Open letter to ebay coders and engineers about backwards seller backend

[cartooness]

You changed the Manage Active Listing pages and made them unworkable. It has made me stop listing. I can't stand how ignorant you are, and why ebay execs allow you to make the backend worse EVERY. SINGLE. WAY.

There was NO REASON to update anything on the seller pages. Everything makes our job harder.

• we cant edit price, only the custom note. PRICE IS THE MAIN THING WE NEED TO EDIT!!! On Amazon, you can edit the price in a second.
• the font on the new unimproved selling page is at least a point smaller.
• the item photos are about 1/3 smaller. Really? That's how you want to save money? Making it harder for sellers to manage a lot of items?
• can't see the format symbols at all in the column now. They're just little lumps. They aren't even solid, they are outlines, about 3 points wide.
• now there is no way to sort, and no column called Time Left. What was your bright idea about this? Completely leave out vital info? I HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY DAYS LEFT FOR THE ITEMS.
• On the Unsold Listings no watchers show. What would be your point in that, giving us less info????
• can't sort by views, which are tons more important than watchers. I had this ability before, now gone. What are you trying to do, ebay????
• why does Group Edit STILL never show views or watchers? Too hard for you to add a column?
• on my Active Listings page, if I have an offer or a question for a listing, there is no Edit option. I have to go to the item, then hit revise. Why make me do twice the work?
• there is no css or html to make an item title turn purple once I have visited it.  IT'S BASIC NAVIGATION, DUMMY. I want to know if I looked at my listing before. Since ebay still does no marketing, the only way I can get my items seen is to list every one on my Pinterest board. I go to the live listing to do that. Now I don't know if I've already listed it on Pinterest. That's a good way to never get views.

Finally, marketing. If you want to buy something online, what is the first store to pop up? Amazon. What almost never shows up? Ebay. Why? Because ebay won't let Google scrape anything. Amazon lets Google scrape everything. 

All these years, all this experience, and ebay still hides all the listings. Honestly, I'm amazed when I sell anything at all. I think it's accidental, that anyone finds anything here. When will ebay move into this century of e-commerce?

Please, someone else add to this list!

[packratville]

Apparently not everyone has that new "improved" page; mine still looks like it has for awhile now. Just curious, does your page still have a "Customize" link on it? If so, I'm wondering if there might be some columns that aren't checked by default in the new version that you could check to bring back those missing columns (like "Time Left")?

[livadia]

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@packratville wrote:

Apparently not everyone has that new "improved" page; mine still looks like it has for awhile now. Just curious, does your page still have a "Customize" link on it? If so, I'm wondering if there might be some columns that aren't checked by default in the new version that you could check to bring back those missing columns (like "Time Left")?

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Exactly, @packratville.  There is the option to customize the layout of the page.  See post #22 in this thread: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/New-Seller-Pro-Active-Listings-dashboard/m-p/28467104#M1203539 for more info.

@cartooness

[dhbookds]

Agree with Rat....... I'm assuming poster is talking about pages in Seller Hub...........I know there have been changes to Selling Manager that people don't like.  I still have Time left for instance.......

[packratville]

That's good Customize is still available in the new version. I still have the old I guess, but after reading so many posts about all the changes I'm always afraid of what I might find at any given moment.

[luckythewinner]

"Coders" and "Engineers" do not lay out the screens, determine which features are present, or decide what data is shown to the user.

In a company the size of eBay, that work is done by Business Analysts and UX Designers.

[yuzuha]

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@dhbookds wrote:

Agree with Rat....... I'm assuming poster is talking about pages in Seller Hub...........I know there have been changes to Selling Manager that people don't like.  I still have Time left for instance.......

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No, it's not the Seller Hub.  The Seller Hub allows you to sort listings, and one of the sort options is "Time left."  You can also sort by number of watchers.

[cartooness]

Thank you for asking. Yes, it has a customize button. No, I have been checking for months - there is NO COLUMN marked Time Left!!!!!

I forgot to add in my list - which I would HAPPILY send to ebay, if they actually had an email - that the Edit Mode, which is right next to the Customize button only edits your Custom Label. So useless. It's like your appendix.

[cartooness]

There is no option to add the Time Left column.
I have 2 accounts. One has the option. The other one does not. THERE IS NO TIME LEFT COLUMN. Thanks for your 20 year old experiments in coding that you throw on people, ebay.

[cartooness]

Well it should be web designers, but obviously ebay doesn't have any, so I call them engineers.. If it's Bus Analysts then they are losing the company money.

[cartooness]

Both of my seller names have had Seller Hub since it started. I wouldn't use anything else.

I wish I had an explanation for why my 2 name have different layouts, but I can only suggest that ebay is experimenting on our dime. But both have changed - neither has the layout of 2 years ago. Both are WORSE.

Of all the bad design, the 2 that kill me every day are the missing Time Left column - I literally don't know when the end is coming - and the fact that Titles no longer change color to purple when you view the actual listing. Visited links are supposed to change color!! Think of Google!! I have no idea if I have already linked it, fixed it, sent it to Pinterest, nothing. THAT is basic coding - css!!!!

[ted_200]

I wish I had an explanation for why my 2 name have different layouts, but I can only suggest that ebay is experimenting on our dime. But both have changed - neither has the layout of 2 years ago. Both are WORSE.

Live beta testing and phased roll outs.  It's pretty much how eBay has always done everything. 

Other sites do limited live beta testing during development, then rigorously test and de-bug the final product before swithing over everyone at once.  eBay beta tests dozens of different things all at the same time, rarely ever has a final product, and does the de-bugging live on the site.

There's a funny cartoon strip about when the Marketing Dept. and MBA's start directing the Engineering Dept., and much of it is true, but it's less funny when that company is your vendor. 

[castlemagicmemories]

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@cartooness wrote:
Both of my seller names have had Seller Hub since it started. I wouldn't use anything else.

I wish I had an explanation for why my 2 name have different layouts, but I can only suggest that ebay is experimenting on our dime. But both have changed - neither has the layout of 2 years ago. Both are WORSE.

Of all the bad design, the 2 that kill me every day are the missing Time Left column - I literally don't know when the end is coming - and the fact that Titles no longer change color to purple when you view the actual listing. Visited links are supposed to change color!! Think of Google!! I have no idea if I have already linked it, fixed it, sent it to Pinterest, nothing. THAT is basic coding - css!!!!

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It's so disappointing when change does not make things better, IMO.

[berserkerplanet]

•fact that Titles no longer
change color
•to purple when you view the actual listing

That one could probably easily be fixed in your browser with 2-6 lines of CSS (if you were willing to make the effort.)

[sodelight]

This is why I prefer to view via the 'My Ebay Selling' page.

Time left is to the very far right of the hub page view as the last item, I have to scroll to see it, which is annoying. The customize box shows it, but doesn't allow adjusting it's placement.

I've rearranged my hub boxes to have Seller Tools at the top and I click to the My Ebay page. Simply my preference.