Monthly chat - June 8th at 1:00 pm PT - All About Stores

[jasmen@ebay]

Hi everyone! ! This month's chat you’ll have an opportunity to talk to Chuck, who’s the Product Operations Manager from the Stores team. Start brainstorming your questions for Chuck before hopping on the Monthly Chat board  on  June 8th at 1:00 pm PT.

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Edit: Thanks for joining us for the Monthly Chat with eBay Staff and Chuck.

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 Chuck 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.

Missed the chat? Send your questions to the podcast by calling 888-723-4630 or email us at podcast@ebay.com and maybe your questions will make it on the air! Or listen to past episodes while you wait for next month!

[postcardcountry]

Welcome Chuck,

I have a questions about store newsletters.  I read the help page but found it was missing some important information.

How to I get subscribers?   There doesn't seem to be any information on this that I can find.  And who is responsible for maintaining the opt out list?

How do I control when a newsletter is sent?  Again, the help page was really very clear about that.

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

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Now that you've removed the left hand category navigation and replaced it with a "header" (more of a "footer" , given that it follows the item description) that contains only nine categories, I'd like to suggest we go back to a header that we can edit (which is the way the old one worked). So, go ahead and provide an automatic nine categories as one option, but give us the ability to manually choose our own nine categories as well. Can you do that?

Speaking of store categories, I've been wanting to change mine for a while now (simplifying and reducing the number), but want to do it as easily as possible....I currently have over 700 listings, most of which have at least two designated store categories. It would be really helpful if you provided video tutorial on how to do this in the most efficient manner. Can you do that?

And speaking of editing the new header, the old header had the option (which I used) of including a search bar so a buyer could search my store directly from the listing page. This should be brought back as an option, and perhaps made more prominent. Can you do that?

The new header also has links for Contact Seller and Visit Store. That's good. But the listing itself , above the fold, has both those AND "See other items" Can you eliminate "see other items" for store seller listings, so that buyers are more likely to go to the store home page, rather than just the "see other listings page"---I want my buyers to see the featured stuff on the Home page....that would help direct them there.

Store Promos (such as Markdown Manager, etc). IF my listing is part of a promo, it is noted at the top of the listing page (and bottom, if I recall), and there's a link to the promo page, where all my items in that promo can be found. However, if the listing is NOT part of a promo, nothing on the listing page tells the buyer that I'm running a promo. Could you promote the promo on ALL my listing pages, not just the ones that are part of the promo?

Store newsletter: We need a way to invite buyers to subscribe to our newsletter....I admit, I cannot understand why you guys don't want to give us that tool. Would you reconsider that decision?

Store newsletter: Unless I'm mistaken, at present I can send a newsletter promoting a coded coupon, but not any other promotion, such as Markdown Manager. Am I wrong about that? And if I'm right, are there any plans to add the ability to promote other Managed Promotions via our store newsletter?

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

[clarkphilatelics]

Why is eBay store accounting so difficult? What is missing? Why do Managed Payments detail reports lack totals for sales and fees? Why is the Payment ID missing from downloaded payment transactions reports? I looked into the Intuit eBay connector and other products. Do any import enough information into Quicken or QuickBooks? I have not found any. Accounting for eBay transactions becomes time consuming or costly. Why should eBay accounting take time away from creating new listings or upgrading the eBay store?

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

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

On the store home page and in the Newsletter: I'd like to have a good way to post Announcements ahead of time , such as "Coming June 16-19, our Father's Day Sale"...posting this at the beginning of June so buyers know the sale is coming, or "We'll be on Vacation June 20 -27th...". (With enough characters to provide some explanation as well.) Can you do this?

It would be great if we could have an optional "blog" for our store, which if I recall ebay provided at one point some years ago. This would give us a place---on ebay, rather than Facebook or wherever---where we could talk about new stock we acquired , or whatever....just a way to "tell our story" in more detail. Any possibility of this?

It is true that, business being business, we all compete against one another. And ebay has brought that home with its focus on promoted listings as a way to compete. But what about cooperation? I'd like to see a tab on my Stores Home Page that leads to a page where I could put links to favorite ebay sellers or favorite ebay items from others. What are your thoughts about something like that?

I'm glad to see ebay recently added a "share" icon to the store home pages, but maybe make this larger? I had no idea it even was a share icon until I clicked it.

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

[ducks2k]

I sell in a specialized area of collectible stamps. Store creation earlier this year has vastly increased my sales over 20 years of auctions. 5,000 items spread over 200+ categories fits well. What drives me crazy is that within each store category there is NO ORDER whatsoever, and none of the optional sorts that are available, make any sense in a store context. Those sorts are all oriented to comparing the same item across multiple sellers. There needs to be some way for the store to organize its items within the Store Category. The simplest way that would be useful to me, would be "Sort by Item Title". If the buyer then wanted to invoke one of the other sorts (for some strange reason), he could, but the default would be what the store chose for display. "Item Title" works for me, but there are other sorts that could be useful. That would just be the easiest one to implement.

In actuality, the current default sort is "best match", but "best match" produces something indistinguishable from random-order in a store context. Random-order is just wrong.

There are many other improvements that could be made to eBay stores - I would be happy to discuss them - this is just the most significant defect in my view.

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

[postcardcountry]

My second question....

Currently stores are permitted only 300 categories/subcategories.

Right now, between my store subscription and eBay's additional offers, I could list 100,000 items.

That could be quite a variety of different types of items.

Is there any plan in the future to increase the number of categories/subcategories for the ease of use by buyers?

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

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Not sure if this is Stores Team territory or not, but regarding videos in listings: Now that we can add a video in Gallery, is there any change to the old video policy that permitted us to include a graphic link to a YouTube video we created, and which we could put in the description section? Is that link still permitted? And if so, could ebay add some indicator above the fold that the listing includes a video?

And also, perhaps an indicator for video in the gallery when we use that video?

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

[wastingtime101]

Hey Chuck, thanks for agreeing to join this chat today.

Love the new change to categories navigation on store homepages. The module placed at the top across the screen was awkward. The module on the side of the screen accessible with one click is so much better, plus the fact that it will “stick” (stay expanded) as you browse through different categories instead of constantly collapsing is key to functionality. Great change - thank you.

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

[wastingtime101]

Two questions:

1. When you’re in store edit mode, the preview function does not show any banners or featured listings/categories for you to preview before publishing changes. Can eBay fix that?

2. I added the Ending Soonest banner to my store, expecting that it would feature a rotation of GTC listings as they approached their renewal time. Instead, the banner did not appear at all. I tested on 2 different stores.

My conclusion is that perhaps the banner only pulls in auction style listings which I don't typically use. Can you confirm if this is working as intended or if it’s a glitch - and if it’s working as intended can eBay change it so that we have a chance to highlight our GTC listings as they come up for renewal? It would be a great way to get extra eyes on some older listings as they rotate through each month.

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

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

At least year's ebay Open Online, Tom Pinckney, VP of eBay Stores, announced that eBay will be adding a social media marketing incentive for stores that will discount the final value fee to 2.5% + $0.30 per transaction when buyers buy from your social media posts.

I was pretty excited to hear this.

I understand that it is currently being tested in Australia.

Two questions:

Is this still "coming soon" to the US? 

If so, can you share a timeline? The economy is rough right now, and it would be great to have this available before the Holiday Season. So, any information you can share would be helpful for those of us trying to plan.

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

[wastingtime101]

When you scroll down the store home page and click to see all listings it takes you to the new store-branded search page. On that page the gallery view has listing modules large enough to accommodate larger gallery pics (like you see on the store home page) except the actual photos are small like you see in regular search. It's visually unbalanced.

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

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

At ebay Investor Day, back in March, Alex Kazim announced that a new store marketing tool would be coming in "the second half" of the year.  No details were given. I realize this is an Ads Team initiative, but I assume the ads team is working with the stores team on this, so you should have some insight. Is this still on track for the second half (which  begins July 1st)?

Again, given the state of the economy, it would be best to have this available well in advance of the Holiday Season, so we can get used to using it. Can you provide any insights into the current timeline?

And any insights into what this will look like? Overall design, fee structure, etc?

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

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

A few store home page questions:

1. can we get more characters for the banner title and description? I don't want to write a book, but the description could certainly be longer....

2. can we get the ability to move the banner on the page? When I'm using it to promote a coded coupon, for example, I'd like to be able to put it above the category/featured rows. 

3. For the rows, could we get the ability to create our own titles? For example: "Under $20 for Father's Day"...give us some default options, but also some "blanks" we can customize.

4. IF our About tab page includes a video, could you provide some sort of icon to indicate that? Or maybe the About tab could say something like "About with Video"

5. Speaking of video, are you going to do anything to promote the use of video by sellers? Maybe a contest of some sort? Maybe put together some tutorials? I'm guessing VERY FEW store sellers are using the video capability, in part because, in typical ebay fashion, you guys release this stuff and then seem to walk away. 

5. Again, video, and store home pages in general: I was a proponent of videos and was thrilled to see you finally gave us store videos. I created a Holiday themed video last year, and finally took it down recently. I have not replaced it. Given that I actually pushed you guys to provide video, why have I not replaced it? Because it does take effort and time, and you provide me with no way to measure the results.  Are people viewing it? Is anyone looking at my About page, or my main Home Page? I have no idea, because you provide no such granularity in the traffic data. PLEASE provide traffic data: how many people (not bots) are looking at the pages? how many are watching the video? Where are they coming from? 

I really think one reason so many people have really done nothing with the Store features is because we have no way to know if anyone is even looking at the pages. This really needs to be corrected.

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

[wastingtime101]

Can we get some basic font capabilities (bold/italics) within store policies?

Can eBay add an FAQ option that would display under policies on the store's about page where we could put the same types of FAQ a buyer would find if they clicked contact seller on the listing? Again, would want basic font capabilities like bold/italics so we could make questions bold and answers non-bold as it would be easier to read.

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