and service metrics and looking for ways to improve both the buyer and the seller experience and how we can help. As new and exciting developments are ready, I'm happy to talk to our community.

Griff: And there you have it. You heard it here first. Gabe Parma has agreed to become our eBay Policy Correspondent for the podcast. Thank you so much.

Gabe: Thanks Griff. I guess we'll see how I feel about it in the future, but so far so good.

Griff: So far so good. We've been speaking with Gabe Parma, the eBay Policy Owner for Power Seller and Seller Standards and Service Metrics and we've been talking about the sunsetting of the program here at eBay called Power Seller.

Griff: We'd like to check in every few months with our connection to what's happening in the world of seller products and features and who better with whom to connect then eBay Vice President of Seller Experience. You know him well, Harry Temkin. Welcome back.

Harry: Thank you so much, Griff. Great to be here. Hello sellers!

Griff: It has been a while since we've had you on and I think there's quite a few things to talk.

Harry: Always.

Griff: So tell us what is coming up.

Harry: Well I thought what we would focus on today is a lot around education. I'm always talking about new features, functionality, new analytics to help our sellers be more efficient, drive more conversion, drive profitability. And I think one of the challenges is that all of these new tools, unless the sellers come to say a podcast or they come to a Seller Check-in and UpFront, it's hard to find the information or really the instructional manual let's say to a lot of these features. What I thought we'd do today is talk about a lot of the new learning resources that we've added directly into Seller Hub for our sellers. So that when they have questions about older functionality or new functionality, they know where they can go get information on that and learn how to use these features.

Griff: Where are some of these learning resources going to show up and what will they be teaching us?

Harry: They're basically built directly into Seller Hub into each one of the tabs, and they're actually called Learning Resources. So when you look down the left-hand navigation, let's say on the Active Listings page, you're going to see Learning Resources, a button at the bottom there of the left hand nav. Now we have Learning Resources on three of the pages today, Active Listings, Orders, and Performance. The next one that is up and coming is the Marketing page. So we'll have Learning Resources there as well. Particularly now that we have coded coupons, which I know we recently talked about, it's one of our fastest growing features. And when we launch the Learning Resources page there, we'll obviously have all of the content you need to learn how to use coded coupons. What you're going to find on these pages is a lot of videos, actually. So if you were like to look at the Performance Tab, as an example, would have videos on how to use the traffic report and the download report and all the content there. and it's obviously a lot of content. It goes through in detail, the Sales Performance Tab as well. So effectively, it's going through each of the capabilities on that tab and how to use them effectively. On the Active listings page. There'll be a lot of content about how to build that perfect listing, the importance of photos, the importance of the right keywords in your title, getting the right item specifics and having a good price, shipping methods, all of those things will all be housed in these Learning Resource pages on the tabs.

Griff: One question I get a lot is, where can I find what information and what reports. I'm assuming that the Learning Resources will contain information on how to find and use that information as well?

Harry: Absolutely. I mean, as an example, if we're looking at the listings page right at the top, you'll see three videos. One titled Listing Essentials. The other is Managing Your Listings and then Updating Item Specifics in Bulk. So some of the key things with respect to the listings themselves, but then underneath that, there'll be links in how to use business policies, the basics of selling, what you need to know about tax information, that we collect internet sales taxes. As an example, there is a section on seller fees and there's a section also on store subscriptions and how all that works.

Griff: So I'm looking forward to this. It'll make my job a lot easier if I can just start pointing people, saying here, go to the Learning Resources. This is great news.

Harry: Yeah. And remember, it's also super easy to bookmark this page. We're always so focused on our daily routine and our habits. We just never take the time really to go learn something new. And particularly if it's hard to find the information you're not going to want to learn it. It's one of the key reasons why we added these pages directly into each of the tabs on Seller Hub. Make it super easy to find and make it super easy to consume.

Griff: Besides the Learning Resource Page updates. There's a lot of discussion regarding the new sell Page at ebay.com/sell. What can we expect that's going to happen with this? What's the rollout plan and what are some of the things that sellers should be looking out for?

Harry: We've had the new Sell Landing page for our consumer sellers since the third quarter of last year. Basically we revamped the entire page to make it quite frankly, super appealing. Like, Hey, why do you want to come sell on eBay? Why is eBay awesome for selling say collectibles or in different categories? And not only does it tell you just how often things are selling, but it also gives you the guidance that you need. How do I do it? I've never sold online before, right? I've got a lot of stuff around my house. And so the idea of the Sell Landing page was as a new seller, that will be the first thing that you see. And so we wanted to make sure that it was super appealing. It was super easy to understand how to get up on the platform, how to register and how to build a listing. Now, what we've also recently launched is the equivalent for our business sellers. For the longest time, we really didn't have a page for a new business seller and obviously we onboarded a lot of new business sellers over the last year during COVID. What we wanted to do was really help sellers understand all the tools that we provide to help manage your business on eBay. We also then wanted to give you an easy way to understand our store subscriptions and to compare the different subscriptions. And what comes with those also to help you understand what is the best package for you in terms of how much inventory do you plan on putting on the platform, what tools do you need? And so it does a really nice job of sort of introducing all of our subscription packages, the features and capabilities that come with them and really helps you determine which one of those you need with respect to the amount of inventory that you want to put on the platform.

Griff: That's great news. That page again, is at ebay.com/sell. Another thing we wanted to talk about while we had you here was the new listing page. Right now I can toggle back and forth between the new listing page and the classic view. Will that be coming to an end? When does this become the default?

Harry: We already have thousands of sellers who have opted into the new tool in the early access program. And it provided amazing feedback. We are only a couple of months away from making it the default tool for some of our sellers. And we really couldn't be more excited. It truly is an upgrade to the older tool. And you've heard me talk about, it's designed super easy and simple to understand yet still offering all of the advanced functionality and capabilities that sellers expect of the Advanced Business Listening Tool. And it's going to be somewhat uniform in design. So when you switch between mobile and desktop, it'll look and feel the same, but of course we are now taking full advantage of being on desktops. You'll see a lot of inline editing of the most common fields that you work with. But what I'm most excited about is we've added a lot of new features that just simply weren't available and couldn't be available in the old listing tool. Let me just give you a couple of those. The first one is drag and drop of photos. Now I know this sounds basic, but about the different companies out there that provide the ability to build really cool books of your photos, Shutterfly and so forth. And you literally are just dragging them from your folder on your desktop directly onto the canvas. We never supported that in our listing tool. We always had, you know, file open, you had to then click on the ones you wanted and actually had opened them and then moving them around wasn't very easy. It is truly now all drag and drop. Moving them on the desktop, much, much simpler. You'll see that the primary photo which we call the Hero Photo is three times larger than the other ones. So you get a really good view of what the primary photo is going to be on the view item card and in search results. We also added the Background Removal Tool, which was only available on mobile. Now it's fully available in the desktop tool. And that was, you know, we got so much feedback that people wanted that on desktop. Now we've got it there. We're now going to be fully embedding what we call the Competitive Insights Module, which is basically the Terapeak Price Research Module directly into the listing flow. So you have access to all of that deep rich content from Terapeak. It'll provide you an average price and then with one single click, it's going to open up a pop-up window that will enable you to do deeper research on Terapeak right there from the listing flow.

Griff: I'm using that one right now. It's making my life a lot easier.

Harry: I think sellers are going to find that this tool is going to be much, much easier to work with particularly new B2C sellers. Talking to our classic B2C sellers who've been with us for a very long time, I've already had many of you tell me I can switch this tool now this is an upgrade. Which is an amazing feeling that we've done all the right things. And I know change is hard. That initial shock of just a difference in design, but I can tell you, I am using the tool. All of us internally have been using the tool for quite some time now. We find it faster than the old tool, much easier to understand, and all of the same features that you've been accustomed to are there, except one, which you know which one that is Griff. And we can talk to that because we've heard a lot of feedback, which is all the format editing in Description. Let me talk to this because I think it's important for our sellers to understand why we've removed it. We've left Bolds and we've left Bullets. Those are clearly important. And look, I will tell you, if you want to cut and paste from Word with formatting, you certainly can do that. But the reason that we took it away, and by the way, we still fully support HTML. But here's the thing. When we look at the data and remember that the vast majority of your buyers are on mobile and on mobile, the description is already basically a snippet of your full description and it's in a normalized font set and font color on mobile. So all that formatting doesn't appear there and it requires the buyer to click on the description to get to your full description. So the key is really the top of the description. That core component is what is visible as the default on native. And then they have to click into it. And the vast majority of buyers actually don't do that secondary click. So ultimately we're trying to save you time. It's about efficiency and I'm not saying you can't format it if you want to, you can cut and paste that from ord, but remember that because the vast majority of things are happening on mobile. We want your time spent efficiently and effectively. If you're adding all that formatting and it doesn't really show up anyway in the primary space that the buyer is viewing, why should we have you do that?

Griff: When I gave it a second thought, because I've been using it for a long time, I thought, well, wait a minute. Do I really need this? You know, I've always been using a little bit of formatting since I've been with eBay. And I thought, well, actually, I really don't. All I need is to put a short description of the measurements, if it's a shirt or if it's some other object and I can do that in just text and it's still going to work, it's going to show up great. And if I need to make something bold, like the, you know, if I want to have a word stand out, that's easy. If I'm that kind of seller, as you said, who wants to keep their current HTML format, they can copy and paste it into the HTML window and keep it.

Harry: A lot of our larger sellers use HTML. That is fully supported and we'll show up exactly how you built that HTML view on Desktop and in Web. Because remember when on mobile, when they click on the description, then it will show your full HTML description. Again, just when it comes to text. We're just trying to save you time based on how we see our users using the platform. Does it impact conversion? I mean, my listings, if you were looking at my son's listing, we use the regular Sanskrit font. We don't even bold it, even though most of his sneakers, all of the sneakers go to Authenticity Guarantee. He still describes like where he got the sneakers, the size. And, you know, he likes to say a hundred percent positive feedback as we all do in our description, just to re-emphasize that, but he uses the basic font or just the default and the default size. And I can tell you, he posted a pair of sneakers on Saturday and within an hour, he was getting Best Offers. We've been getting Best Offers literally up until today. He just sold them today. So if you're thinking I'm not going to get the right visibility, because I don't have color red or color blue or a different font, it doesn't impact it. I'm telling you just use the default and you're good.

Griff: I've never met a buyer who said, well, I'm not purchasing this item. It's not formatted enough.

Harry: It's not about the format. Griff you know, it's really about the description. It's the content that you put there. So the buyer really understands what they're getting, particularly for used items and collectibles and things like that.

Griff: Harry, before I let you go, I wanted to give you a chance to help explain something that I'm in the middle of explaining on our Facebook group. Although a lot of sellers understand it. They're just not getting Item Specifics and they're bitching and moaning and complaining. Why do I have to do this? eBay's just doing this to make me work. And it's mostly the recommended Item Specifics. And someone says, well, none of these relate to my items. So they're worthless. I don't know why people do this. Now I've been explaining it, Hey, what may be worthless for you is not worthless for someone else, just because of the recommended Item Specific is not applicable to your item doesn't mean it isn't applicable to others. We didn't make these up just to make work. We know the types of items that are in that category. Can you talk a little bit about this and reassure people, the reason why this Item Specifics are so important.

Harry: Obviously I've been talking about this for a long time and in many ways I think of it as probably the most important part of a listing. I mean, I know we talk about title, I guess, three equally balanced, but I mean, you know, think about item specifics though we say is, if you don't provide the item specifics, even though those keywords might be in your title, the biggest thing to know is that you won't show up in the left-hand navigation filters. When a lot of our buyers are using left-hand navigation, they're filtering on size or color or other variants. If you haven't provided that as an item specific, you just simply won't show up in those filtered results. That's the core. That's one of the most important things they are making sure you are getting key visibility in all the various ways that buyers are searching the site. Now with respect to the individual items specifics, yes, there always are going to be item specifics that don't apply to your listing. Great example would be in clothing, shoes, and accessories. We hear this all the time. The two items specifics, theme and character. You look at the buyer demand data. Remember we're giving you the data to tell you how important these items specifics are to buyers. So we're showing you how many times those aspects were searched over the last 30 days. ,And they traditionally have very high counts in the millions. So yes, they are important, but if you're selling a white t-shirt or just a red t-shirt, character and theme obviously do not apply, but in that category, right, we have to provide them in the event that you're selling a t-shirt that has Mickey Mouse on it. And then you would say the characters Mickey Mouse what's important to understand is that if it doesn't apply, you simply don't fill it in.

Griff: Leave it blank.

Harry: You don't put an N/A in there. You just leave it blank because it just doesn't apply to your listing. And trust me, even though it has these high search counts, you may think, oh, I need to put something there. You don't want to put something there because then you're showing up potentially in a search that isn't relevant because now your thing really isn't that thing and you don't want that to happen. So the best thing is just to provide exactly the descriptors that you need to describe your item and the ones that don't apply, you leave them blank. Now with respect to the gauge or the lightening gauge at the top, there's always the controversy around, If I don't fill the gauge, then I just don't even show up in Search. That is not true.

Griff: The blue circle.

Harry: Right.We're actually going to change that gauge in the new Unified Listing Tool. It's more like a RPM meter. It's always green. So it just gets darker and darker as you give more items, specifics, but it's never red it's. So anything, anytime you give us an item specific, that's a great thing. Okay? But that lightening gauge kind of implied it had to be full dark blue for you to show up in Search. That is not the case. So we recognize that created a little bit of confusion, and we're going to change that in the new tool. Again, provide the ones that are important to your listing. The ones that are not relevant, just simply leave them blank.

Griff: I couldn't have said it better. And so glad you said it because I see so many sellers in our group that are just pulling their hair out over this and saying, well, I'm going to leave eBay. You're just making work for me. And I'm trying to explain not just why we're not making work, but there was a connection with Google search, a seller who is complaining that their listings weren't showing up in Google search. And I did a whole explanation of how Google search works with eBay. It's shopping. It's not natural search.

Harry: And I think if I remember that was in regards to an auction listing, no, this one was a fixed price listing, but, uh, the seller wasn't using the right search terms on Google. They were adding words that weren't in their title. And I said, well, of course at the search on Google Shopping and you search for an item and you use a word that's not in your title. Your item is not going to show up because it doesn't have that word. The reason why I bring this up is Google really wants those item specifics for shopping as well, because they too have a left-hand nav and if the most common or most obvious item specifics are missing there's a chance that your item will be rejected from the feed.

Harry: That's right. And that's where for those of you who have been ramped into the Listing Quality Report, we actually have a Google Shopping Rejection Report that will tell you which of your listings weren't no compliant. Whether that was a photo issue where you can't have trademarks on the photo or backgrounds to the photo and things, or if you were missing G10, the identifier that Google codes off of, or in some cases you noted item specifics like department. That's in clothing, is it like men's athletic shoes or women's athletic shoes. Those are some of the item specifics that they key off of and that report helps you to understand some of the things that you're potentially missing to improve the listing so that it is eligible to go up to Google. Cause remember we signed all of our listings on your behalf and as part of the service to Google.

Griff: And I think we do that every 24 hours.

Harry: Yes.

Griff: Another poster pointed out that maybe your listing isn't showing up, and I missed this because you're using a bunch of asterisks in your title. And I said, yes, in their marketplace feed rules one of the things that'll get you rejected is if you're using extraneous punctuation in your title. You should never do that.

Harry: And look part of title guidance, the emoticons, you know, like having the dollar signs or the check marks, you really don't want to use those. You're better off just using pure key words in your title. Just one thing back to Item Specifics. Obviously we had a seller update the last couple of weeks, we made some significant changes. Some of the categories like collectibles and so forth. I know sometimes our sellers are like, wow, why did you make these changes? I'm confused why you did this. And really a lot of it is about making your items more accessible to buyers, making them easier to find. At a high level when we talk about trading cards, you know, we used to have specific categories for like hockey cards. And now what we did was we changed that. So the categories are a single card or a lot of cards, lots of cards or a sealed card. And then underneath that, you use the item specifics to say, whether it's a hockey card, a basketball card. And what that allows us to do again is use those left-hand navigation filters much more efficiently in collectibles, right? So now someone is looking for a single sealed card and maybe they're looking for basketball and hockey, they can use the filters, whereas before it would automatically sort of lock you into the hockey category and inside of the category where all of those different types of cards. Sealed, you know, the lots and then, you know, a single card. And that just made it a lot harder for buyers to look and find out exactly what they want. So by making these changes, I know the initial change, you have to go through the change, right? You're used to doing it a certain way, but there is a method to why we do these things again, to make it easier for your items to be found by our buyers.

Griff: And that method, couldn't be more obvious. There's no sort of ulterior motive, except that we need you to sell because our business depends on your success. So we want your buyers to find your items faster and make their purchase faster so that you make more money. Couldn't have said it better, but I did say it, but you know what I meant, I may actually take that out or I may leave it in or maybe you can say it and then I can take it out. I don't know. What's our motivation, Harry?

Harry: I love what I do. And I, I think my motivation is just when we built something and sellers are seeing conversion from those tools, there's nothing better than that. And I say that sincerely, because we know how much our sellers rely on the platform. And that's why your feedback is so important when we launched coded coupons, the feedback was just incredible. How many sellers engaged and were like, I'm getting sales right away. Or when we built Seller Initiated Offers and it immediately drove conversion, there's nothing more exciting than that. It's what gets the team going every day. We just know how important the platform is to all of you and we all use it ourselves. You guys know, I talk so much about my son, myself. We talk about sort of my Head Of Product Management. He is such an avid golfer. I mean, every day he is selling golf and buying golf on the platform, even rebuilt the entire category on the platform like its own. As a seller and buyer. And you know, we live and breathe it, and we enjoy every minute of it doing what we do on your behalf.

Griff: Harry I want to thank you. It's always a pleasure and I know we covered a lot of things, but the nice thing about a podcast that someone can always go back and relisten, or you can actually read the transcript as well. And I urge you to do so. We'll put links to the new Learning Resource Pages, the new Sell Landing Page, and the information about the new Selling Page, which will in the near future become the default so that you're prepared and you're utilizing them to their full extent. Harry, thanks so much.

Harry: Oh my pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's always great to be here.

Griff: Harry Temkin is the Vice President of Seller Experience at eBay and we are very fortunate to be able to tap into him every six months or so, and get an update about what's going on with seller product and features so that we can stay up to date.

Brian: You got questions.

Griff: We got answers.

Brian: How many this week Griff?

Griff: We got two questions.

Brian: Can I read the first one?

Griff: Sure. Knock yourself out.

Brian: Okay. I will. This is an email that was sent by eBay seller, Ron to podcast@ebay.com. And Ron asks, I'm relatively new to listening to your podcast series. And each episode teaches me something I was not aware of on eBay or about selling on eBay. I'm so glad to know about the podcast now and appreciate all your efforts. Recently one of my brothers who moved to Hawaii over 20 years ago, asked me to clean out his personal items, stored at our fathers shop attic. This included his baseball, GI Joe and Kinder Egg toy collections. He would like me to sell these on eBay thoughI don't have any experience in these categories. What suggestion or advice do you have for me before I start opening boxes and start listing the items in the collections. Thanks Ron Johnson. Good Old Mercantile on eBay.

Griff: Okay. Well, Ron, thanks for that email. First. I have to say what a helpful and considerate sibling you are to help your brother liquidate his collection. My first suggestion is to research each of the items by using the Research Tab in Seller Hub. This is powered by everyone knows it Terapeak and we'll put the link in the item transcript, right to that page in transcript for this episode 146. This research tool Terapeak will give you insight into, for example, things like the best title to use based on past sold examples, the best descriptions, the best item specifics, the best pricing and the best format to use. You want to use auction or fixed price. Now I've been in the antiques and collectibles business for decades, and I use Terapeak all the time to stay abreast on prices and best practices. And it definitely helps me to get things sold. And in fact, I'm just like you, Ron. I have a friend who moved to the UK and handed me four boxes, those big plastic boxes of little collectibles and said, Griff, would you sell these on eBay? And I said, sure, but I've got to do the same thing you're doing because it's a lot of stuff I've never sold before.

Brian: And my suggestion would be to prepare for sales of your brother's merchandise. This includes setting up a system to keep his inventory separate from yours. So you can keep your sales and his in a separate record. I don't recommend opening a second account that would be counterproductive and will bring a lot of obstacles to listing all of his inventory because we place limits on sellers when they first get started on our plan.

Griff: Right? Even if you have a second account, you're that new account. You're probably not going to be able to list very much in the start.

Brian: Exactly. Use your own account, Ron, but label his merchandise in some way. So you can easily identify it. The custom label feature comes in handy for this purpose.

Griff: And I saw that you said opening boxes, and I'm assuming that's the boxes they're stored in because you want to be careful about any collectibles that are currently in their original sealed packaging. That's important. If an item is in a sealed package, don't unseal it. You'll have to photograph it in the packaging. It's not ideal, but for some collectors of collectibles in the original sealed packaging is a value booster. Opening that said package, usually that item's value to collectors.

Brian: That's a really, really important point and some valuable collectibles like high-end sports trading cards, especially if autograft will only sell at close to their value If they're authenticated. There are many services out there, but note the turnaround time for authenticating single cards is as long as six months right now. If your research shows that an item in your brother's collection is super valuable and that most, if not all examples were indicated as authenticated by the seller, then you should consider having that item authenticated before listing it.

Griff: That's a great point, Brian. I know there may be a little bit of expense, but it could be worth it depending on the items final value. And finally Ron, don't get bogged down in details to such a degree that you never end up listing anything. Pick out a few items from your brother's collection and list them to test the waters, record the results and use them to change or alter or not change or alter if you're being successful. You're listing practices for the next batch.

Brian: That's a really good idea. Given he's gotten multiples of all of the things that he talked about, like GI Joe's and Kinder Eggs and things.

Griff: Yeah. You can keep those collectors hungry for more.

Brian: Exactly. So are we sending Ron a mug? Absolutely.

Griff: He included his shipping address, so we're good to ship. Our next question was called into (888)723-4630. Let's listen.

Guest Caller: "Hi, this is Donna of Donna's Bits and Bonds on eBay. And although I would have been a member of eBay for a very long time, I only justice last year decided to make it a part-time business for me. When I started making listings, the UPC line, I read or heard that you could use that line if you didn't have a UPC code or didn't want to put a UPC code that you could put some kind of a code in there that would give you a clue as to where you had stored that item in your inventory. And all of a sudden, when I try to do that, I get a message saying that's not a valid UPC code. So has that been changed? Because if it has, I wish there was a line where a seller could put a notation that would guide them to find the item. Thanks. I love the podcast. Bye

Brian: Griff. Another one of those questions for which there exists a solution.

Griff: Yes, my favorite.

Brian: So Donna, there is a field and it's not the UPC code field. It's called the Custom Label. That's the field you can use to indicate the location of the item in your inventory.

Griff: You don't want to use that UPC field for anything, but what's known as a GTIN and that's a number like a UPC code or an ISBN code. If you don't have either, you always leave it blank, or if it's required, then you can select does not apply, but never, ever, ever used the field for any other purpose. And I imagine that you were able to do so in the past because there wasn't a required UPC code so they let you type in anything. But if it's a type of item that we believe is tied to a UPC or ISBN or another type of code, and you put something that isn't code like you, as you have discovered, we'll see that it's been rejected.

Brian: Exactly. The Custom Label field is directly under the Subtitle field on the listing page. If it isn't there, then select the Customize link at the top right-hand corner of that page and check the box for Custom Label.

Griff: I've got a screenshot we can put it in the transcript, but that's for classic view Brian. If you're using the new Listing Page, you'll find that field to the left of the Subtitle field. And it's there by default. So you don't have to worry about customizing it. It says Custom Label, and you can put anything in there. I use it all the time. So I have all my inventory, like many sellers in numbered bins, plastic bins. So I'll put the plastic bin number there. So I know where it is. And I also use it by the way, to put in where I bought it, how much I paid, how much was the discount If I got one and the date I bought it. I put all that in the custom label and that way, when I sell the item, I can use that information in my bookkeeping to notate, yes, I paid this much for it. And I bought this then, and that date, God, I'm so glad you emailed us with this question. Because like Brian said, we love questions that we can answer really quickly because we have the solution right there and we'll send you a mug, but we need your shipping address, Donna. So please send it to us at podcast@ebay.com.

Brian: I do love those kinds of questions that are easy to answer, but we also like the other kinds of questions too, that make us learn something too. And my assumption always is, even if it's easy for us to answer, there are a lot of other sellers out there like Donna, who are unaware of the Custom Label Feature and to use it.

Griff: Oh yeah. I don't mind those questions either. I tend to give those to you. I hope you don't mind.

Brian: I don't mind at all, actually.

Griff: Good. Okay. That's great.

Brian: If you would like us to address your question or comment, do call us on (888) 723-4630.

Griff: Yes. Please do call us at 888) 723-4630 and of course the best part of that number is you don't have to wait. You can call anytime of the day, any day of the week. It doesn't have to be while you're listening and you can leave a question or comment on the voice machine. And if we like it and it's appropriate, we just might put it on the air.

Brian: And if you are not a call on the phone person, you can always email us at podcast@ebay.com. That's podcast@ebay.com. And remember to include your shipping address, because if we use your question on the podcast, we'll send you a mug.

Griff: That's right. We can't send you the mug without your shipping address. Now don't forget your daily podcast to do list.

Brian: Check the announcement board for Up-To-Date Seller News.

Griff: I haven't mentioned them in a few episodes. Shall I?

Brian: Could I stop you?

Griff: Probably not get a thermal printer. Don't put it off. Get it now.

Brian: Now. I think one episode, we put some links to some thermal printers. Maybe we'll have to do that again.

Griff: We will.

Brian: Also check out the transcript for this and all episodes for follow up on what you've heard and to see the links we referenced during the episode.

Griff: On our next episode, which is episode number 147, we'll have a conversation with eBay seller, Jim Rodman of J R clocker. I've already recorded this conversation, of course, cause I'm on sabbatical right now. And this was one hell of an interview. You're going to want to hear it.

Brian: I am looking forward to it and Griff, I hope you're enjoying your sabbatical when this goes live.

Griff: Yeah, let me check. I'm going to look outside and see my future self. Ah, Hey Griff. How are you doing out there? It's Great!! Okay. He's doing fine.

Brian: The tomatoes are growing hopefully. We'd like to, again, thank our guests this week. Gabe Parma and Harry Temkin.

Griff: eBay For Business Podcast is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

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