Does anyone else here have the new Listings Quality Report that Harry Temkin demoed in the December Seller Check In yet? It is being rolled out this month and would be under Performance>Traffic in Seller Hub.
I originally had high hopes for this new feature but after digging into it for a few days I'm fairly disappointed.
I'll start with the instructions screen for this report for those who haven't seen it yet.
The first issue for me is that the report says we have 0% MPN filled in for our listings. In our categories, the field is called Manufacturer Part Number. It's a required field and 100% of our listings have that IS filled in.
Is this just a data mapping issue? Are other parts of our business being hurt because eBay doesn't have this field standardized across all categories? Should I create a custom IS, name it "MPN", and fill in redundant information just to make this report happy and if so, will it have any other effect positive or negative on our listings?
The description of the "opportunity" marks says they are simply measuring the difference between the top 10% and bottom 10% of listings. All that means is there is a difference, not necessarily that the difference has any particular meaning or relevance or that making eBay's suggested "improvements" will have any positive result.
The big red box may be meant to trigger sellers into thinking this is a critical issue on their account, but if you look at the sales conversion section it is pretty clear that Free Returns isn't driving sales conversion for the bottom 10% using it more than the top 10%.
eBay seems to be trying to give the impression that offering Free Returns will result in more page views, but again because all they are doing is highlighting a difference, there is simply no data here to actually identify *if* that difference is the cause of higher click through rates or just a coincidence.
In fact, this report shows that for this category, our sales rank is 2 out of 4,931 sellers, *if* that is accurate it would seem not having Seller Paid Returns isn't really hurting us too badly.
This report also seems to think we have 0% Promoted Listings enabled when in fact 100% of our listings are in active Promoted Listings campaigns.
I'm not even sure how to interpret the data about Google Shopping. It says Google Shopping Applies 0%, but then further down where it shows individual listings, every line has a check mark which one might think would indicate a "positive" or "yes" that Google Shopping applied. Maybe the check mark just means the listing is eligible for Google Shopping and the 0% section shows how many were actually sent to Google? I don't know, and there is nothing in the instructions or report that clarifies this.
Also, the instructions and Harry Temkin's video both say if you have listings that are rejected for Google Shopping, it will show a separate tab in the spread sheet so you can address any issues causing rejection. I do *not* have that tab, so I would have to assume none of our listings are rejected.
With multiple data points which are obviously not accurate, it causes me to question the validity and accuracy of the entire report and renders it pretty much useless to me.
On top of that, some of the elements of this report seem to be designed to nudge sellers to take action that eBay wants them to take by making it look like a critical issue to be addressed, when in reality there is no data here to show that making those suggested "improvements" will have a positive effect on your account.
Bottom line for me, at a minimum this report is not ready for Prime Time and should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else who has access to this feature is seeing similar issues.
1 BEST ANSWER
Accepted Solutions
@valueaddedresource wrote:
@Anonymous thanks again for taking the time to respond. A couple points I'd like some clarification on and a few that were not mentioned in your response -
Column Misalignment - We have reviewed the column misalignment (Best offer, Sale event + markdown) between the items table and the seller level benchmark, and will provide a fix in the next version.
Can you expand on that a bit please? It sounds like you are saying this was just a formatting error where some of the columns were misaligned in the report between the top section (seller benchmark) and the bottom section (items table), and that is the reason the data doesn't match up in some cases. I just want to clarify to make sure I'm understanding that issue correctly.
LQR Data Update Frequency - The seller data (including Google Shopping data) takes approximately 48 hours to process. Our roadmap includes improving the process time. It is important to note that in cases where the seller does not make any modifications to listings, but items have sold or ended, this will result in changes to the benchmark data.
1. The report being lagged behind 48 hours is understandable if that is a limitation of Google Shopping data, but the wording on the report page needs to be made clearer.
I know this may seem like a small thing grammatically but the report itself is updated once every day, not once every two days. Maybe something like "this report is updated once a day and is based on listing status as of x date"?
2. You addressed items sold or ended, but did not address items that are relisted. GTC relists keep the same item number and on the seller side appear to be almost an instant process, but it seems that those listings may not always be picked up for this report if they are within the 24 hour re-indexing time.
More clarity on this and bringing more attention in the report to the fact that shifts in percentages may simply be due to a change in the number of listings being considered are needed. Don't hide it in the fine print, it needs to be obvious if that is the reason for a change in the benchmark percentages.
Other points from previous posts in this thread that were not mentioned specifically in your reply:
Promoted Listings showing at 0% when it should be 100%.
Google Shopping showing at 0% when it should be something higher than that.
Are these also part of the column misalignment issue or something else?
I am noticing that MPN is starting to show something more than 0% so it does look like that is being addressed already, thanks! However, the benchmark numbers are still not quite accurate (most are now in the 70-80% range when they should be 100%).
The listing section under MPN now leads me to have another question - what is the exact definition of "not provided?"
The wording of "not provided" makes it sound like the seller has not provided that information. However, we have provided Manufacturer Part Number for 100% of listings, so that can't be accurate. We also have some listings that say "not provided" for Brand but if I look at the listing Brand is clearly filled in.
Does "not provided" mean that eBay simply couldn't extract or recognize that information from that particular listing at the time of that report? If so, I would suggest different wording that makes it clearer that the issue is on eBay's side, not that the seller didn't provide the information in the listing.
Also there seems to be inconsistency now in the MPN field in that some listings just show a check mark (assuming that means "yes"?) and some will actually show the text/number filled in for that field. Again, not sure if this is part of the misalignment issue, but if not, it should be consistent. My vote would be to show the actual value filled in rather than a checkmark as I think that would be more useful information.
Hi @valueaddedresource , thanks for your follow up questions. Let me break down some quick answers below:
Column Misalignment - we are on the same page here, it wasn't a formatting bug but mismatch of data. As I responded, it will be fixed very soon.
LQR Data Update Frequency:
- As for the wording, I fully agree with you and the wording will be improved, we’ll add it to the instructions tab, you should see it fixed soon.
- GTC items - We take a snapshot of your account once a day, so the GTC items should be included in the report.
Other concerns you asked about:
- Promoted listing showing at 0% - there was a bug that was already fixed, you should see it properly in the next report you’ll download.
- Google Shopping showing at 0% - we show the data we received from Google, and we are checking with them some suspected misalignments.
- MPN starting to show more than 0% filled in - It took some time for the system to aggregate the data after the fix, the data should be accurate now.
Thank you again for your support and valuable feedback. If you have any new issues to discuss, we recommend you start a new post to help keep new vs old issues separate.
Regards,
Harry
My report is now available and I downloaded it this morning.
The report is suggesting the use of best offer as the "Opportunity" to improve impressions, view and sales. Unfortunately, most of my listings are variation listings and therefore are not eligible to use best offer, so those variation listings are not detailed anywhere on the report. Of the 15 listings that I have that are eligible to use best offer 14 are clearance items in my store and are marked down to a break even price. So, enabling best offer on these listings does not make sense, unless I were to reduce the mark down percentage to allow room for best offer considerations. Seems like busy work there. The one other listing that is eligible for best offer use is a special order I made specifically for a buyer and is priced at our agreed upon amount.
As far a Google Shopping. I am understanding my report to indicate 100% of the 15 listings on the report were accepted by Google Shopping. I need to go back and watch Harry's demo again...didn't he say if listings were rejected by Google Shopping those listings would be called out specifically in the report?
Overall, I will say this report, for this this period, is of no use to me. I would like to see the report applied to my variation listings as those are the listings that are my money makers. If there are "Opportunities" to improve those listings, that would be the data that would interest me.
@mcdougle4248 wrote:
Thank you for the clarification on the Google Shopping question. Do you know how often the report is updated?
@mcdougle4248 it looks like it's updated every 2 days and is lagged 2 days behind?
@mcdougle4248 are any of your 15 listings in Promoted Listings and if so, does it accurately show that in the report?
You said they are marked down as well, if they are using either an order discount or sale event + markdown, does that accurately show in the report?
Promoted listings enabled is correct, 1 listing of the 15 is not promoted = 93%. Order discount is incorrect, that should be 0%. Multi-buy is correct. Sale event + markdown is also incorrect, 1 of 15 is not marked down, so should be 93%.
I went back and watched the part about Google Shopping rejections in that video again.
The fact that incorrect MPN may be one reason for rejection definitely makes me think the MPN/Manufacturer Part Number issues in my report could be why it isn't recognizing Google Shopping.
At least in a real world test, it does look like at least some our listings are on Google Shopping, so that's a relief, but it definitely doesn't give me confidence in this report.
Also, I thought the minimum picture size for eBay was 500x500, so I'm not sure how or why it should even be an issue to have something rejected from Google because the picture wasn't at least 100X100?
And finally we have "other - this section will be filled on later versions of the excel file." So they released this report with full knowledge there are other reasons for rejection from Google Shopping that they aren't accounting for here and thought it was acceptable to just say "we'll get to this later"?!
Was there no point in this process where they thought it would be a good idea to test with live accounts to make sure data was accurate and actually *completely* cover Google Shopping rejection before rolling this out?
