Monthly Chat - July 13th at 1:00 pm PT - How to Reach Your Customers

[velvet@ebay]

Hi Everyone! This month's chat you’ll have an opportunity to talk to specialists from our Seller Tools team and is themed around “How to reach your customers”. Let them know your questions here, so they can have a chance to review them before the Monthly Chat on July 13th at 1:00 pm PT. 

-----

Edit: Thanks for joining us for the Monthly Chat with eBay Staff and the Seller Tools 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 (specialist name) 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 (specialist name) 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 

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!”

[dhbookds]

---

seller_tools_team@ebay wrote:

---

@dhbookds wrote:

Any info you can give on the "buy rate" with coded coupons?.......  We've sent several 100 at 10-15% rate....with no takers......

---

Hey @dhbookds - Conversion is based on various factors including but not limited to the amount of discount, relevancy of the coupon inventory to the buyer’s interest, category sell-through, quality of the listings, etc.  As a result of the various factors, there isn’t a general rate that we can provide. 

---

Well, thanks for THAT.............  now any tips you might have to help us?    Trying to give you a chance

[seller_tools_team@ebay]

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Seller Initiated Offers:

Does ebay's data indicate there is a best time of day to send offers to buyers?

Also, ebay has noted that a Best Practice is to send the offer soon after the buyer adds it to his watch list or cart. However, a watch list and a cart are very different.  someone with the item in cart seems more likely to buy the item at full price.  Some of us believe we should not discount when it isn't really necessary to make the sale.

Wouldn't it be helpful if ebay indicated how many of our "watchers" actually had the item in their cart, and maybe give us a way to exclude them?  

---

Hey @my-cottage-books-and-antiques - Thanks for your suggestion. We will consider it in future enhancements.

[allthingssurplus]

Oh come on mam98031, as you always tell me "change is hard for some people".  Looks like you need to take a look at your own advice.  Remember its their platform to do with whatever, as you have suggested.

[devon@ebay]

Just as an update to the chat we have 4 team members from our Seller Tools Team that apart of this month's chat. They bring a wealth of experience and knowledge and have been enjoying all of the questions that have been asked thus far!

[mam98031]

The chat is more than half over.  There was over 50 posts when the Seller Tool team joined us.  And there has been only 4 posts by the Seller Tool Team.  Wasn't the purpose of posting a bunch of questions over the past week so that the Seller Tool team could have a heads up about what information some members need?

[valueaddedresource]

I'm curious what the goal of this type of monthly chat format is?

Maybe if the community team can communicate what they are trying to accomplish here, we can provide some feedback about how to do it in a way that makes sense for community participation.

As it stands right now, it doesn't appear community members are getting much value out of this format and I can't imagine the last half hour of discussion has provided eBay much in the way of valuable insights worthy of taking the seller team away from their regular duties either.

[dhbookds]

in down time when no questions........perhaps Tool 1, 2, 3, and/or 4 (if I may so bold to be personal)....could give us some tips /advantages/explanations of the tools they are responsible for........

[inceptions]

Is eBay working on any tools for sellers to reach more customers that don't involve having to pay more in fees or having to lower pricing?

-----

Edit: A response to your question(s) can be found here.

[valueaddedresource]

The Listing Quality Report is a tool a lot of sellers look to for important information about their business and how their listings are performing - which can point them to ways to improve to better reach customers.

In the Fall 2021 update we were told there would be enhancements to this tool:

Listing Quality Report
Earlier this year, we launched the Listing Quality Report. This report is a downloadable document that provides you with analysis at listing and category level. It suggests specific actions you can take to optimize your listings and categories. You can use the report to help boost your views, impressions, and sales. It was designed with input from the seller community to make sure it matches the needs of your business.

To keep improving the report, we’ve made some updates.

This month, the Listing Quality Report will be available to download in three formats:

A PDF “one-page summary”
An Excel “full report” with one tab per category
A CSV “raw data” file, to be exported for further analysis

In the past, you could see the analysis of your 10 categories with the most live listings. You’ll now be in control of which categories will show up in the report. You’ll also have the option to keep the existing analysis, using the top 10 categories with the most live listings.

None of those enhancements have ever happened - we do not have the different formats mentioned and cannot control the categories in the report.

Any update one when we might see those promised features?

-----

Edit: A response to your question(s) can be found here.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

seller_tools_team@ebay  Thanks. 

[seller_tools_team@ebay]

---

@clarkphilatelics wrote:

Why was best offer duration reduced to 24 hours? I have no way to respond to offers presented on weekends and no secure way to respond to expired offers. Why not add an option to seller offers to buyers to respond to or approach a specific buyer? The fake email addresses passed to sellers from eBay are not helpful, especially if they expire. In one category, most buyers are repeat buyers, and some I had met long before eBay was invented. 

Unfortunately, in the Stamps category, except buyers of specialized or highly graded items, there are fewer repeat buyers. Some buyers may stop using eBay because a significant percentage of sellers do not accurately describe stamps or covers offered for sale. What happened to the association logo program that tagged American Stamp Dealers Association, National Stamp Dealers Association, and American Philatelic Societies with easily recognizable logos. It would have been helpful to link the logos to association ethics requirements that far surpass eBay requirements.

It seems like professional sellers who believe in providing quality merchandise and good service are not visible enough amongst average or below average sellers. Top-rated seller requirements exclude sellers of lower priced items that do not justify tracked shipping.

Finally, sellers forced to spend extra time with tracking eBay revenue and expenses, could reallocate wasted time to better customer service if eBay would simply provide better Payout summaries with complete sales and fees. Poorly defined and missing eBay Item Specifics, especially in the Stamps category continue to hurt sales and frustrate potential buyers attempting to find the stamps they want with the ability to see every relevant listing relevant to the buyer.

---

Hey @clarkphilatelics - to answer the first paragraph: In the past, we gave buyers an option to wait for 12, 24 and 48 hours for the seller's response. The significant majority of buyers were staying with the 24 hour option. 

We will check with the applicable teams for your remaining questions.

[seller_tools_team@ebay]

---

@valueaddedresource wrote:

The Listing Quality Report is a tool a lot of sellers look to for important information about their business and how their listings are performing - which can point them to ways to improve to better reach customers.

In the Fall 2021 update we were told there would be enhancements to this tool:

Listing Quality Report
Earlier this year, we launched the Listing Quality Report. This report is a downloadable document that provides you with analysis at listing and category level. It suggests specific actions you can take to optimize your listings and categories. You can use the report to help boost your views, impressions, and sales. It was designed with input from the seller community to make sure it matches the needs of your business.

To keep improving the report, we’ve made some updates.

This month, the Listing Quality Report will be available to download in three formats:

A PDF “one-page summary”
An Excel “full report” with one tab per category
A CSV “raw data” file, to be exported for further analysis

In the past, you could see the analysis of your 10 categories with the most live listings. You’ll now be in control of which categories will show up in the report. You’ll also have the option to keep the existing analysis, using the top 10 categories with the most live listings.

None of those enhancements have ever happened - we do not have the different formats mentioned and cannot control the categories in the report.

Any update one when we might see those promised features?

---

Hey @valueaddedresource - We don’t have an update on the Listing Quality Report at this time.

[a_c_green]

---

@clarkphilatelics wrote:

The fake email addresses passed to sellers from eBay are not helpful, especially if they expire.

---

Pardon a nitpick, but the addresses are not "fake;" they're encrypted. Although the sale record may disappear after 3 months, the encrypted address remains valid for up to one year after its last use in a transaction, according to an eBay Weekly Chat answer from last year, so it's worth storing the buyer's encrypted email address offsite for future reference.

(The encryption process on the View Order Details page occasionally fails and returns the buyer's unencrypted address instead. I make a point of storing those whenever that occurs, since of course it's valid indefinitely if I ever need to contact that buyer in future about his purchase.)

[clarkphilatelics]

Please consider extending offers to end on business days.

[seller_tools_team@ebay]

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Coded Coupons:

After they first came out, I immediately began adding coded coupons to all my packing slips. Result: No additional sales. This could be for a number of reasons, including that I don't sell in a niche, or maybe my discount was not attractive enough (I experimented with different levels).

1. Could you mine your data and give us best practices for coded coupons?

Also, I feel that the existing coded coupon does not stand out very well on the Packing Slip. I know ebay has a partnership with VistaCreate for Store billboards, etc.

2.How about giving us a template we could use to spruce up our packing slip coupons (including some best viewed in black and white, since many of us prefer to send B&W packing slips, to save on printer ink costs.) There are a lot of creative ebayers who design coupons that would get noticed.

---

Hey @my-cottage-books-and-antiques - two parts to your questions:

1. In terms of which discount template works best for coded coupon, in the Coupon campaign setup flow the best performing discount templates are on top of the list. Other best practices include creating a compelling discount that will generate interest and offer the buyer a good deal; send coupons with relevant inventory to the buyer based on their prior purchases and send a coupon to the buyer soon after they make a purchase to encourage them to come back. 

2. There is an eBay template for packing slips with coupons available via the Seller Hub Orders page.  Select an order or orders you want to print out the packing slip, and then choose Shipping - Print packing slip and more.  Once on the screen, you can customize the packing slip.