eBay

seller_news_team · ‎11-08-2023

All,

Over the past few months, we’ve been working to improve the feedback experience for buyers on eBay. We are making these changes in order to give potential buyers better insight into your products.

We recently updated the default sort to highlight the most relevant feedback for your potential buyers.
We have also started rolling out images on feedback to select sellers who have listings with multiple quantities.

Starting this month, sellers will be able to preview feedback images on their own sold items. At this time, other eBay buyers and sellers will not be able to view images in your feedback. Existing policies related to feedback and feedback removal will also apply to images. Once this rollout is complete, we’ll be expanding image feedback visibility to buyers.

With these updates, your potential buyers will see your most engaged buyers’ feedback and be more confident about their purchasing decisions. Richer text and images in feedback may add credibility and drive sales by instilling additional confidence for interested buyers as they shop. To date, we've already collected almost a million images and the vast majority are associated with positive feedback and showcase the great products and positive experiences buyers have with our eBay sellers.

These updates will serve to add credibility to reviews and increase buyer confidence, while also elevating your feedback scores and helping to drive conversion.

As always, thank you for selling on eBay.

The eBay Team

seller_news_team · ‎11-16-2023

Hello all,

Please see the FAQ's posted below for further details on relevance ranking:

What factors are you using to define the “relevance” of feedback comments?

The new default relevance sort uses a combination of relevance (defined using a machine learning model that scores comments based on the variety of attributes included and the depth of explanation) and how recent the comment was posted. This combination ensures that comments that sort at the top are both rich and not so old that they are no longer relevant to prospective buyers.

Will all types of feedback (positive, negative and neutral) be sorted based on relevance?

Yes, all three ratings will be sorted based on relevance. The relevance sort will not be aiming to bring any particular rating to the top over another rating type and the goal will be to provide buyers with an accurate depiction of the experience a buyer is likely to have with a seller.

What is the oldest feedback that will be surfaced when sorting by relevance?

Feedback comments sorted by relevance can be up to 5 years old, however, the recency of the comment is factored into the sorting logic so more recently posted comments will be more likely to show more highly. If you have a significant volume of recent feedback it should be rare for very old feedback to show at the top of the page.

How will relevance be determined if a seller sells mainly “one off” items?

Much of the feedback our buyers provide for sellers is on the entire experience of buying from a seller including the speed of shipping, the packaging of the item, communication, etc. The relevance model will be taking these attributes into account along with others and we believe the sorted feedback will have value to buyers even if it may describe an experience with a different item than the item a particular buyer is looking to purchase.

Will I be able to save my preference for sorting?

Currently you will not be able to save your preference for a particular sort, but you will have the option to change the sort on your feedback profile page on any platform

Will buyers be able to sort feedback by most recent?

Yes, when viewing a seller’s feedback profile page, buyers will be able to choose whether they would like to view feedback comments sorted by relevance (the default option) or recency. On the View Item, Storefront and user profile pages feedback will only be ordered by the default relevance sort

When will I see the new default sort?

We’re currently testing the sorting enhancement and so these changes may be rolled out at different times to our buyers and sellers. Unfortunately we can’t provide a date for when you may see these changes within your experience.

Will this new default sort to relevance hurt sales?

We are always trying to find new ways to help our sellers that offer great experiences to their buyers drive increased sales. While testing our new relevance sorting we have seen no indication that this change will negatively impact sales. In fact, we’ve found that buyers were more likely to engage with sellers driving increased buying activity!

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ittybitnot · ‎11-08-2023

We recently updated the default sort to highlight the most relevant feedback for your potential buyers.

@seller_news_team

How is the "default" sort determined? Is this the "short version" of feedback that one must click through to get to the usual feedback page that also shows the DSR's? Will that page have a "default" order as well? Can a user select to use "most recent"?

Clicking on the 'feedback' number on anyplace else other than the discussion boards goes to the "short version" with a button to select 'see all feedback'... that ALL feedback page is the only place a uses country of registration is displayed. If a user has ZERO feedback, that page cannot be accessed, and one must tweak a URL and insert the zero feedback users name to access that information.

Do you ever plan to allow "See All Feedback" to view that information for a user that has none?

At least all this feedback page drama can now be cleared up....not a glitch, but an intended change. Thanks!

toomuchstuffagain35 · ‎11-08-2023

How about enhancing the FB 'experience' for sellers?

Like maybe change the Leave FB page back to being in chronological order.

Or maybe give us a button to say 'don't show this again' on buyer cancelled transactions?

Oh and where's the explanation of the rationale for "most relevant"?

So far all I've seen is sellers complaining you're now bumping old negs and neutrals to the top of their 'see FB" list for buyers.

"If a product doesn't sell, raise the price" - Reese Palley
"If it sold FAST, it was priced too low" - also Reese Palley

ltldpr · ‎11-08-2023

"Oh and where's the explanation of the rationale for "most relevant"?"

They're letting AI determine "most relevant" just like they let AI determine how many items relating to your search you are allowed to see, while hiding the rest, and filling the gap with nonrelevant items.

That's my guess anyway, so I doubt a human will answer your questions. I don't think the humans who post here know how it works, including us, but it's allowed to make decisions.

Reminds me of HAL.

https://youtu.be/Wy4EfdnMZ5g?si=u8wrLO97188dPnhv

wastingtime101 · ‎11-08-2023

@seller_news_team wrote:

We recently updated the default sort to highlight the most relevant feedback for your potential buyers.

I'm seeing FB by date right now, not by 'most relevant'. On another discussion elizabeth@ebay passed a bunch of our FB along and shortly after eBay reverted FB sort back to 'normal'. Should I expect to see it change back to 'most relevant' again, Elizabeth?

If the answer to that is yes, then I will repeat what I said on that other discussion:

The algorithm is not doing a great job. It keeps pushing to the top a pos FB I have that, while it does express comments the buyer is generally happy, also criticizes the item they purchased for something clearly depicted in listing photos and description (and is not a flaw or defect in any way, just not what the buyer wanted).

and

If you're collecting feedback on feedback elizabeth@ebay , here's my 2 cents:

I check FB a couple times a week with a quick glance to make sure there aren't buyer issues I need to address. For me it's a form of customer service management. Some buyers communicate through FB instead of messages which is annoying.

With the way things are currently, it's not possible to sort newest to oldest. With the current sort, even filtering by past month, I can't locate FB left the past couple days from buyers. This makes it difficult to help customers, especially those that may express an issue within a pos FB.

If eBay wants to use this "best match" style of sorting and filtering, they need to offer a way for sellers to sort newest to oldest that shows all FB, not just select FB. With this change eBay has removed a customer service tool from sellers.

GLORIOUS!

Confused about the switch to eBay discounted shipping? Read this discussion to make an informed decision about opt in / opt out.

byrd69er · ‎11-08-2023

I'm thick. What's the purpose of having an image in feedback? ....and, what is richer text?

xadexane · ‎11-08-2023

@byrd69er wrote:
I'm thick. What's the purpose of having an image in feedback? ....and, what is richer text?

I have an appointment to be instilled next Tuesday.

wastingtime101 · ‎11-08-2023

@byrd69er wrote:
I'm thick. What's the purpose of having an image in feedback?

When we first saw reports of FB photos my only thought was they're turning FB into a place for product reviews which used to be explicitly against FB policy until eBay removed that text from their help pages. The comment above from eBay about photos only applying to multi-item listings supports my suspicions.

GLORIOUS!

Confused about the switch to eBay discounted shipping? Read this discussion to make an informed decision about opt in / opt out.

fern*wood · ‎11-08-2023

Does this mean the wonky looking feedback screen we had last week was intended after all? Funny, how it was supposedly "fixed" after we posted about the change.

wastingtime101 · ‎11-08-2023

@fern*wood wrote:
Does this mean the wonky looking feedback screen we had last week was intended after all? Funny, how it was supposedly "fixed" after we posted about the change.

devon@ebay 's response last week (link 1, link 2) was "corrected back to normal".

GLORIOUS!

Confused about the switch to eBay discounted shipping? Read this discussion to make an informed decision about opt in / opt out.

slippinjimmy · ‎11-08-2023

Go to a site that already has pics in feedback and see the results, mostly very good results IMHO.

Hate to use 21 century jabbering but the point is "buyer engagement".

xadexane · ‎11-08-2023

@fern*wood wrote:
Does this mean the wonky looking feedback screen we had last week was intended after all? Funny, how it was supposedly "fixed" after we posted about the change.

It was indeed wonky, for weeks.

2 pages of Feedback left for others but nothing is shown

-- and This member has not left any feedback comments across the top.

ittybitnot · ‎11-08-2023

So far all I've seen is sellers complaining you're now bumping old negs and neutrals to the top of their 'see FB" list for buyers.

@toomuchstuffagain35

Yes, some of those were for past YEARS. That is why we all figured it was a glitch, now we know it is an enhancement whether any party is enhanced at all.

You failed to mention the BUYERS that don't get to see the 45 negs a week a seller is 'earning', (who "ships from Texas", but actually is in Egypt). They were bumping up the "good stuff", too. Or as in the case of a zero feedback seller, who has magically bypassed any seller limits, that has a bunch of high end items for sale, and they just registered two days ago.

Transparency in the marketplace used to be a good thing. Taking more of it away is supposed to increase buyer engagement?

valueaddedresource · ‎11-08-2023

It looks like the announcement on the Australia boards shows a picture of what the feedback with images will look like if anyone is interested.

https://community.ebay.com.au/t5/eBay-Announcements/Buyer-s-images-will-now-be-displayed-with-their-...

They also provided a link to an FAQ page, which of course only applies to Australia but my guess is most of it will cross over to other markets as well.

https://www.ebay.com.au/sellercentre/new-feedback-image-faqs

ittybitnot · ‎11-08-2023

When we first saw reports of FB photos my only thought was they're turning.....

@wastingtime101

I thought they would be for "public" view. Here, if a buyer left a photo, we could see what they bought though the rest of the feedback is secret as to title or item number. I thought it might be useful to see what the buyer actually got instead of what they ordered.

I thought maybe sellers would have a reason to appeal a false snad when the buyer posted a photo of the red sweater (they bought from someone else) with a hole in the sleeve, when the seller actually sold them a hammer.

Oh well. so much for that. LOLOLOL