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!

[shipscript]

Chuck, I would like those share and heart icons to have mouseover tooltips. I had no idea what they would do until I clicked them and since clicking can bring on all sorts of issues, I was reluctant to do so.

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

[chuck@ebay]

Hi everyone. I'm happy to join you today and to answer your questions on eBay Stores!

Chuck Van Pelt

eBay Stores Team

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Related to the post from @postcardcountry : I often have items that would fit within 3 of my store categories, rather than just 2.

Could the number of store categories per listing be increased from 2 to 3 (or more)?

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

[mr_lincoln]

Good afternoon Jasmen and Chuck,

Chuck,

Sometime in the last year eBay changed where Buyers "land" when they select the "See other items" (orange arrow in pic below) on a Seller's item.  Now, instead of that link landing the Buyer on a list of the Seller's items, they get dumped on to the Store's home page.  There is ALREADY a link to "Visit store" (green arrow on pic).  eBay needs to change the landing spot for "See other items" back to the way it was prior to the afore mentioned change ... 

With the previous method of landing on a list of the Seller's items I found it beneficial to list LIKE items together, that way a Buyer would be put on my list of items and could scroll up or down from the item they arrived on AND see like items very easily.  Now it means they have to navigate the Store's home page, Store categories, etc.  While experienced Buyers may know how to do this newer ones don't OR the experienced ones simply prefer the "See more items" method of viewing Sellers' items, therefore the change made by eBay does NOT "enhance the Buying experience" and needs to be corrected.   Any time you and your staff could put towards resolving this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Mr. L

                                     

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

[chuck@ebay]

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@postcardcountry wrote:

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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How to I get subscribers?   There doesn't seem to be any information on this that I can find.

Thanks for your questions! Buyers can follow you by clicking the “heart” icon next to your store name. It appears on your storefront as well as your profile page. Some sellers will include a message in their communications or packaging that encourages their customers to subscribe.

And who is responsible for maintaining the opt out list?

When a buyer opts out of email communications from you, eBay tracks that so you don’t have to do anything in order to honor their request to be removed.

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

When you create a newsletter, you have three choices: You can schedule an email to be sent to a buyer when they first subscribe, you can send a marketing email immediately, or you can schedule an email for a day in the future.

[clarkphilatelics]

I have only one eBay store in the Stamps category that really impressed me. The category structure and seller-provided navigation in the side panel efficiently linked to groups of related listings. Why are store categories difficult or intimidating to set up? Store categories numbers may be part of the problem. Why not allow sellers to assign a unique "short name" to each category to reduce typing. For me, the best way to set up store categories would be in an Excel Spreadsheet that could be imported into eBay and exported before updating. As it is, setting up store categories in three stores seems like an insurmountable task. Another suggestion would be to allow store categories to inherit from eBay categories within scope of the store. If this is unclear, your development manager could explain. Some Stamps categories are awkwardly defined. It makes sense to consolidate unused and used regular issue stamp categories and use the Quality Item specific as a filter. Some of the eBay defined values are inconsistent with usage in the philatelic marketplace, so I substitute more accepted terminology. Filters should have a "front end" to convert abbreviations to meaningful names or phrases instead of abbreviations. Buyer experience would be better if eBay filters allowed an unbounded set of values instead of a limited set. I received an email from eBay suggesting that describing a red orange stamp as "orange" would improve visibility on the site. Which is more important, credibility or visibility? Can eBay filters would interact nicely with store categories? Did removing item condition values of "unused" and "Used" make store search more difficult. I believe it did.

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

[jasmen@ebay]

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@clarkphilatelics wrote:

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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Hey @clarkphilatelics we appreciate the feedback for sure, and we're happy to pass it along! 

[wastingtime101]

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chuck@ebay wrote:

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How to I get subscribers?   There doesn't seem to be any information on this that I can find.

Thanks for your questions! Buyers can follow you by clicking the “heart” icon next to your store name. It appears on your storefront as well as your profile page. Some sellers will include a message in their communications or packaging that encourages their customers to subscribe.

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Wait, are you saying that when someone clicks on the heart it automatically signs them up for that store's newsletter subscription?

I thought the heart was exclusively to follow the store within your eBay feed and saved seller e-mails sent by eBay, not to receive newsletters written by those stores.

I'm signed up to get a consolidated e-mail from eBay with new listings from my saved sellers about once a week. If I started getting newsletters from every one of those sellers I would stop following them or opt out of all e-mails.

Newsletters was always a separate sign up. You could follow a seller without signing up for their newsletter. Did eBay change this?

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

[mr_lincoln]

Hi again Chuck,

eBay took away Sellers' ability to see who Is Following them or their Stores ... if this is not under your purview could either you or Jasmen please advise which department made the decision so I can plan to try and be on the Chat that they appear on.  I would like to 1) know why they changed that and 2) get it changed back ... Followers belong to Sellers' NOT eBay, therefore Sellers are entitled to see who is Following them.

Regards,

Mr. L

[wastingtime101]

As this is stores-adjacent, could you encourage the Seller Hub team to fix the store icon when viewing the Payments tab in seller hub? On every other tab the store icon will hyperlink to your store homepage. On the Payments tab it's a store icon without a hyperlink.

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

[devon@ebay]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

As this is stores-adjacent, could you encourage the Seller Hub team to fix the store icon when viewing the Payments tab in seller hub? On every other tab the store icon will hyperlink to your store homepage. On the Payments tab it's a store icon without a hyperlink.

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Hey @wastingtime101! Thank you for the feedback and we will get this passed up!

[postcardcountry]

Chuck,

In that case, how about a popup when you hover over the heart that says "subscribe to seller's newsletter"?

I am willing to bet you a great number of buyers and sellers have no idea what that heart means.

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

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Just adding to @wastingtime101 : The problem isn't that I can't encourage my buyers to sign up for my newsletter, it is that there is NO WAY for them to actually sign up. They can follow me in their feed, yes, but they cannot choose to have me add them to my newsletter list.

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

[chuck@ebay]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

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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Wow, I really appreciate your interest in Stores and I will answer a few of these now, but may need to return later for the rest in order to accommodate some of the other seller's questions.

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?

Indeed, there have been changes related to Stores on the listing screen. We are also updating our technology back-end, which has admittedly been neglected for some time, in order to provide a solid foundation for future enhancements.

It IS possible to change the categories that display on the Item page by reordering them on your Storefront management screen. The Item screen module will honor the order from your Store.

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?

We have some information linked from the Manage Store Categories screen under a link called “Store Categories FAQs”. We are planning to release additional tutorial videos in the Stores Learning Resources section over the next few months and I will pass along your request to include one for category management.

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?

Thanks for this feedback, I will pass along your thoughts on this to the Stores team.

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.

We are currently experimenting with ways to reduce this redundancy and provide a listing screen experience that is easier to navigate.

[clarkphilatelics]

A "Catalog number" item specific is badly needed. Some of the required item specifics for filtering are poorly defined. Some apply to a small percentage of listings. Some describe frequently abused stamp properties like "Grade". "Denomination" and "Color" filters are bounded lists, lacking many commonly occurring values or colors. Item specifics consistent with the Scott Catalog (in the United States) should replace various non-standard abbreviations. It should be possible to use item specifics values to speed the process of creating store categories.

Tools like SixBit can quickly update store categories. Unfortunately, eBay data entry is truly manual. Perhaps someone can post on how to use eBay bulk upload capabilities to do mass updates of store categories.