@dhbookds wrote:
@goodluckselling
Thanks.......I do understand what you are saying and agree that's where things are headed.........
But just can't see WHY they are excluding things from search because of the category choice. I tried a sell on Legendary fantastic four, and the "chosen" category came up first......but there were others tho the ops was not among the choices........
Ah, well, lots of things I don't understand, but have learned to live with........thanks for your time!
I understand the confusion, and I certainly do not know the exact reason why. My guess is this - Because eBay has lots of data that says do these certain things because it supports a better buying and selling experience and having a long term direction in place
- cataloged galleries,
- comparison shopping graphs,
- mobile everything,
- cross platform buying and selling (Not much has been said about this yet but enough to know they are heading in this direction)
- Virtual shopping (coming down the pike based on recent patent applications)
I am going to assume that narrowing the focus of the buyer to a direct category results in better conversion. If a keyword search brings up a lot of listings and eBay already knows from data collected over 20 years that buyers generally only looks at a couple of pages of items before changing the search filters (lowest price, newly listed, etc) or bouncing out of the search entirely, keeping buyers focused on a specific category, seems like a good plan to create a successful transaction. I think we are also going to see a lot of listing trunicated (not all items will show in all search results for this item) controversial user agreement policy article in place now for a few years (just before the release of Cassini) was there well ahead of time for a reason. Certainly not just to get a bunch of bad mouthing but to make sure everyone could have the opportunity to be aware of this policy.
We can agree or disagree to the chosen category for any item but if eBay is directing both buyers and sellers in this one direction then most of the items will be in the same area which should benefit both buyers and sellers. If the search result does not return many items due to the default category for an item, I think eBay should look wider into the product pool and bring make as many good fit items (assembled from item specifics, and attributes) as possible, and I know this will bring up the search engine is stupid and gave me this item or that item in my search which is not what I searched for, but for low search returns similar item inclusion I think is better than low search returns.
In a lot of ways, the entire concept goes back to an early metric which really focused on bounce out rate and although they are very important to watch, what is more important is how long can we keep this user engaged before the bounce out happens? I seems to make sense to me that the longer they can keep a user engaged ( this words is golden to the entire new direction) the better conversion rate they can deliver for sellers.
Yes this means
- cross promotion ads,
- seller created promotions
- category specific suggestions ( this might start to make sense)
- email marketing for specific categories/ sub cats of items that the users will click into and then see refined breakdowns to click into those smaller areas (again the narrowing of the path concept)
- social media cross promotions
- external search engine paid ads
all of these things might need to be refined so buyers can go to a path and follow it farther to create better conversion opportunities for the sellers, which creates revenue for the marketplace.
We sellers see a bigger pictures than just a buyer. experienced Buyer/seller often look at things from a sellers perspective, but the general buyer who is searching from there phone on lunch break is not thinking about all the items eBay might not be showing them based on there search results. They are focused on seeing of they are willing to buy from the items eBay presented them.
Good Luck Selling!
We are always talking about how difficult eBay is and the changes that baffle many, and I see this new direction as a narrowing of the choices ( we are going to lose some choices we are accustomed to) in an effort to create an easier flow for both buyers and sellers.
Good Luck Selling!
