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doug@ebay
eBay Staff (Alumni)

This week Bob takes the mic! Our host this week is eBay’s VP of Seller & Marketplace Operations, Bob Kupbens with a 2018 lookback. Bob talks with Scott Cutler, eBay’s SVP of the Americas on what we can expect in 2019, talks with merchandising leads Sam Bright, Renee Paradise and Marni Levine, and answers the Top 10 questions submitted by the eBay Seller Community. To have your questions answered on Selling on eBay, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at sellingonebay@ebay.com.

 

Selling On eBay - Episode 21 - Bob Kupbens with a 2018 Lookback, Scott Cutler, Sam Bright, Renee Paradise and Marni Levine, and Top 10 Questions From the eBay Seller Community

 

This week Bob takes the mic! Our host this week is eBay’s VP of Seller & Marketplace Operations, Bob Kupbens with a 2018 lookback. Bob talks with Scott Cutler, eBay’s SVP of the Americas on what we can expect in 2019, talks with merchandising leads Sam Bright, Renee Paradise and Marni Levine, and answers the Top 10 questions submitted by the eBay Seller Community. To have your questions answered on Selling on eBay, call us at 888 723-4630 or email us at sellingonebay@ebay.com.


Links

ebay.com/sellingonebay

ebay.com/meetups

ebay.com/community


Hosts

Bob Kupbens, Audrey Tracy


Guests

Scott Cutler (eBay Staff), Sam Bright (eBay Staff), Renee Paradise (eBay Staff), Marni Levine (eBay Staff)


Transcript

I'm Audrey Tracy and this is Selling On eBay. Your weekly source for the information and inspiration you need to start, run and grow a business on the world's most powerful marketplace.

Happy New Year sellers! Wishing all of you a safe and prosperous 2019. We've got a special episode today. We're giving Griff a little bit of a break. He'll be back later in 2019. We've got eBay's VP of Seller and Marketplace Operations, Bob Kupbens as today's special guest host.

Hi Bob.

Hey Audrey. How are you?

Good. Good. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I hope to gift this mic back to Griff very soon but I'm excited to be the special guest host today.

Okay, so what are you gonna be sharing on the podcast?

Well, I want to talk about 2018. Look, I know it's 2019 and Happy New Year everybody. I hope you had a great break, a great holiday, but let's talk about 18. What did we get right? What can we improve upon? And then I guess, how does this work? Is a special guest host allowed to have a special guest? Because we have an extra special guest.

Yes. You may have a special guest.

I'm allowed. And that's Scott Cutler, so I'm going to interview Scott. Scott is obviously eBay's Senior Vice President of the Americas and he's going to talk about what to expect in 2019. After that, I'm going to bring a few of my friends in Sam Bright, Renee Paradise, Marni Levine, the Heads of Merchandising for eBay in the Americas. And we're going to talk about merchandising and product and holiday and all things that, uh, that happened both in 2018 and what's going to come in 2019. Then our sellers have voted up some of the top questions that have been asked. I'm going to answer the top 10 questions that we collected from the seller community, if that, if that's okay?

Of course. That sounds great. Let's jump right in with your thoughts on 2018.

All right, let's do this.

Hey sellers, this month we're asking you to review your business performance in 2018 so you can start to renew your strategies. And in this segment, I just want to provide a 2018 retrospective from eBay's point of view. And why is that important today? You might be asking and sometimes before you dive into a year and before you dive into a big project, it's important to stop, reflect, review how we did the year before. Did we achieve what we set out to achieve? We talked about a lot of stuff last January and so, so how did we do? And how far down the path that we get? And what a great opportunity here in the podcast to, to have that more detailed discussions. Let's do the 2018 review from our perspective. You know in February we talked about delivering three main things. Delivering on an optimal shopping experience, guidance and improve resources to help you run a more profitable business and putting you are sellers at the center of everything we do.

So how did we do? I mean, if you look for something that's more recent, holiday. eBay had its biggest Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the company's history in terms of sales. And there are so many crazy highlights as you look at these, at these events. A pair of shoes sold every second, an Nintendo Switch sold every 13 seconds. That ramped up to six every six seconds at peak. Kitchen appliance, every eight seconds. Watch was sold every 11 seconds. And Apple watch every 26 seconds. So if you're a math geek, you can figure out the speed at which other watches were sold. I'll let you do that math in your head. A camera sold every 13 seconds and we just had some incredible deals on the site too. Nintendo Switches, Apple iPhones, Mac Books, Yeezys, Adidas, incredible, incredible shoe that we did some work with this year.We did a big sneaker drop and that was one of the obvious highlights of the holiday season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday were huge successes. And it's funny, like you look at not only big, high moving fast moving items, but you actually look at some other items. There was a Cartier 18 karat diamond ring that sold for over $22,000 through mobile of all things. So which one of you out there bought that? Because I want to know. Okay. And then a, a gold watch, a designer gold watch for $31,000. It's got a very classy sounding French name that I'm not going to attempt to pronounce here. But anyway, I mean the good news is not only are we selling fast moving new deals, goods, but the whole marketplace benefits when we have these big events. So I think from that perspective, I felt like, especially in holiday, you know, sales really, really delivered.

We talked about the optimal shopping experience and reimagining how shoppers shop on eBay. And you, you know, you've seen some advancements in AI, AR. We've seen some movement in structured data, probably not as much as we wanted, but we'll continue to work on that. But look, things like guaranteed shipping and the shift to Fast N Free and Guaranteed was really, really important. So 300,000, over 300,000 sellers are in this program, over 80 million live listings. And you know the impact that that has on buyers when they see Fast N Free and Guaranteed, especially in the, in that key holiday period. Manage Payments, a lot of you signed up, enrolled, saw over close to $40,000,000 of revenue just in the short time that Payments has been live already intermediate on that platform. So it's working, it's working well. There's obviously some feature gaps that we're planning to fill in 2019, but this is the start of a long journey and we've been super clear about that.

So sellers are saving money and the folks who are in, in general feeling good and we've got work to do as we, as we get into 2019 and 2020, when that becomes more of a reality for everyone. Again, product based commerce, we've learned a lot. We'll build on those learnings in 2019 as we leverage the catalog and leverage our, our attribute data and the key aspects of all of the items that we put on the site and how we showcase those to buyers. You know, we simplified our returns policies from 73 to 5 policies that makes it so much more clear for buyers. We also added some auto accept rules. Look, I know that some of you love those because it makes it easy for you and some of you don't love them because it does things like prevents the opportunity for you to negotiate or have a different kind of customer service discussion.

So we're going to look at those and sort of tune those in 2019. But we think in general, speeding up the transaction processes on the site is a good thing. And then we created and launched and executed 12 days of deals in holiday, which was new and different for us, but drove, a lot, a lot of volume. Again, changes to the shopping experience. We feel really positive about a number of those things. Guidance and resources for profitable growth. Look, promoted listings has continued to grow, not only as it continued to grow, we're experimenting with new placements for promoted listings all over the site. We added it to the selling flow, so it's super easy for people to take advantage and there's over $160 million listings currently on promoted listings, so we're very excited about that. In seller hub, like I said, we continue to apply and improve AI and adapt and enhance our guidance, but more importantly we just put the more likely to be used features right in front of you on the, on the listings tab.

And so I think that's one of the key things that we'll continue to do and make it much more easy to use. Seller hub. You know, we bought Terapeak a little while ago. We haven't yet done all the work to integrate that, but that's coming soon. We launched volume pricing which was a new capability within our marketing tools, so that gives you the opportunity to highlight places where you've got volume discounts on items with multiple quantities. Just a number of things in the vein of trying to help you drive profitable growth, which is obviously clearly important. And then putting the sellers to the center of everything we do. I mean, eBay Open for those of you who were able to attend was I think bigger and better. It's getting bigger and better every year, but was a really, really great event. So for those of you who were there, I loved meeting so many sellers. I love the personal connection, you know, we're doing that more in meetups and providing more content and going to do some visits in meetups this year. And we have actually a little secret strategy that I won't reveal here on the podcast, but we are going to get out and, and find a way to meet some more sellers this year at eBay Open in other formats. So keep an eye out for that. We launched the podcast this year. We made a very seamless transition, I hope, from the radio show to the podcast, and I encourage you as loyal listeners to the podcast to get the message out. This is where we're going to be sharing a lot of really critical information. It's tight, it's packaged, it's on demand for you, and so please encourage your seller friends and colleagues to, uh, to make sure that they listen to and download and subscribe to the podcast.

And then a ton of changes have happened. You know, tax is changing rapidly and we're in the process of providing tax support both for GDPR, which is more of a European but bleeding over into the US thing, but also internet sales tax. We've had a ton of emergencies this year, so wildfires and hurricanes and earthquakes, and you know our hearts just as you, as you see these things, go out to anybody who's been affected by these events. We do our best in real time to make sure that people are protected from defects and other things that result in challenges to your eBay business as a result of those events. Our objective is to hear feedback from you, so we've solidified a feedback loop. We want to make changes where we're hearing issues from the seller community. We did this 14 day Markdown Manager thing that we're all now trying to forget, but we turned it off pretty quickly I think as a result of feedback. And then you know, our executive team were just available for you and we're going to be here on this podcast and in other forums, making sure that you get the information you need and have the opportunity to provide a feedback loop. And then you know, there's a big thing you'll hear more about in 2019 around trust. And basically what it means to be a partner and how do we make sure that if you're a great seller, we trust you.

Scott's going to talk a little bit about that, but whether it's a item not as described or fraudulent returns or other things, we know there's some issues there and we're going to build some seller protections in in 2019. Okay, so I said 2019 a couple times in my 2018 retrospective. One thing that I can't leave out of a 2018 retrospective is some of the technology issues that we had on the platform. Look, you know, Scott will probably echo this as well. They're just not acceptable. They're unacceptable that we have a platform that doesn't support our sellers growing their business, you know, everyday 24-7. We're working very closely with the technology teams. Many of you know Scott Hamilton who is one of the most earnest and wonderful human beings on the planet and he is part of the team that is actively looking at how we make sure that those kinds of technology issues don't happen in the future and will be much, much more cognizant of how these things can affect your business.

And so again, apologies for those of you who were affected, we really are going to try to minimize those and can't probably prevent everything, but we've got a big team and it's a huge focus for us. So just be aware of that. So with all that said, I think 2018 in balance was a pretty good year. I hope you all felt that way. I hope your individual sales have grown. I've talked to a lot of sellers, some have been very, very successful. Others have struggled for different reasons and so we want to work through that and make 2019 the best year for you on eBay. And thank you for everything you do as sellers. Up next I'm going to speak with Scott Cutler, who's the Senior Vice President of the Americas, so let's look forward to that.

All right. I want to welcome Scott Cutler, the Senior Vice President of the Americas to our podcast.

Bob, it's great to be here.

Awesome. I'm so excited to have you. And look, we just came out of an incredible holiday. Maybe can you just give us some initial reflections on the holiday that we just had?

You know, this is a real honor for me to be here because as we talk about the importance of eBay in the world, we're coming out of a holiday season where we will have executed in the Americas billions of dollars of transactions for buyers powered by an amazing network of sellers. And so when you look at the delight that we're bringing to the holidays for the buyers that's represented by amazing economic opportunity, empowering and supporting the network of sellers that make that happen. Those represent jobs, families, people, businesses, and all of that comes together and exciting time in holidays. And I was just so excited by what I saw in that network, that flywheel effect between buyers and sellers this holiday season. I'm powered up going into 2019.

And the energy was incredible. I mean, the energy in the, in the holiday season was, was just absolutely fantastic.

Yeah. We have these war rooms every single day. Stand ups where we talk about the business, we talk about the categories, we talked about inventory that we're bringing to the market and the team is literally working around the clock, working with our sellers and driving a great site experience. And there's a lot of energy around it.

Yeah, you can feel it. So listen, in January we're going to be asking our sellers to review their business in 2018 and we're committed to doing the same thing. So just as a quick retrospective, what would you say were some of the big wins for 2018?

Well, I look back at 2018 and our focus is in a number of different areas. Number one is just driving relevance and consideration for a set of buyers. You saw us lean into a number of brand moments throughout the year, highlighted by what we saw in the holidays with the "It's happening on eBay". I was excited to see us prominently featured in cultural moments like The Wreck It Ralph Saved the Internet. I saw the unique eBay inventory come to life this last year in a unique toy seasoned catalog. Trending what's happening hot in the universe we were bringing to life through the campaign and we've made significant investments for people to consider eBay for those shopping moments. I'm proud with what we've been able to do in terms of improving that shopping experience.

2018 was a lot of foundational investment also for eBay. We started on our journey towards managing payments, which we talked about with people at eBay Open. We launched it in the fourth quarter. I'm pleased with the progress that we're making. We've tried to drive a really strong partnership with our sellers. I will talk a little bit about that. I think there's opportunity for us to improve that as we go out into it. I think 2018, there are things that I wish we could have done better for our sellers that we're committed to changing. And I think as we look at our purpose, connecting this back at eBay, our purpose of providing economic opportunity for our sellers, but also making a difference in the world. I'm proud with how eBay showed up in terms of our ability to contribute in charitable causes and supporting what we called Retail Revival. Which was really bringing communities onto the eBay platform through Retail Revival in places like Akron and East Lansing, Michigan, where we're bringing these retailers which, and sellers into the world of eBay, and it's really exciting to see that work progress.

It's fantastic. A big year obviously in 2018. Scott, one of the phrases we hear you talk about a lot is "uniquely eBay". Can you talk a little bit more about that and what that means to you?

Uniquely eBay celebrates the unique diversity of the inventory that we have on eBay that's sourced by amazing sellers. We do not own inventory. We did not own warehouses. We don't own distribution centers. We're not putting our capital at risk to buy inventory that then were pushing to buyers. We're trying to find those things that are unique to eBay, which means that it's great selection. It's a great product. It's at a great price and we show that spectrum and that diversity in a uniquely eBay way. And I think that's been the history of why eBay is such a strong marketplace because it is a differentiated value proposition. What that means for us, particularly as we're working with sellers, is for us to be able to highlight those categories, those products where we have a competitive differentiation versus other retailers versus other sources of supply, and I think where we have that opportunity to show that range of inventory, that spectrum of inventory and bring it to life in a unique way. That's what we talk about uniquely eBay. One brand moment, if you saw it in one of our commercials, we had a unique Spiderman commercial and if you saw it, we tried to highlight collectibles, which we're the only place that you could get a one, two and three edition of a Spiderman was on eBay. We celebrated the unique aspects of finding all of the different Spiderman related paraphernalia, merchandise around that which extends across multiple categories. And then the thing that everybody else would have, which would be like a Playstation4, uniquely has the Spiderman logo. That's something that we're competing for and everybody else is competing for, but highlighting that entire range of opportunity if Spiderman was your thing, is the thing that eBay can uniquely bring to life. And that's just one example of what I think it means for us to focus on uniquely eBay inventory.

That's exciting and and obviously something that only eBay can do. Scott, you referenced this earlier, areas that we need to improve on in 2019. What would you say those key areas are?

Well, for 2019 if I was to focus it on just two things. Number one, on the product side, we had product failures this year that particularly impacted our sellers. We highlighted that onstage, we've highlighted that with our sellers. We have great opportunity to improve the stability of the selling platform on eBay. A key goal and I am confident we are going to deliver that in 2019. The other is actually from a policy perspective, a focus on seller protections. Recognizing that it is our sellers that power, that environment and I think many of our sellers have felt as though we've swung the pendulum too far to only focus on buyers. Seller protections is another area that I anticipate us to make some great moves into 2019 that are sellers will feel and I believe recognize.

Awesome. 2018, Scott was your first eBay Open, the great eBay Open. What have you learned about sellers in 2018 and, and how are you going to build on that in 2019?

Well, eBay Open is one of those uniquely eBay things. We bring together a great collection of sellers from around the world. You know, obviously you feel the energy, the passion, the commitment, the diversity, the uniqueness of our seller community that powers the great eBay network and I saw that over and time and time again at eBay Open. I was inspired at the end of the eBay Open where we have the opportunity to welcome the clap.

The clapping tunnel?

The clapping tunnel. And actually the opportunity to personally interact, slap hands with all of the people that are coming out of eBay Open was an inspiring event for us. I mean an unbelievable connection to the purpose that we have with sellers. I think we also had that opportunity to get direct feedback, which is really important for us to know so that we can make the changes that we need to make in the platform. So a lot of the things that I referenced earlier is feedback that we obviously get in forms but to be able to get that feedback in person is powerful for us to be able to hear from our sellers in that way. And so I think those moments, our Top Seller Summit, our seller meetups that I've had the opportunity to attend around the country is really important for us to connect with our sellers because this is the community that powers the eBay network and it's been an honor to work with all of you and you know, it's an amazing community.

It is again, and another uniquely eBay thing about everything we do. So Scott, just summing it up, what's the prospect for eBay in 2019 from your perspective?

So for 2019, is going to be super exciting as we look at what we're focused on, really specifically two things. We talked about it uniquely eBay. How we bring uniquely eBay to a notion of an inspired marketplace. And what I mean by an inspired marketplace is, we're not trying to be like every other online site. We're not trying to be like a retailer. We're trying to highlight this great aspect of this inspired seller community, the purpose that we have at eBay, and to be able to identify unique inventory that celebrates the unique personalization, the diversity of, of our inventory to buyer's. Bringing that uniquely eBay moment out and highlighting those unique categories where we can differentiate is a key focus for 2019.

Our first priority in that is going to be in the first part of the year. Is it another big year, where we see a big traffic spike in kind of the end of February all the way through the end of March? We're going to be there with uniquely eBay moments. The second thing is, as we look at on the buyer side, we're getting a lot more specific and strategic around particular buyer segments that track to those uniquely eBay categories, those enthusiasts, those categories where we have passionate customers that like that eBay, unique eBay inventory. We want to make sure we know who those buyers are, that we're marketing to them, that we're providing opportunities to retain them, to acquire them and to grow our buyer platform. Buyer growth overall is really key for us to be able to create a dynamic marketplace and so we're focused on making sure we acquire great new buyers out there, but we also keep the enthusiastic, passionate buyer at eBay and, and focus on delivering value to them as well.

On the advertising side, promoted listings, we've talked about that. That's going to be the opportunity for our sellers to raise the visibility of profile of inventory that they want to highlight. A key growth opportunity for our sellers. Key opportunity for us at eBay. And we're going to be continuing on the march that we have been on the payment side. Uh, we started, here in the fall, through the first half of the year things that we know that we're going to be launching in particular in payments. People have PayPal as a form of payment to extend it into other opportunities like global shipping, reconciliation for sellers. All of these new features as part of our payments progression are going to be launched and available in the first half of the year. And we're going to continue our progress that we've made on the payment side, which is also, I think, exciting for our seller community. So those are probably the four things that I look forward to in 2019.

Awesome. Well listen, thank you Scott. I'm so glad to have you here and I know that our sellers really appreciate hearing directly from you. It sounds like it's gonna be an incredible year. I'm looking forward to it and I hope everybody out there is as well.

Thanks Bob. Thanks for having me on.

Up next, I'll speak with three merchandising leaders at eBay. Marni Levine, Sam Bright, and Renee Paradise.

Joining me on this segment are my friends and colleagues from the eBay merchant organization and we're going to do a little bit of a 2018 look back, sort of a retrospective. So you guys ready to be retro today?

Ready.

Game on.

Absolutely.

All right. So with me today are Sam Bright, who leads Soft Goods. Marni Levine who leads Hard Goods and Renee Paradise, who leads Fashion. Really excited to have you guys here. As we look at 2018 in the rear view mirror, everyone, so that's super exciting. Our sellers would love to hear your perspective on what was great in 2018. What were the wins and then what are the things we're looking at to do differently in future years. And before we start that, I mean maybe for our listeners, tell us a little bit about what a merchant is. You know, I've always said that sellers are the beating heart of the marketplace. So merchants are what? Liver? Pancreas? Kidneys? The beating kidneys of the marketplace. I mean you guys play such an integral role, so maybe, I don't know. Sam, do you want to start? Just tell us a little about what a merchant is.

Yeah, sure. Thank you for having us today Bob. Merchants are industry experts as well as helping sellers grow their business on eBay. So it's everything from a variety of different programs like the Deals Program to activating various initiatives and partnership with this other organization like Fast N Free and Guaranteed or volume based pricing. The list goes on, but essentially it's a centralized point of contact that helps to, to grow the business for specific category.

And you guys get to decide, for example, what goes on the homepage, right? Renee, you had some great successes this year.

Yeah, I mean, uh, I think I would add to what Sam says by saying that it's also a really creative job because it's the opportunity to really look at, what can we highlight to help our sellers grow? Like some of the things that we decided on in 2018 for fashion, we had a real highlight on sneakers in June. Market is obviously on fire and so it was a cool opportunity to do the first ever eBay sneaker drop and to highlight sneakers all over the homepage and onsite and through offsite media. Later in the year, We also did the launch of a couple of different luxury shopping destinations, Louie Vuitton as a well, as well as Rolex.

Is that how you say it? I hope to get some Louis Vuitton for Christmas.

I just say"L V". I give up.

Yeah. So just highlighting the things that are really special about eBay is is a part of the decision making that we can do and it's pretty creative trying to think through what are the things that we think are going to highlight our seller's inventory in a way that buyers find exciting.

That's awesome. Maybe Sam, if it's okay, go back to you and talk a little bit about Soft Goods. What are the categories in Soft Goods? What do you manage? And then I know there have been some incredible collaborations that you've done this year. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, sure. So Soft Goods is just the internal way that we reference a variety of different verticals. So the art and collectibles business, which as all of our sellers are aware, spans everything from antiques to stamps to coins to all the pop culture oriented categories. There's also media toys and lifestyle and so that includes travel under the lifestyle, musical instruments and gear, and then under media, everything from books and CDs and vinyl. And then there is sporting goods, which would include everything from camping and hiking items to team sports to hunting, to fishing, and then there's also crafts, pet supplies and food. So quite a lot of really interesting categories.

You can have a really great outing with that. You can go camping and fishing with your food and bring some other things with you. So it sounds like a fantastic category.

That's right. I always win at White Elephants because there's always so much interesting stuff.

The DisneyAnna.

Exactly that, that pop culture. Everything from.. You mean eBay Anna.

Exactly. It's going even further back. So as part of how we've leaned into these businesses. We've worked very closely with the sellers to launch new experiences and then to also bring exclusive inventory to the platforms. Series of experiences that have been launched, including sort of the gradual rollout of eBay Authenticate into several collectibles categories. The bullion buyback collaboration with one of our sellers to enable potential C to C sellers to sell their bullion coins or gold bars back to a B to C seller for re listing onto the platform. The Market Research Price tool with another one of our sellers for sports cards to enable hardcore sports carts enthusiastic to research and price a broad swath of high dollar sports cards and then be able to find similar things to purchase or sell on the platform. And then shifting to the inventory, there's been a variety of collaborations there as well. Whether it be sort of recurring auctions, So we partnered with various trade associations or various exclusives from art with Ai Weiwei and Hebru Brantley and Mike Perry. To coins like Coca Cola to scarcity within the market like what happened just a short while ago with Magic, The Gathering.

Let me switch over to Marni a little bit. You're new in leading Hard Goods.

Yes.

And can you talk about your new role and what's exciting in Hard Goods these days? Well, I don't get to say Louie Vuitton but I do get to sell a lot of iPhones.

Apple? ( said with french accent)

Samsung? ( said with french accent)

(Laughter)

We can go on and on.

You know, this could go on forever. Maybe our, maybe our listeners would be interested in other things that we should say in a French accent. Marni?

Alright. I'm new in the role here in vertical, so I was in the Seller Organization for the past year and a half.

And a good training ground by the way.

Yes. Absolutely. I manage Hard Goods, which are the categories that consist of most of our technology areas, so everything from iPhone to TVs. I manage as well our consumer electronics, our appliances, parts and accessories. So we do a huge business within our eBay motors category. New and used for sure, as well as manage the business and industrial categories. So it's been quite the learning curve for me, but still get to communicate and spend quality time with our sellers, which is what I love to do.

That's fantastic. And tell us a little bit about what's the most exciting thing that happened in 2018 in in Hard Goods and why is that exciting?

Well, I joined the team!

I second that!

I would say most recently is really what we call our Cyber Six, which was our stellar Black Friday and Cyber Monday and we sold a ton of products. A ton of televisions, a ton of iPhones, a ton of JBL headphones. So we really had a stellar season. As you guys know, as sellers, those are very competitive products and I'm proud to say that eBay had the lowest price on the Internet for most of those days.

Really electronics is such a key set of categories for us. Very, very important obviously. And for those of you sellers who were in electronics, I mean we very much appreciate everything that's happened over the last, uh, over the last little bit of 2018.

And Renee, welcome, you know, you chimed in a little bit earlier, but this is your first time on the podcast and so Renee runs Fashion and part of I assume running fashion is that you have to be the most fashionable person at eBay. Is that true?

Obviously. Yep. I'm wearing something fantastic right now.

Other than the things you talked about earlier, any other highlights for the year? Things that you talk about that worked really well in 2018 in Fashion?

Yeah, I think some of the things that we started doing in 2017 and we're able to dial up, especially this holiday season, for example, we had a pretty amazing Ray Ban event, which is, this is our second year doing that now. Ray bans and Oakley’s. We did at $59, 99 lowest price on the Internet by quite a lot. That I think was an exciting thing for the sellers that were a part of that and for a reason for buyers to come to eBay. Another thing during the holiday was we had David Yurman 40 percent off for the second year in a row. And I think stuff like that is very cool because there's really nowhere else on the Internet that you could find a luxury brand like that at such a discount. I think it's a compelling reason for buyers to show up in eBay and then once they're on the site they're finding other things and the more unique things and the things that they can only find on eBay. But I liked that we had a few events like that that are real kind of blockbusters. They show up on Slick Deals, they are covered in the press and it gives people a reason to come to eBay.

It was amazing, you know, when you saw some of the marketing that we did this year and it really spans all of these categories. It spans collectibles. It spans fashion. It spans electronics and so pulling it all together in one message to our consumers about the eBay brand and the transformation that's happening in the eBay brand. I mean you guys delivered that all year long, which is awesome.

Thanks Bob. You too.

Yeah. Well, you know, here we're one big team, right? Listen, holiday planning starts earlier and earlier every year. I think we're going to be starting planning here pretty soon in 2019 for holiday of 2019 it seems like. But can you talk a little bit about the planning for holiday of 2018? What contributed to us having such a great set of record days and anything we'd do differently next year besides start planning now in January?

We definitely start planning early. You know, like march, April were already thinking about what categories are we going to highlight and what weeks based on where consumers are and based on what we've seen works on eBay in the past. Because eBay has a really different platform than a lot of other places where people are shopping during the holidays. I think one thing that was successful for us this year was basically almost challenging our merchandising organization to find the absolute best things to highlight on homepage, on all of our paid media and social, that type of thing. We really challenged the merchants to bring together that inventory starting in about June and we had a lot of really fun meetings where everybody Kinda brought their best pitches for why their categories should be highlighted on the homepage. We called it the "Hot or Not Sessions". That was pretty fun actually and I think it contributed to really high quality inventory when the holiday came around.

Yeah, and I think a lot of it is really providing the intelligence to our sellers on what we are seeing from our buyers and what they're demanding. So we're really building on Renee's point. We're really working with them to anticipate trends that are coming up. Help them see what has already taken off in recent times with particular buyers and then also giving them suggestions on what's going to drive conversion.

Yeah. I would add, I mean the planning is a long process for sure, but the beauty of eBay is that we are able to pivot in season, so we do all this planning upfront. We speak to our sellers, we understand what the customer wants, but certainly if something comes up at the 11th hour, a pair of Yeezys or a scarcity item, a, what is it called? The baby shark?

Yes.

(Singing..."I'm a shark.")

I'm not getting in on that one. Sorry guys. (laughter)

We're able to pivot quickly and understand what the buyer's needs are. Go out to our sellers, ask them to source the inventory so we can be nimble enough to meet the needs of the customers.

That's fantastic and you know, I mean you guys have done such great work. I'm glad we're thinking about that. I mean, what. What would you say to our listeners, our sellers, for how they can take advantage of all the work that you and your teams do to make 2019 the best it can be?

The one thing I'd ask the sellers is really spend the next nine months or so working on their handling time and shipping. So I'm going to get very specific. This becomes more and more competitive in the market and we want to create more days between Black Friday, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the faster you can ship or the shorter your handle times become, the more time you have to sell and the more GMV you'll drive. So I implore you to look at your supply chain, look at how you pick, pack and ship. Look how you get your boxes ready and really focus on how do you get your handle time down and you're shipping out to the customers. Not even during the holiday season, all year long, but especially during the all important fourth quarter.

I think one other thing that we started to do in 2018 and we can really get better at it in 2019, is the specificity and creativity of one P ads on the platform. I think for a lot of major sellers, we did advertising packages in partnership with them that really allowed them to get the right inventory in front of customers who were interested in it at the right time. And whether that be through halo ads or promoted listings, I think we're really starting to crack how the Ad real estate on the site is additive to the buyer experience and really helping sellers drive sales.

That's great. So I'm hearing a lot of partnership. I'm hearing a lot of collaboration. I'm hearing a lot of how we can make sure that we're supporting sellers in the best way possible to highlight their inventory, get it in front of the buyers. Marni did a paid commercial announcement from buyers everywhere and related to shipping and handled time, which is awesome. And you know, from a seller team we're going to be releasing a bunch of new tools to make sure that sellers can maximize the value that they get out of the eBay platform. So thank you guys. Listen, thanks. Thanks for joining me. I look forward to working with you obviously very, very closely to deliver the best, best experience for our sellers in 2019 and it's been awesome having you here. One team in the same room. It's great. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Next up, I answered the top 10 seller questions as voted on by you, our sellers.

In this segment, we'll answer the top 10 questions for Bob submitted by sellers. Here's how it works. A few weeks ago, we opened up a forum on our community site, (cheap plug) community.eBay.com, where sellers could submit and vote for questions in this segment. We've taken the most popular questions as voted on by sellers and we'll address them now. Ready to go, Bob?

I'm ready. Although I don't know if they're the popular questions. They seem to be the hardest questions, so I think it's good. It's clearly the most important questions to sellers, so I'm very happy to answer them.

I think there's a big overlap between popular and hardest. Okay, here we go. Let's jump right in. This is question number one from the ShoppingMom. If I offer 30 day returns plus free return shipping, why is eBay allowing the buyer to still choose the return reason? If I'm offering free return shipping, the buyer should not have to choose a reason. I have had buyers not knowing that they have a free return shipping, choosing reasons like SNAD so that they can get a free return label. I thought that by offering free return shipping, I would be protected from SNAD claims. Can you please clarify the policy and maybe look into changing it for sellers that offer free return shipping? Maybe it could be done that once a buyer clicks return the item, they do not have to choose anything and the label will be created automatically. That would speed up the process and make a better experience.

Well ShoppingMom, I think there's a lot of actually really good ideas in there. We should consider a few things. First of all, I want to say thank you for offering free shipping and free returns. You know, it's something that our buyers obviously care about and is a big conversion driver. So I hope your sales are seeing increases as you've now implemented those new policies. Secondly, anything that we can do to speed up the process, make it a better experience for buyers. We're absolutely going to try to do that. Make sure that both sellers and buyers have the ability to identify the difference between a remorse return and a SNAD return is that a SNAD returned still is a bad buyer experience different than a remorse return. So if you buy something and you decide you don't want it and you return it and you take advantage of a seller's great return policy, that's a really positive experience, but if you get something that's not as described, that's not a great experience. And so it's important on a couple of dimensions. It's important for us to understand how frequently returns happen on the platform. It's important to give sellers feedback so that they know if they're getting an excessive number of SNADs, that maybe it's time to have more images or describe your item more effectively. Or use sizing guides or whatever it is that's going to make it so that fewer buyers have negative experience. Again, I think it's important from a data standpoint, if I can say it that way, to make sure that we know if it's a remorse, if it's a. If it's a SNAD, we protect you on our side if there's tracking information and this is one that will consider. We'll consider how this works. Look, we put the reason code for SNAD, but basically below the fold it's behind a click, so we're trying to encourage people to not pick that as an option. They have to work really hard as a buyer to pick SNAD return as a reason code. But I think you've got some good points and we'll continue to look at whether that's something that we want to adapt and adjust in the new year, but thank you for the question.

Okay. Question number two. GoodGuy44. Bob. It seems that the mega sellers do not have to follow the same policies as smaller sellers. For instance, a big seller in my category books, often does not have photos in their listings which I thought was a requirement. Or another example, a big seller has mis categorized their items with arc welders in the baby category. Why does it seem like enforcement is selective with these larger sellers? Are these two issues something you will be addressing?

Look, a short answer to the question is absolutely yes. I mean these are two things that should not be in the marketplace. They pollute and make the marketplace confusing and we do not want babies using arc welders. I mean, if I could just say that out loud, it's important. No. look, our policy is super clear. You have to have an image. And you know, your overall point about mega sellers not having to follow the same policies as smaller sellers, I think honestly, I think it's more likely the opposite. Sometimes small sellers can sort of fly under the radar and our big sellers have a ton of scrutiny, but as it relates to this, you know, our policy is very specific. Now, if you list against a catalog in particular in the media category, you should be able to pick a catalog image and if you don't have a catalog image, you're required to upload your own image. At least one and in many categories obviously more images is better. We think four or five images as sort of the ideal point for what is the best description of a visual description of an item. So that said, no, we're going to hold all of our sellers to that standard. And then as it relates to mis categorization, you know, we're constantly looking for mis categorization. I mean we, we enforced that. There are fee issues. Obviously you know, people trying to get around fees and listing in different categories that have lower fees. Like we're absolutely focused on trying to make sure that's cleaned. But from a buyer experience you definitely don't want items mis categorized. And if you asked our search team or if you asked our catalog team or anybody else around the organization whether things should be categorized in the right category, the answer is a resounding yes. So we'll continue to work on that and pushing especially our larger sellers to be better at keeping their stuff in the right categories. And the only other thing to say is if you do see a seller who either intentionally or unintentionally is doing this, especially at a large scale, send us an email sellingonebay@ebay.com or me directly bob@ebay.com. We'll pass those along to the team and make sure that we get those reviewed. But thank you. That's a great question.

Okay, thanks. Question number three from MGogo1960. Will eBay offer priority cubic pricing to sellers? If so, when? A competitor has already integrated the cubic pricing for sellers on their platform. Pirate Ship and others offer priority mail cubic pricing. Depending on the size of the package, Priority Mail cubic pricing can save money when shipping small packages that weigh between 1 and 20 pounds.

So MGogo1960. You are absolutely right. And this is the thing that we're looking very, very hard at. I mean we're making changes obviously to incorporate the new zone pricing stuff that USPS is doing. We're constantly evolving our labels platform. That new labels platform that we've released has been getting a lot of enhancements, you know, little by little over the year and I feel like hopefully what people have seen is that that labels platform is an opportunity for them to save money, be really efficient, incorporate label printing directly into their eBay processes. As it relates to cubic pricing, we obviously know about it. We understand what people are seeing on Pirate Ship and others. Were pushing really hard to make that something that's available for our sellers. I don't have a timeline on that, but we're aware and we're focused and you know, our shipping team is a strong passionate bunch. And so I'm confident that we'll have something to say later in the year, but again, unfortunately can't make a commitment right now, but it is something that that's on our mind and we're working very hard to figure out how we can, how we can do something in that area.

Okay. This is question number four from Vintage Auction Sam. Why aren't buyers still not required to pay immediately? I don't understand why once an item is won or purchased that the buyer is not held accountable for the payment. Why can't a buyer be charged as soon as the seller accepts an offer or when a buyer accepts a counteroffer or perhaps within 24 to 48 hours? Will this be addressed?

Vintage Auction Sam, I'm going to guess that you run a few auctions on the platform based on your seller Id. I mean, one of the things to say is that about 80 percent of the items that are sold on eBay are paid using immediate pay. For auction style and best offer, I mean, we've struggled a little bit to just make sure that we provide the right buying experience. You know, one of the things that we worry a little bit about is if to make a bid, you're required to put in a payment method. Sometimes it's going to discourage folks from making bids. And we know that, um, you know, that would probably solve our unpaid item issue, it would solve some of the immediate pay issues. But at the same time, if it discourages folks from coming onto the marketplace and makes eBay feel like a just a hard place to shop and explorer and browse, I think that that's probably going in the wrong direction as well. So we're trying to balance those things like how do we make this a right marketplace, make it easy for folks to participate, but at the same time prevent fraud, make sure sellers get paid. And so right now our approach to that is that we don't require immediate pay. I do think there are some tuneups that we'll look at. I think best offer is a good question. We doing a lot of work next year on best offer and because of that we're going to have to evaluate our policies around immediate pay.

I appreciate the feedback and we'll take a look again at auctions and see if there's something that we can do there to tighten up the timing or improve the messaging. I think that's another one that we think about a lot is, if we message folks that it's time to pay, is that the right kind of message? I know we have sort of two messages, one you won, two it's time to pay and so like let's just make sure that that's as tight as possible. And then as we get to manage payments, it's going to be a lot easier. We're going to have folks with more stored payment methods. Uh, we're going to have an easier flow through all of the payment paths. Checkout is going to be easier and it will be much, much more clear and I think we'll have an opportunity in manage payments to resolve some of those core issues while not closing down the marketplace for folks who want to participate.

Okay. This is question number five from Homeville1. And I'm summarizing a very long question. Bob. I've been selling on eBay for a long time. I've had a bunch of great years, recently, eBay let a large T shirt seller onto eBay and they flooded the market. As a small seller, how can I compete with larger sellers who overwhelmed the market with lots of listings?

Look, that's a great question. And Danny, you know you and I have talked about this and I think for sure our objective is to allow buyers to have the full selection of items that they're looking for. Do we need the volume of listings that we brought on in the Tee shirt category this holiday? We're going to analyze it and see. I think. Let me just back up for a second and say that when we looked at holiday this year, we had a listings growth number that was in our minds not sufficient to meet all the inventory needs of buyers. And we spent a lot of energy to try to bring buyers to the platform from paid search to our marketing campaigns, to social and just all the things that we do to try to bring buyers to the site. We want to make sure that the inventory that's there is the inventory that they're looking for. We looked at our listings growth. We looked at key categories, fashion obviously is a key category and said, wow, there's just not enough listings here. So we went out on purpose to try to add listings to the marketplace. Now, did we overdo it a little bit in the Tee shirt category? I'd say probably. And in fact we're going to look at how we back that down in the very, very near term, but that said, we're always going to be looking and were in fact, we're going to use the data from this holiday to understand better what listings result in what sales growth. Because if you're not growing sales listings just becomes pollution and confusion and Danny, to your point like small sellers may or may not be able to then compete with with large sellers.

But look, I'll say two things. The best inventory is going to win. And there's a couple of reasons the best inventory is gonna win. Buyers are savvy and they're going to look for things that they want and they're going to do the right searches and if you're delivering a great product with fast shipping and return policy and great customer service and a great rating like that, that's going to win. And I think sellers are doing that in general. Small sellers as well. And so buyers will see that. You know, one other thing that sellers should think about is that we've done a lot of experimentation this year with promoted listings and providing more placements all over the site for promoted listings. So if you're worried about the visibility of your listing, I think that's an opportunity to give more promoted listings a try. Increase the rates and just see what additional visibility you can get by leveraging promoted listings and put yourself ahead of any of those listings that you might believe are flooding the category.

The other thing is that search is all about relevance, so things that get watchers and things that have page views and things that have sales are going to start to move to the top of the search results. Again, you could equally argue, gosh, with that many listings, like there's gonna be some sales and those things are going to start to be in the first sets of pages of search. So I hear you and we're actively looking at trying to understand where more listings is better and where more listings is less healthy for the marketplace. And in those places where we feel like it's less healthy, we are absolutely going to pull some of those out and be much, much more discretion about where we add listings and honestly from whom. So I think your question is an awesome one. I'm a hundred percent aligned to making sure that we only add listings where it has the benefit for the marketplace.

Look, in some cases, are all small salary was going to be able to be successful? Think about pricing differences. Think about shipping efficiencies. Like I don't know in every category, but in this one I would like to think that small sellers can be very successful here and search should prove that out and our analysis should prove that out and we're going to be way more focused on only adding listings that evens. And especially from these big sellers where we think the sales is going to be a positive result. One other thing to say is when you add more inventory to some of these categories, it actually brings more traffic. So having more traffic in Tee shirts is actually a good thing for all sellers in Tee shirts, we believe there's probably a balance there, but for sure as you bring more inventory and you have more vibrance, more listings, more ability for a buyer to come and feel for sure that in this category they're going to get what they want, then that should be good for everyone. And so we're trying to make sure that as we add listings, we balance that in a way that it is truly good for everyone who sells in that category.

Okay. This is question number six from DC in Tennessee. This is a question about the push to offer free returns in general and specifically as it relates to top rated plus discounts. First, I respectfully disagree with eBay across the board stance that shoppers demand/expect free returns or that it's even an online marketplace standard. It's a benefit offered by some national retailers, but definitely not all and free returns almost are never offered by small business sellers. So the top rated plus final value fee discount, you have to offer free returns. This is terribly unfair to sellers of pre owned clothing, selling items that weigh more than a couple of pounds and basically all small sellers who sales volumes aren't enough to absorb the potential losses. Please make it so that top rated plus is once again a reward rather than a potential punishment. At the very least, it should not be a one size fits all designation.

So DC in Tennessee. I think that's it. I mean, look, it's a good question. We've made a very significant move in returns because we believe and we've seen from our research and everything that our buyers have told us that free returns is a big conversion driver on the platform. I've actually seen the data and so to your point in aggregate, it is a very, very positive thing for buyers. For sellers. You know, I know some folks economically it's a little bit challenging. I mean, look, I've talked to a lot of sellers. Some folks haven't seen the return rates change at all. I mean, one way to evaluate that is to just take a portion of your inventory, make it Free returns, leave the rest of your inventory as Not Free returns and just see what the outcome is. Like what are your return rates? What are you seeing in terms of increased conversion in sales? Kind of make your own economic decision based on that.

Others, it's marginal. And then others, depending on what you sell can be a little bit higher. And so we're, you know, returns is one of those things. We made a big move this year. We're going to continue to evaluate that move and see if we need to do anything different and make any sort of exceptions. Because I think there are some exceptions that we did make. We made exceptions for heavy items and the BNI category for example, you know, there's a question about low ASP items, you know, should low ASP items really have free returns given you know, especially if you're, if those items are coming from China. Like what's the likelihood that that return that anybody wants to actually have that return happen. So there are a few things that we're looking at. And even domestically, I mean it just at some point you're adding too much to the cost of an item by returning it.

So there's a few things that we're looking at there, but let me just back up and address the top rated seller and top rated plus question. When that program was first initiated, the reason was that our retail standards and buyer experiences that our sellers we're providing on the site, it was like the wild west out there. You know, and nobody knew what they were gonna get and so every seller was providing something different. Some sellers were just awesome and others weren't, and so buyers could never know and you'd never count on an experience that you could have from eBay. And as a result, bringing traffic to the site or getting people to think about eBay as a place that they shop first was just harder and harder and harder. And so TR, TRS these programs came in to try to create an incentive for folks to deliver the best customer experience.

In that vein. That's the choice that we made this year as we don't view this as a penalty. We view it as an incentive. So in order to get a discount on your final value fees, which are by the way reasonable final value fees compared to other marketplaces. In order to get a discount on those final value fees, we want you to provide the best customer service and so we define the best customer service now as offering free returns. And so like I said, we'll continue to evaluate whether there are some exceptions there or not, but the reality is that when you see increased conversion directly as a response to offering free returns, you really can't argue with the fact that that's a buyer expectation. And you can't argue with the fact that that's what our marketplace needs to stand for. You know, how we get there I guess is a different question.

But this for me is one where it may be we're on the, on the leading edge of this one? I don't think so. If you look at lots of marketplaces and other retailers, free returns is pretty typical. Physical retail, free returns is clearly and returns with no reason code, like clearly happens all day long. I guess I would respectfully disagree that this is not necessary from a buyer experience standpoint. I think of TRP as a reward for providing the best customer experience.

Okay. Question number seven from GentZ. I hope I'm saying that correctly. Apologies if I'm not. I've had buyers purchase an item than after the fact ask me to wait to ship the item till a certain time. Having a one day turn around and doing this hurts your account. It would be nice instead of canceling the order refunding and repurchasing that the customer can just delay the shipping.

No late shipments. No emails back and forth. No calls to eBay. This would be a win win for everyone. I mean, we hear this occasionally from sellers. I think the history of the eBay marketplace, being a community and being a connection between a buyer and a seller has facilitated this kind of interaction for a long time. I mean, it's very different obviously than the way traditional retail operates. Retail operates you, you buy a thing and actually you hope it ships faster most of the time. Especially in the holiday season. Yeah, I mean this is one where it just, it feels like it's a, it's a, use case that happens, you know, occasionally. And each seller gets to choose, I guess whether they, whether they want to do this as a, as a convenience factor. I don't think it happens enough or we can probably look at the data. It doesn't happen enough in my knowledge that it would meaningfully affect somebody's overall rating. So if you choose on a one off basis to delay shipment a couple of days, yeah, I mean it probably dings your thing, but your volume and the great customer service you provide overall is not going to move the needle. I guess on this one I would say we've got a set of priorities across all of our technology development. There's some things that are super high on the list. We've talked about multiuser access and we've talked about some of the Terapeak integration things would have massive, massive impact for lots of sellers across the board. This one feels like it's a once in a while thing that sorta just hasn't made the list. And I don't say that apologetically or sadly. I mean we make active choices about the things that we want to invest in and this is one where if you can provide that great customer service and you think you've got room knowing your defect rate around late shipping, then then do it.

If not, I think the retail standard would say, you know, ship the thing when you have it available and then you know, you hope the buyer, like whatever the situation is that is getting them interested in having that delayed, you know, we hope they can resolve it. Have somebody come pick up the package. Like whatever it is that you would normally do in a retail situation.

Question number eight from DHBooksDS. And I'm summarizing that question again. Can you please address the technical issues in 2018. For example, item specifics in men's shirts were messed up, titles on product pages were wrong and photos were lost. This kind of stuff is not only discouraging, it's harmful for both buyers and sellers. What's being done in 2019 to ensure these issues do not happen again?

A lot. So it's a really important question. I think I addressed it in the upfront. I know Scott talked about it as well, but this is a 2018 that we don't want to repeat on a number of levels. And the technology issues that we have with the platform is like top of the list. We've got a team in place. We are much more focused on the stability of the platform. We're looking at every change that goes in, whether we believe initially that it has a seller impact or not. We're going to review it and actually review it several times to make sure that it either does or doesn't have a seller impact and if it does, we're going to make sure we scrutinize it in a way that we've not scrutinized many changes up until this point. So everything is going to get a heightened level of scrutiny. There were specific goals in the organization. On the product side specifically, but also within our business teams to make sure that we have high availability and that these issues don't occur in 2019 and also going to be way more transparent.

I think in particular the photo one. As we were trying to diagnose the issue and the scale of that issue, which was sort of the one of the biggest issues in 2018, I think we miss some opportunities to communicate with sellers as quickly as as we could have. So we're going to be way more transparent if anything were to happen, what the impact is, what we're learning and we have a system status page and the community boards, so we'll use those in a much more aggressive way. The issues we had in 2018 are not acceptable. We have teams and goals and processes in place to ensure that those things don't happen in 2019. We're going to hold ourselves all accountable to that being the case and then we'll be transparent to the extent that things do happen. And if you identify or see any issues, definitely keep surfacing them on the community board. We have teams that are dedicated to reading the community boards and you know. Maybe you think that I don't post that frequently on the community boards, but I'm on the community boards all the tim. And you know, Allen and Brian and folks who are incredibly, incredibly connected to our sellers in the overall sentiment of our sellers and the issues that our sellers are having are on it literally every day. And I don't mean on the community boards, they're on it, you know, the proverbial it. Trying to make sure that we do everything we can to get your issues addressed. So if you have things that come up, surface them and we'll get them addressed and resolved.

Okay. Question number nine is from Bearded. Hi Bob. What plans are in the works for eBay stores in 2019? Specifically, can we expect to see any of the following changes: A tier between premium and anchor? A set number of store listings with no division between fixed price and auction? The ability to generate a coupon code and promotions manager that we can use to target specific customers?

Bearded, I love your seller Id and I'm probably should have called you to name our store tiers because I don't think we were as creative as you are. We get premium anchor, enterprise, starter, basic, you know, it's like anyway, corporate speak. But look, I actually think we made a ton of change in 2018. We expanded stores for the first time in over a decade. We have a new entry level store and a new enterprise level store and so we feel like that mix is actually a mix that's gonna carry us forward for a while. But your suggestions are really good. Could we sort of break the line between fixed price and auction?

I think it's a good question and we'll go evaluate that. I think we want to continue to evaluate the services that we're providing as a part of those stores tiers and make sure that people feel like they have the right option for their business. The right number of free listings, sort of the right pricing that goes with that. The right other things that come with a different store tiers and so we'll actually have in early in 2019 some things that will add as features and capabilities to those different store tiers. And so look for that coming up. But I think just in general we like the tiers that we have. We think there's good stratification built into that and we'll continue to evaluate sort of pricing and services and we'll look at your point around fixed price an auction. I think it's a good suggestion.

Okay, final question. Question number 10 from Love To Be Selling. Hi Bob. First, thanks for all you and your team do for sellers. I've asked this before but I'll keep asking. I love seller hub, but for over three years we've been promised social media traffic reporting. We're encouraged as sellers to do social media. We have sharing buttons on our listings, but we have no data as to where our traffic is coming from except eBay and other. In other words, externally off of eBay. Other sites tell sellers, this percentage is from Google. This percentage is from Facebook, etc. We'd also like to know key words that buyers use to come to our listings. We would love this information. Again, I don't mean to bash eBay in any way. I love eBay, but please give us the data we need to run our business. Thanks.

Well Thanks. I appreciate your love of eBay because it's obviously it matters to us. I think if our sellers feel the platform is a place that they can grow a business. Then that's what matters. We have a purpose and a drive here, not only to great, great buyer experiences, but to make sure this a place where sellers can be successful. So thank you for that question. Yeah, I agree. we don't have that functionality. We used to. Just. One thing I would say. It is interesting to know how much traffic comes from eBay and externally. eBay spends a ton of energy/money to try to bring traffic to the platform. we spend a lot on paid search. We try to optimize that and it'd be as efficient as we possibly can. We're tagging all of our pages with SEO and working through the process to make sure that we increase relevance for all of our pages. I don't know what the math is on this, but it seems like a vast majority of the traffic would be coming from eBay and that's a good thing. And so that's probably the reason that we don't show that breakout and I guess there were also some issues with the breakout and nobody was quite confident that it was exactly right. And just what I would say on this one is because the question I think is more on a campaign level, sort of how is that thing that I did on social working? Or how is that specific post or these kinds of posts better than these kinds of posts to drive traffic and drive velocity? I would just say use those tools. I mean there are those tools themselves and there are other sort of tracking tools, Hootsuite and others that are sort of free and affordable.

Pretty basic tools, but I think get you hopefully what you need to understand the tradeoffs that you're trying to make in social. Yeah, I think it would be awesome to bring that back. I will investigate. I think it's a good question. We'll go investigate if that's not a complicated thing, but in the grand scheme of priorities in seller hub, that's probably a little bit lower on the list. So in the near term, whether that's the social media site themselves that have metrics and analytics or some of these third party tools, I think I would try to take advantage of that and think about it from a campaign perspective. We'll continue to focus on driving as much traffic to the platform which helps all of our sellers. And so you'll see that breakout, eBay and external, eBay and other and then give you the opportunity in the near term to sort of dissect that other on your own basis and we'll see what we can do down the road.

Thank you Bob. Those were the top 10 questions from sellers. Really appreciate your time. Any closing thoughts?

Wow. I think those were awesome questions. I feel in those questions, the passIon and how much our sellers care about eBay as a community and I'm just honored and thrilled to be a part of this community. I'm incredibly grateful to lead the team that is focused on all of these seller issues and I take your questions very, very seriously. So hopefully I've given you some good answers and good insights and we'll take back a number of things that will continue to go work on what the team. So listen, thank you everybody for selling on eBay. Thank you for being a part of this community and you know, as always my email is bob@ebay.com and feel free to use that with any other questions or thoughts that you have.

Thanks Bob for guest hostIng this special edition of the podcast and for bringing in your special guests. Lots of great info. Any final thoughts before we sign off?

We've said a lot on this podcast. Sellers are the absolute heart of this marketplace and I feel so passionate about doing everything we can to make the platform even better in 2019. And we've got a lot of teams and a lot of folks and obviously a lot of energy focused on that. Our sellers are what make eBay special. And this community is an incredible community. Were your partners. Thank you for everything that you do and absolutely Happy New Year. And let's have an amazing 2019.

Thanks Bob. And now the credit. Presenting the Selling On eBay team: Director of Community Brian Burke, Community Manager Alan Aisbitt, Community Manager and Technology and News Editor Doug Smith, Marketing Strategist Liz Austin, Editor In Chief and Host Griff, Script Writer and cohost Audrey Tracy. That's me. We'll be back next week with a fresh new episode of Selling On eBay. Selling On eBay is produced and distributed by Libsyn and podCast411.

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