Episode 1 || 2018 Fall Seller Update and eBay Open 2018

[doug@ebay]

Welcome to the launch of the Selling on eBay podcast, Your weekly source for the information you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's best marketplace! In this episode, we'll discuss the 2018 Fall Seller Update, including payments 2.0 and how they'll work on eBay, service metrics and shipping and product based commerce. After that we'll hear from some sellers from eBay Open 2018, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. As always we'll also take call-ins from 888 723-4630. #ebaypodcast

Yeah, let's see. Okay, wait, wait a minute. Is this thing on? It is. Okay, great. I'm Griff and I'm Audrey Tracy and this is selling on eBay. You're weekly source for the information you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's best marketplace, and this is show number one. For those of you haven't heard, eBay radio is morphing into a new format and with the retirement of eBay Radio Co-host and producer Lee Maribelle, we decided it would be a good time to well you know, try something new like a podcast, so once a week, every week we'll bring you great stories, news and advice from eBay sellers, employees and industry experts about how to start, run and grow a business on eBay, and we'll still be taking your calls. Just call our toll free number. 888-723-4630, wait a minute. How do we do that?

How do you take calls on a recorded podcast?

Well, it's magic and it's also a secret. If you're curious to know just exactly how we do it, you're going to have to call the number 888-723-4630, okay. If you say so, that number 888-723-4630. Wait a minute. That sounds familiar.

It should. It's the old eBay radio phone numbers that we've been using for 15 years. Hey, eBay is all about recycling, so why not recycle the phone number?

Let's just use it again.

That's it. And that's what we're doing. So Audrey, what do you have for us for our first maiden voyage of the selling on eBay show?

Well, today we're talking about the 2018 fall seller update, which was just announced today, August seventh. We've got a couple of topics.

Number one, we're going to talk about payments. Sellers have a lot of curiosity about how payments are going to work on the eBay platform, so we'll bring in an expert on that. We're also going to talk about service metrics and shipping. These are the metrics that compare your performance against your peers within a selling category where we have an update on that. That's great.

And then the last thing is product based commerce. This is our eBay catalog initiative, as you may know, and we've got some updates on that as well.

And we're expanding it to categories. There will be some new requirements you're going to want to pay attention to that. After we talk about the fall seller update for 2018, we're going to talk to some of our sellers at eBay Open. Actually, we have correspondents from our Community team roaming the floors and roaming the parties after, the each day's event and they were speaking with sellers and uh, we got a little story to tell about that.

So we'll hear from sellers at eBay Open 2018 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. And then of course your call-ins. We'll be airing some of our calls that we've received previously and if you want to be on the show with your question, just call us at 888-723-4630, that's 888-723-4630, and follow the instructions when you get the message. So I think we're ready on with the show.

Let’s start our first. This is our maiden broadcast. Is that the right word? Maiden voyage. Yes, I think it is. So let's give birth to the podcast. We're ready to go. Let's talk about seller update and meet our first guest.

Before we move on to the news, I want to let everyone know that we have a new eBay community page dedicated to the selling on eBay show. You can find it at ebay.com/sellingonebay . You'll find discussion threads and links to past shows there, including the recent eBay radio archives. Again, that url, ebay.com/sellingonebay  And don't forget, we still want your phone calls. That call in number may sound familiar. It's the same old number as  it's always been 888-723-4630 . That's 888-723-4630. 888-723-4630. every week. On the selling. On eBay show will have a regular eBay news segment this week for our first show. The news segment is dedicated to the 2018 fall seller update announced this morning, August seventh, 2018. In today's news will focus on three topics from the fall update payments 2.0, product based shopping and the seller service metrics. Remember, you can read the entire update at ebay.com/fall2018. That's ebay.com/fall2018. Now onto the news.

Hi everyone. I'm Audrey Tracy and welcome to a special edition of the selling on eBay podcast. Today we're talking about the 2018 Fall Seller Update with me is Keala Gaines. She's the senior director of payment services, hi Keala.

Hi!

And we're going to talk about all the payments news that we just announced. What is managed payment?

We announced in January 2018 at our intention to intermediate payments. And intermediation is kind of one of those words where you wonder what it means to you. And so really what we're doing is we're managing the payment process for our buyers and sellers. And that's really what it means and we're starting to stand in between the transactions

And how will managed payments work on the eBay platform?

Well on the eBay platform, if you think about the way that buyers pay today, many of the choices around how they accept payments are really set by their PayPal account and in the future, our ability to determine what methods of payment a buyer wants to pay by or can pay by.

We actually begin to be set by us.

So what that means is probably more choice and flexibility for buyers is that correct?

Absolutely okay. When you saw that probably we've already announced that apple pay will be part of our initial offering.

Yep, we just announced Apple Pay about a week ago. What are some of the benefits to sellers?

And we actually think that sellers have much more change and I believe in a good way then buyers, because for buyers they may not actually notice a lot of the changes they may notice new options, but they don't have to do as much. Sellers do need to do some things, but the reality is they'd have to do quite a bit today and that we ask our sellers to really manage two separate relationships, one with eBay and one with PayPal, and that includes everything from when you sign up to how you contract to your fees, your reports, your bills, your customer service experience, down to your policies in the future.

All of those will be one relationship managed by eBay so that you got one set of fees, one bill, one set of reports, and really one servicing experience as well.

Excellent. So that means no more reconciliation between eBay and PayPal. Everything will happen directly on eBay platform.

That's Right.

And what about benefits to buyers? We alluded to a few.

For buyers, again, more choice as well as what we hear loud and clear and I think we hear it more now in ecommerce than we ever have before, which is buyers want the ability to pay with a credit card. They want it to be really easy to find and really easy to use and that hasn't always been the case on eBay. You know, we've always kind of lead with PayPal is the way to pay and so one of the things we're doing right out of the bat is credit card will be a lot easier to use and find.

It will be defaulted, it'll be front and center if you're coming from a mobile device Apple Pay will also be there.  While I should say an apple mobile device.

Right.

On our roadmap in the future. We're also thinking about those non-app devices.

Sellers are really curious about the buyer experience, what will buyers see on the screen at checkout?

If you go to our site today and you uncookie and unremember me on all of your preferences and you came in as a new user to the site, you would see the ability to pay with a credit card. It comes below the option to pay by PayPal. So if you can kind of imagine the option to pay for the item without PayPal being there and the credit card piece being front and center and expanded, that's exactly what the checkout looks like. Other than that, it really doesn't look any different.

And this is a familiar experience for online shoppers, right? They go to any other online site and they're presented with a space to enter their credit card. Their security code and then it's off to the races.

Absolutely. And they can choose to store that or not with us, so if they want to store it and make it super easy to use in the future, they can do that. If they want to enter it each time, they can do that as well.

We've had a few questions about PayPal. Why won't PayPal be included in the initial launch? Why not wait until PayPal is available and most people would look at our site and would say, well PayPal is there today. That seems like kind of a no brainer. Why isn't it? There is a deliberate and the answer really is it's not deliberate. The answer is in the future it will be there in a different way than it is there today.

It requires a completely new integration for us and that integration takes time and it's frankly complex.

What's the rollout timetable for managed payments?

As you probably may have heard already announced, we started announcing our intentions here in our January earnings announcement, 2018. In that announcement we had said we intend to start slowly, which we are doing and we're starting slowly in 2018 and so fall of 2018 is when we will start actually turning this on for sellers. The sellers that have been invited to participate have already been contacted and those plans expand into 2019, with the intention that we will be largely at a stage where we're complete with most of our sellers and this will just be the new way that you sell on the eBay platform beginning in 2021.

Right. So it's a phased approach. We're rolling out to sellers gradually.

We're not allowing everyone on the new payments platform at once because we want to get this right.

Absolutely.

Why is managed payment launching in September? The start of the busiest time of the year for sellers?

It's just a matter of this has been a large effort. It's complex as, as I mentioned, and September, it was actually the soonest that we could start to get functionality in the hands of our sellers and one of the things that has been paramount to our strategy is making sure that we are doing so with feedback from our customers in mind and the only way to get feedback from our customers is to get it in their hands. September. While we know that that won't work for everyone. For some folks, hopefully it will work and we can start to get that feedback in early.

Sellers often ask, do I need an Adyen account?

Adyen is really our back end provider.

It's something that normally our customers wouldn't, shouldn't have to care about, have visibility to. It's really about, it's how eBay manages and processes payments on the back end. So No, our sellers will not need an Adyen account if you are an enterprise seller and run your own business and there's a need for you to engage with them directly for it, for that portion, perhaps. But for your on eBay, part of your business, there is no need to have an account with anyone other than eBay. We will be your one stop shop for everything to do with selling on the platform and getting paid all in one place. Your existing eBay account. You won't set up a new account. Your existing account would just be transitioned so that this new set of functionality starts to be enabled.

A lot of folks think that this is the same model as PayPal where they have a separate PayPal account, but that's not the case.

You will sell and get paid all on one platform.

Yeah, if you had a separate account, we actually wouldn't be managing it for you.

Exactly. Okay. Another question we hear all the time is how fast can I get my money? What's the model for payout?

This is a complicated one. The answer should be simple and it is, and I'll give you a simple answer. And right now that's simple answer is two to four days, but I want to kind of give why it takes two to four days. And I know there's also some misconceptions that we're going to hold money and like we want to hold it longer and things like that, that's not the case. We actually want to make sure that our sellers can get their funds as soon as they possibly can. But for anybody who has processed credit cards outside of eBay or even done a bank transfer or waited for their paycheck to hit their account from a direct deposit, it just takes time to move money.

And so we will pay out as soon as the funds become available to us for payout. And that's typically as short as two days. Sometimes we see it faster, but we don't want to kind of over promise and under deliver. And on the long end it can be, it can be four days. The important thing for I think our sellers to realize is that, you will get paid again as we receive the funds in. And it's kind of a daily payout process. So let's say you had $100 worth of sales. Let's say there was 10 transactions for $10, you would get a deposit two days later, $100, you double click in your seller hub at $100 deposit and you'll see, oh, that was 10 transactions, $10 so that you can reconcile. Right? So it's not individual transaction payouts, it's sort of this daily payout, but again, we'll make it really easy to reconcile so you can see exactly what was in that deposit from a transaction perspective.

Got It. So it's a lump sum with details about each transaction. That's great.

Yeah.

I've heard that there are limitations to international support at launch. Can you tell me what that means? International also complex. That's going to be my word of the day, but anybody.

These things are tough people.

Anybody that's sold or shipped internationally that should definitely resonate. And so, knowing that there's quite a bit of complexity there, it's just not something that we were able to get into this early launch. It's absolutely high priority. eBay is a global platform. It's one of the things we really pride ourselves on doing. And so a high priority for us to make sure that we get it in, there's some nuance to what it means to sell internationally and there's lots of ways that eBay supports it and lots of ways that our customers use it today.

So, maybe I should explain a little bit of kind of what's supported and what's not?

Yeah, that'd be great.

Sellers that actively go and list their inventory on one of our other sites. So let's say you're based in the US, you list on .com, but you also list your inventory actively on .uk .de .France. However many different ones you choose to do that right now in the initial phase is not supported. And we call that active listing. Passive listing is where we take inventory and we will push it to some of those sites for you. And that also is not supported right now, but what is supported is when your customers come from one of our sighted countries, they come to the US .com site. You're willing to ship internationally and they can check out. They can use their foreign issued credit card, it will work and you can ship to them and so that portion of international.

Absolutely will work. One more caveat of what won't work. Global Shipping Platform.

Okay, so I just want to reiterate that everything that we've talked about so far is for the initial launch where we're asking a certain percentage of sellers to participate.

Yes. Again, we talked about a number of things that are complex and that we haven't built out fully yet and so what we really focused on with some of the core use cases around coming in, you're on the US site, you're a US seller. You’re largely selling domestically. You may have international shoppers that you fulfill those on your own. You don't use our global shipping platform for example, you know, sort of kind of handling some of our more basic use cases to start and then in time and very aggressively for some of these they're super high priority. Adding PayPal as a form of payment for our buyer’s top priority.

Those things will be coming in 2019 and beyond.

So let's get a few more details on the initial launch. How did you determine which sellers to invite to participate first?

We took a look at the data and we took a look at the way that our sellers sell today and their profile and we really did our best to try to find folks who wouldn't hit some of the things that we know aren't supported right now. Right? So if we looked at your sales and we see a ton of your business, you use the global shipping platform, you probably wouldn't have been somebody that we outreached to initially if we did, if we got it wrong, we're sorry, but that's really the intent around how we are focusing our invitations. It's really largely based on product fit and what the profile looks like.

Sellers might ask if I didn't get an initial invite to manage payments, how will the rollout work for me.

If you didn't get an initial invitation and you want to participate, you absolutely can contact us. While we did do a scrub of account of selling history to kind of find fit and you, you want to participate anyway, we'll absolutely take another look and we'll see if there's a way that we can invite you in or what it is exactly that won't work for you and have that conversation. If you haven't been invited and you don't want to participate, you absolutely don't need to worry about it now is not the time for you and we will be continuing to expand invitation as we bring capabilities online.

So for folks that are interested, how can they express interest to eBay?

They should come to ebay.com/payments and they'll find a different ways to contact us there.

Can I opt out of payments once I'm in?

At this point in time, the product really isn't configured to enable opting out.

That said, we know that this is something a lot of folks have concerns over and one of the things that we are committed to doing is making sure that we are continuously improving and adding to the capabilities so that this becomes a robust offering. And keep in mind, this is our future state, so it's not like this is an optional feature or something that we're trying that's going to go away. We are absolutely committed to this. This is the future of how you're going to sell and get paid on eBay.

How will returns work? Will eBay debit the funds from my bank account?

Returns look really similar to the way that they work today and that the first thing we'll do is we'll look to debit your pending sales. If you don't have any pending sales with us, we'll send you a notification that we are going to debit whatever your payment method on file is with us and so that would be the same way that you pay your seller fees with us today, whether that's a credit card or PayPal or your bank account.

Thank you so much.

You are very welcome.

Thank you for being here. I just want to say a couple of quick wrap ups. You can get all the payments information at ebay.com/payments. That page will have the latest news and updates. You can also express interest in the initial launch. Thank you Keala for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks Audrey. Thanks to Keala as well. Great Information.

Up Next I'll talk to Chris Van Wagoner about updates to the product based shopping experience on eBay. You're listening to selling on eBay. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

Joining me right now is Chris Van Wagoner. Chris, tell us what team you work on.

I am in Seller Experience. We're very much focused on the experience obviously that our sellers are having as they sell on the site and as they engage the different tools that we develop for them.

And part of this Fall 2018 Seller Update again is an update to the ongoing project that we know is product based shopping experience. But before we start, let's just do a little overview for anyone who's new to the podcast and maybe new to this project. Uh, explain to us what is product based shopping?

Well, product based shopping is eBay's investment in buyer traffic. You see buyer expectations are changing every single day and we want to make sure that we are aligning buyers with the products that they're looking for. And so the product based shopping experience is a project that we've been working on for a couple of years now and it's very focused on categorizing items in such a way based on the structured product information that they have available so that we can quickly and easily present buyers with the items that they're interested in and those values that they're looking for online.

Tell us about the new create product and update product information features that were announced today at the 2018 Fall Seller Update.

Well, one thing that we've heard quite often from our sellers is that when I am trying to list my item using the eBay catalog, I can't find the product that I'm trying to list.  So we're launching a couple of different features today that first allow sellers to create a new product in the catalog. If it's not already there.  Providing us with as much universally understood product information as they have available. We're also rolling out a function that if a seller notices that a products information is out of date, or if something else needs to be included in the product information that's in the eBay catalog, they can go in and inline, provide us with the information that needs to be updated so that they're not associating their listing with information that's outdated and this will help us better manage the products that are on the site and serve up the information that needs to be presented to buyers as they're shopping on our platform.

What will happen if sellers don't associate their listings with the eBay catalog?

One thing that we announced a few months ago as a part of the first phase of the product based shopping experience was that if sellers don't, uh, associate their listings with the catalog, their listings won't qualify for these new experiences that we're creating. So while their listings will still be visible on the platform, they may not see things like the group listing functionality include their listings within that consolidated view of items that are available on our site. They may not have access to the reviews that exist in certain places on the platform or things like price trending, so these tools that sellers are very much interested in to help manage and guide their businesses, won't be available to the listings that these sellers are creating.

How can sellers find out which listings they're going to need to update it in order to be in compliance and in what we call the eBay catalog?

There are a couple of places you can visit. Obviously we, uh, as part of the seller update, we'll give you some information as to whether or not you're impacted by these changes, but there's also a landing page that we created earlier this year that we're constantly updating that will have that information available as well. All you have to do is visit ebay.com/structureddata and that will take you to a page that has everything that you need to know about product based shopping and the different categories that are impacted by these changes were announcing.

Excellent. Now, can sellers use the eBay catalog for multiple variation or multi skew listings?

Absolutely. As part of this change, we're actually asking that sellers that operate within these enabled categories that for variations, they also find the product that best matches that variation that they're listing. This will allow us to appropriately identify these variations as products and list those amongst other listings that are being created of the same product type.

Again, making it easier for buyers to find exactly what they're looking for in the shortest amount of time possible.

Now, Chris, we're encouraging sellers for appropriate items in their inventory when they list them and wherever possible to associate them with a catalog. But for a lot of these, they're not a requirement yet. When will sellers have to associate their listings with these new categories announced in the fall seller update?

So the ones that we announced in the fall seller update, uh, we want sellers to focus okay, very keenly on their businesses this year, selling and transacting with buyers as they come flocking to our platform, looking for those great holiday gifts. Uh, so, uh, sellers will not be required to list in these new categories that we're announcing until early next year. So you'll have until February to complete transactions and then start preparing in 2019 for these changes that we're announcing. For categories that exist outside of those that we're discussing today.

If a product exists in the catalog that accurately matches the item that you have for sale, please feel free to use it. If you do find product information that you'd like to update while the functionality won't be available in your category, you can leverage the SDsupport@ebay.com email address to notify us of any changes that need to be made to additional products outside of the categories we're focusing.

That email address again is s and d, d as in dog, SDsupport@ebay.com for all of those categories outside of those initial categories. We're focusing on this year and early next.

So you don't have to do it right away, but just like the early bird gets the worm, the early catalog adopter could get the better sales.

That's exactly right.

So do it as soon as you can. Now, what can sellers do if they find a product in the eBay catalog that's maybe missing product specifics or even worse might include some inaccurate information?

Well, I think that's another great plug for this function that we're rolling out in August that create product and update product information will allow you to inline as you're creating your listing flag product information that needs to be updated and within 24 hours our catalog team will review the information that you submitted and make those adjustments. The same thing goes for creating a new product in the catalog within 24 hours. After you've submitted this universally understood information, we'll let you know whether or not we can create a product or maybe ask you for a couple of bits of clarifying information so that we can better understand the item that you're selling and then outside of the categories that we're focused on, outside of consumer electronics and some sporting goods and home and garden categories. If you find something, say in fashion that has a product that's been created in the catalog that maybe has some information that's out of date or needs to be updated, feel free to use that email address. Again, SDsupport@ebay.com. We don't want to leave those products on attended. We want to make sure that information is being correctly displayed to buyers and that your items on the site are being represented in the best way possible.

Chris, I want to thank you for helping us out with this update and providing this great information. The product based shopping project on eBay will be ongoing for well for the extended future, at least for the next few years and anything we can do to help sellers understand it and adopt the catalog. It's going to help everyone. Thanks again. Chris will talk to you next time.

Thank you.

Coming up, the new seller service metrics explained here on selling on eBay. Stay tuned. Joining us now to discuss another aspect of today's announced fall seller update for 2018 is our dear friend Kristi Diemoz. Kristi, welcome.

Hey Griff. Thanks. I'm excited to be on the podcast today.

Kristi, tell us your role at eBay

Right now. For those of you who I know, you know, I've been here a long time. I've been in a lot of different roles, but right now I'm actually running the seller update process and so I kind of work with all the teams to gather things that should be in the seller update and help the teams with that. And I've worked really closely with the team on the topic we're talking about today. So I was excited to get the chance and, and come talk a little bit more about this one.

And so what we're talking about is service metrics, specifically service metrics and peer benchmarks. So tell us what are those?

So this is something we announced in the spring seller update and something we've been talking about for a few months now. Service metrics and peer benchmarks are basically a tool and an information source of data in the seller hub that provides sellers with information on their nonperforming sales. So examples would be item not as described. Returns or item not received requests. And so the service metrics and peer benchmarks will also share best practices on how to reduce these nonperforming sales. And so my favorite part about this tool is that it also provides peer benchmarks instead of being compared against all sellers, like in previous kind of types of standards changes in this one. You're compared to sellers who are similar to you. So what that means is when you see your peer benchmark in the dashboard, you'll see that you're compared to sellers who are selling in a similar category, similar item conditions, and similar price point.

So we really try to truly compare peer to peer so that you can see where you stack up against sellers who are selling similar products. So just it's really useful information and we think it's going to be great for sellers to finally have access to this data.

How do these metrics benefits sellers?

So these help sellers by giving them extremely important insights and basically data when these situations happen, it's so important for any business to track and understand how they're serving their customers. And maybe you know, understanding when things don't go exactly as expected. So what they do is first they help sellers identify any products or listings or services that might have a higher than usual return rate or a higher than usual item not received rate. And so you'll even have the availability this week to download a report from your service metrics and benchmarks that help you identify these specific listings.

So they do that. They also act as an indicator on how you'll be ranked against search among your peers. So if you see that, you know, you're not rating as high as your peers, it may be that they might actually show up in search above you. So that's really important insight that you can have to try to improve that and get better, you know, search ratings and then also they'll give you competitive insights on how you perform in comparison to your peers. And so again, like I mentioned, that's my favorite part about it is instead of, you know, back when we had defects and standards and all of that, you were being compared against all sellers. And now with this out of standards and with this in this tool, you are compared against other similar sellers. And then lastly, you know, by improving these rates and monitoring this and using the data, it will help increase, you know, buyers trust and the eBay marketplace and the, you know, our ultimate goal is to, when buyers come to the site, we want them to have a great experience.

We want them to buy your items and we want them to keep coming back. And so by utilizing this tools and data, it can help sellers, you know, again, identify any opportunities and you know, have great experiences that keep buyers coming back, which I think we all want.

What actually happens if a seller has a very high rate of either item, not received, requests or item not as described returns?

So first, before I jump into what the specific consequences are, I do just want to say that you know, majority of sellers are within normal rates. There are only a handful of sellers that are really high. And so, so we really don't want you to stress about this too much. We want you to monitor it and use it, and then if you are in the very high area, there could be a consequence and so what those are is if you have a high rate of item not as described, return requests.

There could be an additional four percent final value fee for listings in the categories where you're evaluated as very high. So what that means is say you sell across electronics and home and garden, but your return rate is only very high in electronics but not in home and garden. That means that you'll be subject to a four percent additional final value fee in the electronics category, but that won't apply to home and garden. So it just applies in the category where you're rated is very high. And then secondarily, if you have a very high rate of item not received requests, we might add some time to your buyer facing estimated delivery dates. So when buyers are shopping on the site and they click on the item, it shows them a calculation of when they should expect to receive it. And if we know the items are regularly not being delivered on time and you're rated as very high, then we'll add a few days there to more accurately reflect what the buyer experience will actually be.

So again, just keep in mind, majority of sellers are completely within more normal rates, but those who are very high will really want to work on this and address it so they don't have these consequences.

Where can sellers find service metrics and peer benchmarks?

So in the seller update, we provide links directly to a lot of this great information, but sellers can always find them. And again, this is something we recommend that they track regularly, but they're located in the performance tab of seller hub. So if you go to your performance tab on the left side, you'll see service metrics and like I mentioned, the great thing you can also do this week is you'll be able to download reports straight from the page. And you know those will be available this week at some time. So what you'll see is when you're looking at your dashboard, if you scroll down, you'll see a little button that says download, report, and then this is where you can get that additional data and insight.

Kristi, do you have anything else you want to add?

Hey thanks Griff!  No, I hope this is useful information. You know, we really recommend you read all the details and the seller update page and again, this is just giving sellers insight and tools that all businesses need to track and monitor to ensure that they are, you know, so they understand how they're serving their customers. So we hope sellers find that really useful and it helps them improve their business. Thanks so much for having me, Griff.  I'm so excited about the new podcast and this opportunity to chat with everyone and hope to join you again soon.

Kristi, it's been a pleasure. As always, we'll come back and check in with you on this topic and others from our Salt Lake City office as we move forward in future podcast episodes. Thanks again.

Great. Thanks so much Griff.

Okay, let's go to our very first caller on our selling on eBay show for this week. Hello. Welcome to the show. What's your name and your question or your comment?

Hi, my name is Lee. Hello Griff, Am I really the first caller?

You really are the first caller on the show.

I've been up all night waiting to be the first caller?

Well I don't want to answer that question because I think it's better that we don't. But welcome to the show. Lee.

Well thank you Griff.

You know I missed you on Tuesday.

Yeah, Tuesday was a, you know, it was empty not having the live show. I'm glad that you called though because this is technically like a transition into the new show.

Well, you know, and there's something I have to say first if I may?

Well maybe before you even say that. Let me tell the audience that's listening for those of you are new to our show. Lee and I had a show on the air called eBay Radio for 15 years and the reason why we changed formats is because Lee's gone into retirement. Where now, she has lots of time to call other shows. Well welcome.

Okay, so Griff, I called for a reason because things went crazy at the end of our last show, at the event, you know, all of a sudden, for those of you who were listening and then we went off the air, what had happened was eBay executives passed out, eBay executives passed out champagne to the audience. Griff and I didn't even notice it because we were busy doing the show and so at the end of the show, and then Audrey jumped in to say wonderful things,

She gave you a toast.

So I did not give a chance. Get a chance to mention the team.

Ah Yes.

Can I do that?

Yes, of course. I'd be happy if you did Lee.

Am I  interrupting your new thing?

No, no, no. You're a part of it now.

Okay, thank you. Okay.

Just when you think you've gotten away, we drag you back in.

So first of all, John Sell.

Yes.

Chief engineer, and audio editor. His editing and board engineering made us sound much better than we deserve Griff.

Boy did he ever. Thank you John.

And then each year, if you've been at our eBay radio conferences or the last few years at eBay open, Shawn Mcneil is our Las Vegas broadcast engineer. He's with iHeart media in Las Vegas and he comes and he's been helping us for years. We only see him in Las Vegas.

We only and It's actually like he's part of the family now. Exactly. Thank you Shawn.

And then there's the Donna, the spreadsheet queen. I am not worthy in addition to being our business development director. You heard her sweet voice on the Thursday phone screening for over eight years

And she's been so patient as a phone screener.

Oh, she is very patient. Donna is a patient person in life.

Frank Caesar, who John and I have known Frank since the early seventies. His famous voice gave us that professional sound, we adore as broadcasters, and he's an old friend from back in the day, guitar player.  Burt Lo the webmaster who kept our archives in pristine condition. Melissa Maribelle, who has been with me for many, many, many years.

Since she was born in fact.

Exactly.

She's your daughter.

In the terrestrial radio days, beginning around 1980. She was 11.

Wow.

Was schlepping banners and all those things you do in radio. She served her well. Serves us well. You've heard her upbeat phone attitude on Tuesday shows for 15 years. CJ  came to us a few years ago.  She made a gigantic difference in our workflow. eBay expert collector of eBay, honor. Her advice has been invaluable. Griff, I don't know if you ever had an opportunity to just sit across from her to lunch or dinner, but she's a very bright woman.

Valuable information from her retail.

And that most people don't realize that she was in retail for years and she really served her well on her eBay selling journey.

She brought that knowledge along to her eBay listings and in fact she teaches people.

Yeah, she was. She's a great teacher. She's kind and patient and really knowledgeable.

Yes, and I didn't get a chance to hug her, so John and I are driving to San Clemente on Thursday and taking her to lunch.

Well, that's very sweet. Tell her I say hello.

I will give her a hug for you.

Thank you.

Then without her friendship, sage advice and hard work. eBay Radio would never lasted this long. I truly believe that our eBay expert seller behind the scenes  eBetsy,  We will miss your briefs  Betsy

And your colored hair and your wacky sense of humor.

What can I say about  Griff?

I don't know.

Entertainer, musician, radio professional and a hell of a lot of fun. He got radio from the first day and made this journey very exciting for me and I, I love the whole team and there!  I've said it.

Well. I'm glad you called because I get a chance to tell you on the air how much I think of you and it was a great surprise to get the phone call and I look forward to our friendship extending through the years. And who knows? Maybe you can be a part of this show still. We are not going to retire. We're going to call you out. Going to ask you, how did that affect you? We're going to ask you your advice. There'll be the Lee Mirabelle segment. Oh, you can't get away, Lee.

Well, you know, Griff. My place in the eBay community was pretty much an anomaly.

It was a unique insight.

Although I have an eBay seller account with 100 percent positive feedback.

Congratulations.

I only used enough to learn the ropes to be able to give listing dishes and selling advice. So I was more the entrepreneurial and motivational part of the team. And now it's good to know I'm still going to be involved in some little way here and there. So. We’ll miss you guys terribly. 

We will be, calling you or waiting for your calls and looking forward to your entrepreneurial advice.

Alright, I love you darlings. And for you listening today. I'm not going to miss you because I'm going to be hanging around you on Facebook and you'll be hearing my voice on these things once in a while. I love you all.

Lee, My best to you and John, you are two of my dearest friends and I look forward to seeing you in San Diego and more good times in the future. It's been a wonderful 15 years.

Come on down, I have a Brand new guest room.

I can't wait.

That’s got your name all over it.

Get a piano ready and we'll jam.

Bye bye.

Bye Lee.

It's a pleasure. Break a Leg on your new endeavor.

Thank you. I will extend those wishes to everyone on the team. Okay.

Bye Bye. Bye Bye now.

eBay Open 2018. eBay's annual three day seller conference in celebration. Was held during the last week of July. Our correspondent Chris Gangai, guys spoke with two sellers who are experiencing eBay open for the first time.

Let's listen in.

And your name is...

Wendy. Eric.

What is your store name? Hipchimps.

How long have you been selling on eBay?

We had been selling for about six months. I used to buy a lot of stuff on eBay, like vintage video games and that sort of stuff for my son and I just got this random thing to say, hey, you know what, let me just go and sell some stuff online. And pretty easy, you know, after you do a couple of transactions.

So what exactly are you guys selling?

But we're selling a little bit about everything. I'd say anything that sells and anything that makes money, that's what we want. But it's clothing, shoes, bags, electronics.

So is this your first eBay open? So you’ve sat through a couple of the general sessions?

We got in early about 8:00, went to the registration, went out and got ready to start attending and starting at 1:00 PM we did the Facebook live deal, 1130. We sat in on that. Just really cool to kind of get a feel for what everybody else is doing. Right? So if you're in your hometown, you don't always, you know, you may have friends but not everybody really cares or wants to hear about what's going on with eBay. And so you can relate to a lot of people that you meet and really learn a lot of things in a short amount of time.

Have you guys gotten a chance to talk to a lot of sellers?

During breakfast there were little regional meetups I guess yesterday. That's also helpful. It's cool to get everybody's perspective right? So people that have been selling on the platform for a long time know a lot about a lot of things, you know, and it's not, you find that people aren't just an a niche, right. So a lot of people graduate to multiple categories over time.

Who's running the business while you guys are here?

It's running itself and we're just gonna have to hustle when we get back home.

We're reducing our handling time every day. She's a stay at home mom, so she does a lot of the stuff throughout the week. So usually one of us that is doing something but uh, when we were both out than normally were updating our handling time every day. Every morning for like three days, two days. One day while we're here.

Yeah.

So is eBay your primary job?

Not yet. I mean it's, it's grown substantially. I think, you know, we started having discussions late last year and I was thinking like what could we do to spend more time with the family and live life on our terms just isn't always the easiest thing to do. She's been able to stay at home, which has been great and we were looking for opportunity and just probably in my opinion was something that we could do very easily and it's very surprisingly, it's kind of just taken off month over month to where if it was a single person can make a living extremely easy. Right. So we're just continuing to focus on hopefully here learn more and more to help grow the business to get it to that point.

The more you put in the more you're going to get out.

Yeah. Don't be afraid to do it, just to do it.

So some people may be intimidated thinking that it's complicated. I mean, I wouldn't say it's hard or complicated, just take some time to really get in there and get focused. Spend some time learning.

So out of the general sessions that have happened so far, which one do you guys feel has been the most valuable?

The general sessions yesterday. We're all about feeling connected to eBay as an organization, you know, and so we're not just a seller on a platform with a handful of people that are just running a website. Right? There's a lot of people that are invested in not just eBay as a platform but the seller, so I think that was really cool and getting to hear from the senior leadership. I really enjoyed the technology component of it. Yeah. And would it be doing for the mobile community? Right. So you can do a lot more things on the mobile APP. I'm really interested in trying to figure out, you know, what can we do to kind of jump on that bandwagon and help get sales through that aspect.

Is there a specific topic or area of selling that you guys are hoping to explore?

For me personally, I'm open-minded about receiving any type of information I can get for this being our first time us being new sellers. We're just trying to be a sponge and soak up as much as we can everywhere.

Have you learned anything unexpected? Maybe it's something that will help your business?

Just because we're so new to the game. I feel like everything that is thrown at us, it's like we're just going to take it and run.

We'd like to thank Eric and Wendy, eBay sellers that were interviewed by our correspondent Chris Gungai at eBay, open 2018.

That's all for this week. Join us next week for a fresh episode of selling on eBay. Thanks to our entire selling on eBay team of correspondence without whose help collecting the content. This podcast could not happen. Director of community at eBay, Brian Burke, community team managers, Alan Aisbitt and the King of Instagram, Doug Smith. Don't forget, Liz Austin of the social team here at eBay.

Selling on eBay is produced and distributed by Libysn and podCast411.  On behalf of eBay, I'm Audrey Tracy and I'm Griff and we'll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, happy sales to you until we meet again here on selling on eBay. We said selling on eBay like six times. I think it's well maybe seven, but it is the name of the show and we do have to promote it. 

[doug@ebay]

Welcome to the launch of the Selling on eBay podcast, Your weekly source for the information you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's best marketplace! In this episode, we'll discuss the 2018 Fall Seller Update, including payments 2.0 and how they'll work on eBay, service metrics and shipping and product based commerce. After that we'll hear from some sellers from eBay Open 2018, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. As always we'll also take call-ins from 888 723-4630. #ebaypodcast

Yeah, let's see. Okay, wait, wait a minute. Is this thing on? It is. Okay, great. I'm Griff and I'm Audrey Tracy and this is selling on eBay. You're weekly source for the information you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's best marketplace, and this is show number one. For those of you haven't heard, eBay radio is morphing into a new format and with the retirement of eBay Radio Co-host and producer Lee Maribelle, we decided it would be a good time to well you know, try something new like a podcast, so once a week, every week we'll bring you great stories, news and advice from eBay sellers, employees and industry experts about how to start, run and grow a business on eBay, and we'll still be taking your calls. Just call our toll free number. 888-723-4630, wait a minute. How do we do that?

How do you take calls on a recorded podcast?

Well, it's magic and it's also a secret. If you're curious to know just exactly how we do it, you're going to have to call the number 888-723-4630, okay. If you say so, that number 888-723-4630. Wait a minute. That sounds familiar.

It should. It's the old eBay radio phone numbers that we've been using for 15 years. Hey, eBay is all about recycling, so why not recycle the phone number?

Let's just use it again.

That's it. And that's what we're doing. So Audrey, what do you have for us for our first maiden voyage of the selling on eBay show?

Well, today we're talking about the 2018 fall seller update, which was just announced today, August seventh. We've got a couple of topics.

Number one, we're going to talk about payments. Sellers have a lot of curiosity about how payments are going to work on the eBay platform, so we'll bring in an expert on that. We're also going to talk about service metrics and shipping. These are the metrics that compare your performance against your peers within a selling category where we have an update on that. That's great.

And then the last thing is product based commerce. This is our eBay catalog initiative, as you may know, and we've got some updates on that as well.

And we're expanding it to categories. There will be some new requirements you're going to want to pay attention to that. After we talk about the fall seller update for 2018, we're going to talk to some of our sellers at eBay Open. Actually, we have correspondents from our Community team roaming the floors and roaming the parties after, the each day's event and they were speaking with sellers and uh, we got a little story to tell about that.

So we'll hear from sellers at eBay Open 2018 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. And then of course your call-ins. We'll be airing some of our calls that we've received previously and if you want to be on the show with your question, just call us at 888-723-4630, that's 888-723-4630, and follow the instructions when you get the message. So I think we're ready on with the show.

Let’s start our first. This is our maiden broadcast. Is that the right word? Maiden voyage. Yes, I think it is. So let's give birth to the podcast. We're ready to go. Let's talk about seller update and meet our first guest.

Before we move on to the news, I want to let everyone know that we have a new eBay community page dedicated to the selling on eBay show. You can find it at ebay.com/sellingonebay . You'll find discussion threads and links to past shows there, including the recent eBay radio archives. Again, that url, ebay.com/sellingonebay  And don't forget, we still want your phone calls. That call in number may sound familiar. It's the same old number as  it's always been 888-723-4630 . That's 888-723-4630. 888-723-4630. every week. On the selling. On eBay show will have a regular eBay news segment this week for our first show. The news segment is dedicated to the 2018 fall seller update announced this morning, August seventh, 2018. In today's news will focus on three topics from the fall update payments 2.0, product based shopping and the seller service metrics. Remember, you can read the entire update at ebay.com/fall2018. That's ebay.com/fall2018. Now onto the news.

Hi everyone. I'm Audrey Tracy and welcome to a special edition of the selling on eBay podcast. Today we're talking about the 2018 Fall Seller Update with me is Keala Gaines. She's the senior director of payment services, hi Keala.

Hi!

And we're going to talk about all the payments news that we just announced. What is managed payment?

We announced in January 2018 at our intention to intermediate payments. And intermediation is kind of one of those words where you wonder what it means to you. And so really what we're doing is we're managing the payment process for our buyers and sellers. And that's really what it means and we're starting to stand in between the transactions

And how will managed payments work on the eBay platform?

Well on the eBay platform, if you think about the way that buyers pay today, many of the choices around how they accept payments are really set by their PayPal account and in the future, our ability to determine what methods of payment a buyer wants to pay by or can pay by.

We actually begin to be set by us.

So what that means is probably more choice and flexibility for buyers is that correct?

Absolutely okay. When you saw that probably we've already announced that apple pay will be part of our initial offering.

Yep, we just announced Apple Pay about a week ago. What are some of the benefits to sellers?

And we actually think that sellers have much more change and I believe in a good way then buyers, because for buyers they may not actually notice a lot of the changes they may notice new options, but they don't have to do as much. Sellers do need to do some things, but the reality is they'd have to do quite a bit today and that we ask our sellers to really manage two separate relationships, one with eBay and one with PayPal, and that includes everything from when you sign up to how you contract to your fees, your reports, your bills, your customer service experience, down to your policies in the future.

All of those will be one relationship managed by eBay so that you got one set of fees, one bill, one set of reports, and really one servicing experience as well.

Excellent. So that means no more reconciliation between eBay and PayPal. Everything will happen directly on eBay platform.

That's Right.

And what about benefits to buyers? We alluded to a few.

For buyers, again, more choice as well as what we hear loud and clear and I think we hear it more now in ecommerce than we ever have before, which is buyers want the ability to pay with a credit card. They want it to be really easy to find and really easy to use and that hasn't always been the case on eBay. You know, we've always kind of lead with PayPal is the way to pay and so one of the things we're doing right out of the bat is credit card will be a lot easier to use and find.

It will be defaulted, it'll be front and center if you're coming from a mobile device Apple Pay will also be there.  While I should say an apple mobile device.

Right.

On our roadmap in the future. We're also thinking about those non-app devices.

Sellers are really curious about the buyer experience, what will buyers see on the screen at checkout?

If you go to our site today and you uncookie and unremember me on all of your preferences and you came in as a new user to the site, you would see the ability to pay with a credit card. It comes below the option to pay by PayPal. So if you can kind of imagine the option to pay for the item without PayPal being there and the credit card piece being front and center and expanded, that's exactly what the checkout looks like. Other than that, it really doesn't look any different.

And this is a familiar experience for online shoppers, right? They go to any other online site and they're presented with a space to enter their credit card. Their security code and then it's off to the races.

Absolutely. And they can choose to store that or not with us, so if they want to store it and make it super easy to use in the future, they can do that. If they want to enter it each time, they can do that as well.

We've had a few questions about PayPal. Why won't PayPal be included in the initial launch? Why not wait until PayPal is available and most people would look at our site and would say, well PayPal is there today. That seems like kind of a no brainer. Why isn't it? There is a deliberate and the answer really is it's not deliberate. The answer is in the future it will be there in a different way than it is there today.

It requires a completely new integration for us and that integration takes time and it's frankly complex.

What's the rollout timetable for managed payments?

As you probably may have heard already announced, we started announcing our intentions here in our January earnings announcement, 2018. In that announcement we had said we intend to start slowly, which we are doing and we're starting slowly in 2018 and so fall of 2018 is when we will start actually turning this on for sellers. The sellers that have been invited to participate have already been contacted and those plans expand into 2019, with the intention that we will be largely at a stage where we're complete with most of our sellers and this will just be the new way that you sell on the eBay platform beginning in 2021.

Right. So it's a phased approach. We're rolling out to sellers gradually.

We're not allowing everyone on the new payments platform at once because we want to get this right.

Absolutely.

Why is managed payment launching in September? The start of the busiest time of the year for sellers?

It's just a matter of this has been a large effort. It's complex as, as I mentioned, and September, it was actually the soonest that we could start to get functionality in the hands of our sellers and one of the things that has been paramount to our strategy is making sure that we are doing so with feedback from our customers in mind and the only way to get feedback from our customers is to get it in their hands. September. While we know that that won't work for everyone. For some folks, hopefully it will work and we can start to get that feedback in early.

Sellers often ask, do I need an Adyen account?

Adyen is really our back end provider.

It's something that normally our customers wouldn't, shouldn't have to care about, have visibility to. It's really about, it's how eBay manages and processes payments on the back end. So No, our sellers will not need an Adyen account if you are an enterprise seller and run your own business and there's a need for you to engage with them directly for it, for that portion, perhaps. But for your on eBay, part of your business, there is no need to have an account with anyone other than eBay. We will be your one stop shop for everything to do with selling on the platform and getting paid all in one place. Your existing eBay account. You won't set up a new account. Your existing account would just be transitioned so that this new set of functionality starts to be enabled.

A lot of folks think that this is the same model as PayPal where they have a separate PayPal account, but that's not the case.

You will sell and get paid all on one platform.

Yeah, if you had a separate account, we actually wouldn't be managing it for you.

Exactly. Okay. Another question we hear all the time is how fast can I get my money? What's the model for payout?

This is a complicated one. The answer should be simple and it is, and I'll give you a simple answer. And right now that's simple answer is two to four days, but I want to kind of give why it takes two to four days. And I know there's also some misconceptions that we're going to hold money and like we want to hold it longer and things like that, that's not the case. We actually want to make sure that our sellers can get their funds as soon as they possibly can. But for anybody who has processed credit cards outside of eBay or even done a bank transfer or waited for their paycheck to hit their account from a direct deposit, it just takes time to move money.

And so we will pay out as soon as the funds become available to us for payout. And that's typically as short as two days. Sometimes we see it faster, but we don't want to kind of over promise and under deliver. And on the long end it can be, it can be four days. The important thing for I think our sellers to realize is that, you will get paid again as we receive the funds in. And it's kind of a daily payout process. So let's say you had $100 worth of sales. Let's say there was 10 transactions for $10, you would get a deposit two days later, $100, you double click in your seller hub at $100 deposit and you'll see, oh, that was 10 transactions, $10 so that you can reconcile. Right? So it's not individual transaction payouts, it's sort of this daily payout, but again, we'll make it really easy to reconcile so you can see exactly what was in that deposit from a transaction perspective.

Got It. So it's a lump sum with details about each transaction. That's great.

Yeah.

I've heard that there are limitations to international support at launch. Can you tell me what that means? International also complex. That's going to be my word of the day, but anybody.

These things are tough people.

Anybody that's sold or shipped internationally that should definitely resonate. And so, knowing that there's quite a bit of complexity there, it's just not something that we were able to get into this early launch. It's absolutely high priority. eBay is a global platform. It's one of the things we really pride ourselves on doing. And so a high priority for us to make sure that we get it in, there's some nuance to what it means to sell internationally and there's lots of ways that eBay supports it and lots of ways that our customers use it today.

So, maybe I should explain a little bit of kind of what's supported and what's not?

Yeah, that'd be great.

Sellers that actively go and list their inventory on one of our other sites. So let's say you're based in the US, you list on .com, but you also list your inventory actively on .uk .de .France. However many different ones you choose to do that right now in the initial phase is not supported. And we call that active listing. Passive listing is where we take inventory and we will push it to some of those sites for you. And that also is not supported right now, but what is supported is when your customers come from one of our sighted countries, they come to the US .com site. You're willing to ship internationally and they can check out. They can use their foreign issued credit card, it will work and you can ship to them and so that portion of international.

Absolutely will work. One more caveat of what won't work. Global Shipping Platform.

Okay, so I just want to reiterate that everything that we've talked about so far is for the initial launch where we're asking a certain percentage of sellers to participate.

Yes. Again, we talked about a number of things that are complex and that we haven't built out fully yet and so what we really focused on with some of the core use cases around coming in, you're on the US site, you're a US seller. You’re largely selling domestically. You may have international shoppers that you fulfill those on your own. You don't use our global shipping platform for example, you know, sort of kind of handling some of our more basic use cases to start and then in time and very aggressively for some of these they're super high priority. Adding PayPal as a form of payment for our buyer’s top priority.

Those things will be coming in 2019 and beyond.

So let's get a few more details on the initial launch. How did you determine which sellers to invite to participate first?

We took a look at the data and we took a look at the way that our sellers sell today and their profile and we really did our best to try to find folks who wouldn't hit some of the things that we know aren't supported right now. Right? So if we looked at your sales and we see a ton of your business, you use the global shipping platform, you probably wouldn't have been somebody that we outreached to initially if we did, if we got it wrong, we're sorry, but that's really the intent around how we are focusing our invitations. It's really largely based on product fit and what the profile looks like.

Sellers might ask if I didn't get an initial invite to manage payments, how will the rollout work for me.

If you didn't get an initial invitation and you want to participate, you absolutely can contact us. While we did do a scrub of account of selling history to kind of find fit and you, you want to participate anyway, we'll absolutely take another look and we'll see if there's a way that we can invite you in or what it is exactly that won't work for you and have that conversation. If you haven't been invited and you don't want to participate, you absolutely don't need to worry about it now is not the time for you and we will be continuing to expand invitation as we bring capabilities online.

So for folks that are interested, how can they express interest to eBay?

They should come to ebay.com/payments and they'll find a different ways to contact us there.

Can I opt out of payments once I'm in?

At this point in time, the product really isn't configured to enable opting out.

That said, we know that this is something a lot of folks have concerns over and one of the things that we are committed to doing is making sure that we are continuously improving and adding to the capabilities so that this becomes a robust offering. And keep in mind, this is our future state, so it's not like this is an optional feature or something that we're trying that's going to go away. We are absolutely committed to this. This is the future of how you're going to sell and get paid on eBay.

How will returns work? Will eBay debit the funds from my bank account?

Returns look really similar to the way that they work today and that the first thing we'll do is we'll look to debit your pending sales. If you don't have any pending sales with us, we'll send you a notification that we are going to debit whatever your payment method on file is with us and so that would be the same way that you pay your seller fees with us today, whether that's a credit card or PayPal or your bank account.

Thank you so much.

You are very welcome.

Thank you for being here. I just want to say a couple of quick wrap ups. You can get all the payments information at ebay.com/payments. That page will have the latest news and updates. You can also express interest in the initial launch. Thank you Keala for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks Audrey. Thanks to Keala as well. Great Information.

Up Next I'll talk to Chris Van Wagoner about updates to the product based shopping experience on eBay. You're listening to selling on eBay. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

Joining me right now is Chris Van Wagoner. Chris, tell us what team you work on.

I am in Seller Experience. We're very much focused on the experience obviously that our sellers are having as they sell on the site and as they engage the different tools that we develop for them.

And part of this Fall 2018 Seller Update again is an update to the ongoing project that we know is product based shopping experience. But before we start, let's just do a little overview for anyone who's new to the podcast and maybe new to this project. Uh, explain to us what is product based shopping?

Well, product based shopping is eBay's investment in buyer traffic. You see buyer expectations are changing every single day and we want to make sure that we are aligning buyers with the products that they're looking for. And so the product based shopping experience is a project that we've been working on for a couple of years now and it's very focused on categorizing items in such a way based on the structured product information that they have available so that we can quickly and easily present buyers with the items that they're interested in and those values that they're looking for online.

Tell us about the new create product and update product information features that were announced today at the 2018 Fall Seller Update.

Well, one thing that we've heard quite often from our sellers is that when I am trying to list my item using the eBay catalog, I can't find the product that I'm trying to list.  So we're launching a couple of different features today that first allow sellers to create a new product in the catalog. If it's not already there.  Providing us with as much universally understood product information as they have available. We're also rolling out a function that if a seller notices that a products information is out of date, or if something else needs to be included in the product information that's in the eBay catalog, they can go in and inline, provide us with the information that needs to be updated so that they're not associating their listing with information that's outdated and this will help us better manage the products that are on the site and serve up the information that needs to be presented to buyers as they're shopping on our platform.

What will happen if sellers don't associate their listings with the eBay catalog?

One thing that we announced a few months ago as a part of the first phase of the product based shopping experience was that if sellers don't, uh, associate their listings with the catalog, their listings won't qualify for these new experiences that we're creating. So while their listings will still be visible on the platform, they may not see things like the group listing functionality include their listings within that consolidated view of items that are available on our site. They may not have access to the reviews that exist in certain places on the platform or things like price trending, so these tools that sellers are very much interested in to help manage and guide their businesses, won't be available to the listings that these sellers are creating.

How can sellers find out which listings they're going to need to update it in order to be in compliance and in what we call the eBay catalog?

There are a couple of places you can visit. Obviously we, uh, as part of the seller update, we'll give you some information as to whether or not you're impacted by these changes, but there's also a landing page that we created earlier this year that we're constantly updating that will have that information available as well. All you have to do is visit ebay.com/structureddata and that will take you to a page that has everything that you need to know about product based shopping and the different categories that are impacted by these changes were announcing.

Excellent. Now, can sellers use the eBay catalog for multiple variation or multi skew listings?

Absolutely. As part of this change, we're actually asking that sellers that operate within these enabled categories that for variations, they also find the product that best matches that variation that they're listing. This will allow us to appropriately identify these variations as products and list those amongst other listings that are being created of the same product type.

Again, making it easier for buyers to find exactly what they're looking for in the shortest amount of time possible.

Now, Chris, we're encouraging sellers for appropriate items in their inventory when they list them and wherever possible to associate them with a catalog. But for a lot of these, they're not a requirement yet. When will sellers have to associate their listings with these new categories announced in the fall seller update?

So the ones that we announced in the fall seller update, uh, we want sellers to focus okay, very keenly on their businesses this year, selling and transacting with buyers as they come flocking to our platform, looking for those great holiday gifts. Uh, so, uh, sellers will not be required to list in these new categories that we're announcing until early next year. So you'll have until February to complete transactions and then start preparing in 2019 for these changes that we're announcing. For categories that exist outside of those that we're discussing today.

If a product exists in the catalog that accurately matches the item that you have for sale, please feel free to use it. If you do find product information that you'd like to update while the functionality won't be available in your category, you can leverage the SDsupport@ebay.com email address to notify us of any changes that need to be made to additional products outside of the categories we're focusing.

That email address again is s and d, d as in dog, SDsupport@ebay.com for all of those categories outside of those initial categories. We're focusing on this year and early next.

So you don't have to do it right away, but just like the early bird gets the worm, the early catalog adopter could get the better sales.

That's exactly right.

So do it as soon as you can. Now, what can sellers do if they find a product in the eBay catalog that's maybe missing product specifics or even worse might include some inaccurate information?

Well, I think that's another great plug for this function that we're rolling out in August that create product and update product information will allow you to inline as you're creating your listing flag product information that needs to be updated and within 24 hours our catalog team will review the information that you submitted and make those adjustments. The same thing goes for creating a new product in the catalog within 24 hours. After you've submitted this universally understood information, we'll let you know whether or not we can create a product or maybe ask you for a couple of bits of clarifying information so that we can better understand the item that you're selling and then outside of the categories that we're focused on, outside of consumer electronics and some sporting goods and home and garden categories. If you find something, say in fashion that has a product that's been created in the catalog that maybe has some information that's out of date or needs to be updated, feel free to use that email address. Again, SDsupport@ebay.com. We don't want to leave those products on attended. We want to make sure that information is being correctly displayed to buyers and that your items on the site are being represented in the best way possible.

Chris, I want to thank you for helping us out with this update and providing this great information. The product based shopping project on eBay will be ongoing for well for the extended future, at least for the next few years and anything we can do to help sellers understand it and adopt the catalog. It's going to help everyone. Thanks again. Chris will talk to you next time.

Thank you.

Coming up, the new seller service metrics explained here on selling on eBay. Stay tuned. Joining us now to discuss another aspect of today's announced fall seller update for 2018 is our dear friend Kristi Diemoz. Kristi, welcome.

Hey Griff. Thanks. I'm excited to be on the podcast today.

Kristi, tell us your role at eBay

Right now. For those of you who I know, you know, I've been here a long time. I've been in a lot of different roles, but right now I'm actually running the seller update process and so I kind of work with all the teams to gather things that should be in the seller update and help the teams with that. And I've worked really closely with the team on the topic we're talking about today. So I was excited to get the chance and, and come talk a little bit more about this one.

And so what we're talking about is service metrics, specifically service metrics and peer benchmarks. So tell us what are those?

So this is something we announced in the spring seller update and something we've been talking about for a few months now. Service metrics and peer benchmarks are basically a tool and an information source of data in the seller hub that provides sellers with information on their nonperforming sales. So examples would be item not as described. Returns or item not received requests. And so the service metrics and peer benchmarks will also share best practices on how to reduce these nonperforming sales. And so my favorite part about this tool is that it also provides peer benchmarks instead of being compared against all sellers, like in previous kind of types of standards changes in this one. You're compared to sellers who are similar to you. So what that means is when you see your peer benchmark in the dashboard, you'll see that you're compared to sellers who are selling in a similar category, similar item conditions, and similar price point.

So we really try to truly compare peer to peer so that you can see where you stack up against sellers who are selling similar products. So just it's really useful information and we think it's going to be great for sellers to finally have access to this data.

How do these metrics benefits sellers?

So these help sellers by giving them extremely important insights and basically data when these situations happen, it's so important for any business to track and understand how they're serving their customers. And maybe you know, understanding when things don't go exactly as expected. So what they do is first they help sellers identify any products or listings or services that might have a higher than usual return rate or a higher than usual item not received rate. And so you'll even have the availability this week to download a report from your service metrics and benchmarks that help you identify these specific listings.

So they do that. They also act as an indicator on how you'll be ranked against search among your peers. So if you see that, you know, you're not rating as high as your peers, it may be that they might actually show up in search above you. So that's really important insight that you can have to try to improve that and get better, you know, search ratings and then also they'll give you competitive insights on how you perform in comparison to your peers. And so again, like I mentioned, that's my favorite part about it is instead of, you know, back when we had defects and standards and all of that, you were being compared against all sellers. And now with this out of standards and with this in this tool, you are compared against other similar sellers. And then lastly, you know, by improving these rates and monitoring this and using the data, it will help increase, you know, buyers trust and the eBay marketplace and the, you know, our ultimate goal is to, when buyers come to the site, we want them to have a great experience.

We want them to buy your items and we want them to keep coming back. And so by utilizing this tools and data, it can help sellers, you know, again, identify any opportunities and you know, have great experiences that keep buyers coming back, which I think we all want.

What actually happens if a seller has a very high rate of either item, not received, requests or item not as described returns?

So first, before I jump into what the specific consequences are, I do just want to say that you know, majority of sellers are within normal rates. There are only a handful of sellers that are really high. And so, so we really don't want you to stress about this too much. We want you to monitor it and use it, and then if you are in the very high area, there could be a consequence and so what those are is if you have a high rate of item not as described, return requests.

There could be an additional four percent final value fee for listings in the categories where you're evaluated as very high. So what that means is say you sell across electronics and home and garden, but your return rate is only very high in electronics but not in home and garden. That means that you'll be subject to a four percent additional final value fee in the electronics category, but that won't apply to home and garden. So it just applies in the category where you're rated is very high. And then secondarily, if you have a very high rate of item not received requests, we might add some time to your buyer facing estimated delivery dates. So when buyers are shopping on the site and they click on the item, it shows them a calculation of when they should expect to receive it. And if we know the items are regularly not being delivered on time and you're rated as very high, then we'll add a few days there to more accurately reflect what the buyer experience will actually be.

So again, just keep in mind, majority of sellers are completely within more normal rates, but those who are very high will really want to work on this and address it so they don't have these consequences.

Where can sellers find service metrics and peer benchmarks?

So in the seller update, we provide links directly to a lot of this great information, but sellers can always find them. And again, this is something we recommend that they track regularly, but they're located in the performance tab of seller hub. So if you go to your performance tab on the left side, you'll see service metrics and like I mentioned, the great thing you can also do this week is you'll be able to download reports straight from the page. And you know those will be available this week at some time. So what you'll see is when you're looking at your dashboard, if you scroll down, you'll see a little button that says download, report, and then this is where you can get that additional data and insight.

Kristi, do you have anything else you want to add?

Hey thanks Griff!  No, I hope this is useful information. You know, we really recommend you read all the details and the seller update page and again, this is just giving sellers insight and tools that all businesses need to track and monitor to ensure that they are, you know, so they understand how they're serving their customers. So we hope sellers find that really useful and it helps them improve their business. Thanks so much for having me, Griff.  I'm so excited about the new podcast and this opportunity to chat with everyone and hope to join you again soon.

Kristi, it's been a pleasure. As always, we'll come back and check in with you on this topic and others from our Salt Lake City office as we move forward in future podcast episodes. Thanks again.

Great. Thanks so much Griff.

Okay, let's go to our very first caller on our selling on eBay show for this week. Hello. Welcome to the show. What's your name and your question or your comment?

Hi, my name is Lee. Hello Griff, Am I really the first caller?

You really are the first caller on the show.

I've been up all night waiting to be the first caller?

Well I don't want to answer that question because I think it's better that we don't. But welcome to the show. Lee.

Well thank you Griff.

You know I missed you on Tuesday.

Yeah, Tuesday was a, you know, it was empty not having the live show. I'm glad that you called though because this is technically like a transition into the new show.

Well, you know, and there's something I have to say first if I may?

Well maybe before you even say that. Let me tell the audience that's listening for those of you are new to our show. Lee and I had a show on the air called eBay Radio for 15 years and the reason why we changed formats is because Lee's gone into retirement. Where now, she has lots of time to call other shows. Well welcome.

Okay, so Griff, I called for a reason because things went crazy at the end of our last show, at the event, you know, all of a sudden, for those of you who were listening and then we went off the air, what had happened was eBay executives passed out, eBay executives passed out champagne to the audience. Griff and I didn't even notice it because we were busy doing the show and so at the end of the show, and then Audrey jumped in to say wonderful things,

She gave you a toast.

So I did not give a chance. Get a chance to mention the team.

Ah Yes.

Can I do that?

Yes, of course. I'd be happy if you did Lee.

Am I  interrupting your new thing?

No, no, no. You're a part of it now.

Okay, thank you. Okay.

Just when you think you've gotten away, we drag you back in.

So first of all, John Sell.

Yes.

Chief engineer, and audio editor. His editing and board engineering made us sound much better than we deserve Griff.

Boy did he ever. Thank you John.

And then each year, if you've been at our eBay radio conferences or the last few years at eBay open, Shawn Mcneil is our Las Vegas broadcast engineer. He's with iHeart media in Las Vegas and he comes and he's been helping us for years. We only see him in Las Vegas.

We only and It's actually like he's part of the family now. Exactly. Thank you Shawn.

And then there's the Donna, the spreadsheet queen. I am not worthy in addition to being our business development director. You heard her sweet voice on the Thursday phone screening for over eight years

And she's been so patient as a phone screener.

Oh, she is very patient. Donna is a patient person in life.

Frank Caesar, who John and I have known Frank since the early seventies. His famous voice gave us that professional sound, we adore as broadcasters, and he's an old friend from back in the day, guitar player.  Burt Lo the webmaster who kept our archives in pristine condition. Melissa Maribelle, who has been with me for many, many, many years.

Since she was born in fact.

Exactly.

She's your daughter.

In the terrestrial radio days, beginning around 1980. She was 11.

Wow.

Was schlepping banners and all those things you do in radio. She served her well. Serves us well. You've heard her upbeat phone attitude on Tuesday shows for 15 years. CJ  came to us a few years ago.  She made a gigantic difference in our workflow. eBay expert collector of eBay, honor. Her advice has been invaluable. Griff, I don't know if you ever had an opportunity to just sit across from her to lunch or dinner, but she's a very bright woman.

Valuable information from her retail.

And that most people don't realize that she was in retail for years and she really served her well on her eBay selling journey.

She brought that knowledge along to her eBay listings and in fact she teaches people.

Yeah, she was. She's a great teacher. She's kind and patient and really knowledgeable.

Yes, and I didn't get a chance to hug her, so John and I are driving to San Clemente on Thursday and taking her to lunch.

Well, that's very sweet. Tell her I say hello.

I will give her a hug for you.

Thank you.

Then without her friendship, sage advice and hard work. eBay Radio would never lasted this long. I truly believe that our eBay expert seller behind the scenes  eBetsy,  We will miss your briefs  Betsy

And your colored hair and your wacky sense of humor.

What can I say about  Griff?

I don't know.

Entertainer, musician, radio professional and a hell of a lot of fun. He got radio from the first day and made this journey very exciting for me and I, I love the whole team and there!  I've said it.

Well. I'm glad you called because I get a chance to tell you on the air how much I think of you and it was a great surprise to get the phone call and I look forward to our friendship extending through the years. And who knows? Maybe you can be a part of this show still. We are not going to retire. We're going to call you out. Going to ask you, how did that affect you? We're going to ask you your advice. There'll be the Lee Mirabelle segment. Oh, you can't get away, Lee.

Well, you know, Griff. My place in the eBay community was pretty much an anomaly.

It was a unique insight.

Although I have an eBay seller account with 100 percent positive feedback.

Congratulations.

I only used enough to learn the ropes to be able to give listing dishes and selling advice. So I was more the entrepreneurial and motivational part of the team. And now it's good to know I'm still going to be involved in some little way here and there. So. We’ll miss you guys terribly. 

We will be, calling you or waiting for your calls and looking forward to your entrepreneurial advice.

Alright, I love you darlings. And for you listening today. I'm not going to miss you because I'm going to be hanging around you on Facebook and you'll be hearing my voice on these things once in a while. I love you all.

Lee, My best to you and John, you are two of my dearest friends and I look forward to seeing you in San Diego and more good times in the future. It's been a wonderful 15 years.

Come on down, I have a Brand new guest room.

I can't wait.

That’s got your name all over it.

Get a piano ready and we'll jam.

Bye bye.

Bye Lee.

It's a pleasure. Break a Leg on your new endeavor.

Thank you. I will extend those wishes to everyone on the team. Okay.

Bye Bye. Bye Bye now.

eBay Open 2018. eBay's annual three day seller conference in celebration. Was held during the last week of July. Our correspondent Chris Gangai, guys spoke with two sellers who are experiencing eBay open for the first time.

Let's listen in.

And your name is...

Wendy. Eric.

What is your store name? Hipchimps.

How long have you been selling on eBay?

We had been selling for about six months. I used to buy a lot of stuff on eBay, like vintage video games and that sort of stuff for my son and I just got this random thing to say, hey, you know what, let me just go and sell some stuff online. And pretty easy, you know, after you do a couple of transactions.

So what exactly are you guys selling?

But we're selling a little bit about everything. I'd say anything that sells and anything that makes money, that's what we want. But it's clothing, shoes, bags, electronics.

So is this your first eBay open? So you’ve sat through a couple of the general sessions?

We got in early about 8:00, went to the registration, went out and got ready to start attending and starting at 1:00 PM we did the Facebook live deal, 1130. We sat in on that. Just really cool to kind of get a feel for what everybody else is doing. Right? So if you're in your hometown, you don't always, you know, you may have friends but not everybody really cares or wants to hear about what's going on with eBay. And so you can relate to a lot of people that you meet and really learn a lot of things in a short amount of time.

Have you guys gotten a chance to talk to a lot of sellers?

During breakfast there were little regional meetups I guess yesterday. That's also helpful. It's cool to get everybody's perspective right? So people that have been selling on the platform for a long time know a lot about a lot of things, you know, and it's not, you find that people aren't just an a niche, right. So a lot of people graduate to multiple categories over time.

Who's running the business while you guys are here?

It's running itself and we're just gonna have to hustle when we get back home.

We're reducing our handling time every day. She's a stay at home mom, so she does a lot of the stuff throughout the week. So usually one of us that is doing something but uh, when we were both out than normally were updating our handling time every day. Every morning for like three days, two days. One day while we're here.

Yeah.

So is eBay your primary job?

Not yet. I mean it's, it's grown substantially. I think, you know, we started having discussions late last year and I was thinking like what could we do to spend more time with the family and live life on our terms just isn't always the easiest thing to do. She's been able to stay at home, which has been great and we were looking for opportunity and just probably in my opinion was something that we could do very easily and it's very surprisingly, it's kind of just taken off month over month to where if it was a single person can make a living extremely easy. Right. So we're just continuing to focus on hopefully here learn more and more to help grow the business to get it to that point.

The more you put in the more you're going to get out.

Yeah. Don't be afraid to do it, just to do it.

So some people may be intimidated thinking that it's complicated. I mean, I wouldn't say it's hard or complicated, just take some time to really get in there and get focused. Spend some time learning.

So out of the general sessions that have happened so far, which one do you guys feel has been the most valuable?

The general sessions yesterday. We're all about feeling connected to eBay as an organization, you know, and so we're not just a seller on a platform with a handful of people that are just running a website. Right? There's a lot of people that are invested in not just eBay as a platform but the seller, so I think that was really cool and getting to hear from the senior leadership. I really enjoyed the technology component of it. Yeah. And would it be doing for the mobile community? Right. So you can do a lot more things on the mobile APP. I'm really interested in trying to figure out, you know, what can we do to kind of jump on that bandwagon and help get sales through that aspect.

Is there a specific topic or area of selling that you guys are hoping to explore?

For me personally, I'm open-minded about receiving any type of information I can get for this being our first time us being new sellers. We're just trying to be a sponge and soak up as much as we can everywhere.

Have you learned anything unexpected? Maybe it's something that will help your business?

Just because we're so new to the game. I feel like everything that is thrown at us, it's like we're just going to take it and run.

We'd like to thank Eric and Wendy, eBay sellers that were interviewed by our correspondent Chris Gungai at eBay, open 2018.

That's all for this week. Join us next week for a fresh episode of selling on eBay. Thanks to our entire selling on eBay team of correspondence without whose help collecting the content. This podcast could not happen. Director of community at eBay, Brian Burke, community team managers, Alan Aisbitt and the King of Instagram, Doug Smith. Don't forget, Liz Austin of the social team here at eBay.

Selling on eBay is produced and distributed by Libysn and podCast411.  On behalf of eBay, I'm Audrey Tracy and I'm Griff and we'll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, happy sales to you until we meet again here on selling on eBay. We said selling on eBay like six times. I think it's well maybe seven, but it is the name of the show and we do have to promote it.