Monthly Chat - July 12th at 1:00 pm PST

[devon@ebay]

Come chat with the Social Product team this month as the chat will be discussing the new Social page for store sellers in the Seller Hub. Get all of your questions ready for the team, so we can make the most out of this month's chat on July 12th at 1:00 pm PT!

Thanks for joining us for the Monthly Chat with eBay Staff and the Social Product team.

The chat thread will remain open until 2 PM PT at which point we'll close it from additional responses. After that time, we'll continue to work on responding to any queries that might still be unanswered.

To post your question, click Reply in the lower right corner of this post, type your question, and hit submit between 1-2 PM Pacific Time. The format of our chat mirrors the format of our Community Discussion Boards, where each post will appear in the thread chronologically. The International Shipping team and Community Team will review each question as it comes in, and will quote the original question in our reply. This quote and the reply will appear later in the thread, so just keep scrolling down to see our answers.

As a reminder, we want the Social Product team to be able to get to as many members as possible during the allotted hour, so we have a few things to ask of you:

• Keep on topic
• Scroll through the list of questions to see what has already been asked to decrease chances of redundancy 

Keep the message/question simple and no more than one to two items. If you include multiple questions in a post, please be aware that they may not be addressed during the chat and (specialist name) will do their best to follow-up with it after the chat has closed

[social_product_team@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

A few years ago, ebay had announced that items sold via a Social media referral would be charged a reduced FVF of, as I recall, 2.5%. This was greeted with loud Huzzahs from the Seller Community, but we have heard nothing since. If you want sellers to use social media to send buyers to ebay (especially if you want the increasing numbers of multi channel ebay sellers to do so), making this promise a reality would be a big help.

What is the status of that promise? Can we expect to see the store referral FVF soon?

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques Previously eBay tested offering final value fee discounts in some small markets, and we are currently looking into ways to improve the experience before we offer to sellers again. We know this is an exciting feature for sellers, and we want to get it right before rolling out further.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

How about adding tutorials for practical use of Social Media to the Social Media Stores page? You have instructions to link the accounts, but once we've done that, it would be nice if the page could provide some tutorials and other resources to help sellers understand how best to use the different platforms once we've linked.

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here. 

[social_product_team@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Thanks for the explanation. Can you explain why this explanation wasn't posted to the actual Social Media page? was there some reason to leave sellers speculating, rather than providing us with this information?

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques Though the Social page is still new to eBay, we’re hoping to expand the ways we can reach out and notify our sellers with updates and changes in more a streamlined way, as we definitely want to be able to keep sellers informed as we grow!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Any timeline for at least testing the Store Referral fee in the US? And I am publicly offering myself as a beta tester LOL 

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here. 

[social_product_team@ebay]

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@mcdougle4248 wrote:

I received my first SMS visit several days ago.  Please help me understand where that visit might have originated from as I only share listings to Facebook and Pinterest.

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@mcdougle4248 

The Analytics on the Social page show two views: visits to your assets (store, listings etc) based on your shares from eBay, and visits to your assets based on all shares from eBay, including you and other potential buyers who liked your items and shared them to social. 

The SMS visit likely was from a buyer excited about your listings, and sharing it via one of our buyer-facing eBay social tools to their SMS channel. 

The analytics page shows traffic from sharing from both the Social page and the simple “share” options across different eBay flows, such as listing page or storefront home.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

"Though the Social page is still new to eBay, we’re hoping to expand the ways we can reach out and notify our sellers with updates and changes in more a streamlined way, as we definitely want to be able to keep sellers informed as we grow!"

just a thought: while finding multiple ways might be a good idea, posting to the actual Social Media page would seem like a good start. 

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here. 

[social_product_team@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

One result of the new Promoted Listing Standard "halo" fee is that it is entirely possible that I could send a buyer to a listing directly from my social media page, and , if he buys it, I will get hit with the PLS halo fee because, sometime within the last 30 days, the buyer had viewed a completely unrelated item which was one of my promoted items. The way it works now, ebay will attribute the sale to THAT , rather than to my direct social media referral. 

We need assurance that ebay will make an exception for social media referrals, and NOT charge the Halo fee for such referrals.

Do you agree?

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques 

Thanks for this feedback. How Promoted Listing fees are assessed is something we’re constantly evaluating. It’s a priority for eBay to find a fair balance between Promoted Listings and how we attribute a seller’s own social sharing traffic. Watch for future updates for details as this evolves.

[social_product_team@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

How about adding tutorials for practical use of Social Media to the Social Media Stores page? You have instructions to link the accounts, but once we've done that, it would be nice if the page could provide some tutorials and other resources to help sellers understand how best to use the different platforms once we've linked.

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques Good feedback, we will continue to keep adding more resources for social in the future. And make sure to attend eBay Open this September for more information on how to leverage the Social page and marketing tools!

[social_product_team@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Any timeline for at least testing the Store Referral fee in the US? And I am publicly offering myself as a beta tester LOL 

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques We will pass along that interest! Though currently there’s nothing we can share publicly at this time.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

"How Promoted Listing fees are assessed is something we’re constantly evaluating. It’s a priority for eBay to find a fair balance between Promoted Listings and how we attribute a seller’s own social sharing traffic. Watch for future updates for details as this evolves."

Again, just a thought, but buyer goes from my social media post directly to my ebay listing and makes a purchase? That's, you know, pretty direct. Pretending that the buyer touching on a different listing of mine sometime in the last few weeks, with absolutely no traffic trail connecting that to the ultimate sale, is not a balancing of attribution, it's simply a total misattribution.

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

ebay Open? Yep, I'll be there. Thanks for the tip.

[mcdougle4248]

Thank you!  Your explanation is spot on.  Now I just need to have more of those 😀 SMS visits.

[social_product_team@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

"Though the Social page is still new to eBay, we’re hoping to expand the ways we can reach out and notify our sellers with updates and changes in more a streamlined way, as we definitely want to be able to keep sellers informed as we grow!"

just a thought: while finding multiple ways might be a good idea, posting to the actual Social Media page would seem like a good start. 

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques Yes, we definitely want to find visible and accessible locations to reach sellers!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

If a multi channel ebay seller asks me: why should I use social media to drive traffic to ebay, rather than a site with lower fees or a site that is bringing me more sales, what should I tell him?

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Edit: A reply to your question can be found here. 

[social_product_team@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

If a multi channel ebay seller asks me: why should I use social media to drive traffic to ebay, rather than a site with lower fees or a site that is bringing me more sales, what should I tell him?

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques 

eBay aims to offer as many different tools to sellers to fit their needs, eBay is also working to improve our Social tools and insights and save sellers more time on social marketing, so they can spend more time on what they do best: selling.