Weekly Chat today???????????????????

[mr_lincoln]

Yours truly doesn't read everything that gets posted so just curious if anyone knows if a Weekly Chat is planned for today March 13th?  Or is someone superstitious?

[mr_lincoln]

@go-bad-chicken   Re: your post on the Weekly Chat - further discussion and please invite Cottage too ... I'll be in and out all evening ...

[go-bad-chicken]

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

@go-bad-chicken   Re: your post on the Weekly Chat - further discussion and please invite Cottage too ... I'll be in and out all evening ...

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@mr_lincoln

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques

mr_lincoln

First off I wanted you to know that it was not my intention to snipe at you or your suggestion during this past Wednesday's weekly chat. But, once I saw Tyler's response to your suggestion "Thanks for these suggestions @mr_lincoln - I will get them to the right team for review!"  I wanted to make sure that eBay also heard my dissenting opinion before these ideas were sent up the chain of command to the powers that be, and then to have someone at eBay deciding to remove the "See other items" link without having thought through the possible unintended consequences of a change like this.

My biggest concern with the idea of eBay removing the  "see other items" link is that while both the seller’s eBay store link and the See other items links are present when viewing a listing on a PC or desktop platform, only the See other items link is shown to buyers on the eBay mobile site, and even then a buyer has to scroll half way down, after pretty much everything else on that page to find that link. A seller’s eBay store icon and store name are nowhere to be found when viewing a listing on the eBay mobile site.

This exclusion of a seller’s eBay store on the mobile platform leads me to believe that eBay is so concerned with trying to create a sales conversion on any give page that they do not want prospective buyers to become distracted by entering a seller’s store. But I have no proof of this and is speculation on my part.

[mr_lincoln]

@go-bad-chicken   Thanks for the reply ... no problem with the discussion on the Weekly Chat.  eBay has been redesigning page layouts to be more mobile friendly but they have a terrible app.  I think they are trying for a one size fits all layout for both desk & lap top computers and smart phones ... that does not work.  I have no problem with them going with my #3 choice which would simply mean a Buyer can select EITHER the Visit store or See more items links and get dumped in to the store category that the item they were on corresponds to. 

Now, what you don't know is this, (and PLEASE know this is not bragging) I have submitted a number of very good suggestions and as of this writing not a single one has been implemented BUT each and everyone has been passed on to the appropriate department for review ... so this one suffered the same fate Wed on the chat ... its sort of a standing joke in my circles LOL!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@mr_lincoln

@go-bad-chicken

I want to elaborate on go-bad-chicken's point. I have a theory about ebay stores. I hope I am wrong. But here goes:

As go bad notes, stores are virtually unseen in ebay's mobile app. While I agree, the app has a lot of room for improvement, I do not think the absence of stores is an error, I think it's by design. As go-bad says, it seems the app is designed to push ITEMS, period. 

Add a couple other things to this. We know ebay believes (correctly, I believe) that Mobile is the future. So maybe we should view the app as telling us where stores are headed.

While ebay's "Product Pages/Catalog" project seems to be in a painfully slow roll-out, with fewer predictions coming from ebay about how quickly all items will have Product Pages, we also know ebay hasn't abandoned the idea. Product pages are also all about the item, with little effort to highlight a seller's store. 

We also know ebay recognizes the effectiveness of Promoted Listings as an important revenue tool for ebay. Again, PL, unlike say, Markdown Manager, is item -centric, not really tied to stores.

ebay has strongly hinted that there is no longer even a "stores team" at ebay.  In early 2018, ebay's first Seller Release stated that changes were coming to stores. All indications were that these were changes in store design and functionality, not tiers or more perks (such as Terapeak, shipping supply credits, etc).

But whatever changes were in the works, they apparently were quietly abandoned (probably with the dissolution of the stores team).

Here's my guess. I really hope I am wrong. ebay is going to deprecate what we think of as stores: you know, the store banner, the store categories, and so forth. "Stores" might survive as a name for a store subscription tier. So a Basic Store would simply mean a monthly or annual subscription for x amount of dollars, which gets you x amount of free listings and various perks, such as shipping supply credits, etc. But a store landing page? Even a store name? I'm thinking ebay will gradually do away with all of that stuff. Or, at best, will do what they've been doing for years now: basically, stores are a case of benign neglect. We still have stores, but ebay is doing nothing to redesign them, to provide us with better branding tools etc. Kind of like Turbo Lister----stores as we know them will die a slow death.

Again, I'm only talking about the stores themselves. Stores as a subscription level will likely continue, but eventually ebay could just call them Level A, Level B and so forth, rather than "Store" subscriptions.

I hope I am proven wrong. I have long thought ebay could do MUCH more with stores as vehicles by which we can brand our ebay businesses. But at this point I see nothing on the horizon for any actual improvement to stores, just more benign neglect and maybe a slow death.

[mr_lincoln]

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques,  I sincerely hope you are wrong about stores and certain defer to your opinion on the mobile app ... next week we will be getting mobile devices but I have no plans to work on the eBay accounts from it BUT I do plan to use it to search items when out and about.

I think the other thing that eBay has been trying to do is have ALL Sellers look the same on the site when they changed the TRS Plus Badge design AND separated the Seller Contact info from the Badge designation (pic below comparing the old and new formats).  I could see them eventually moving the Seller info somewhere so it is not noticeable.  And to your point about the store banner, I could see them either making it very small or canning it altogether so that ANY item looks like it's eBays and NOT from an individual account ... BUT, that would be in conflict with the big "Branding" push in (I think) Seller Center.

Having Store Categories I think is crucial for the site to enhance the all precious "conversion" rate.  For myself, and maybe its just the way I shop, I want to see like items when I so a Search for something as well as See other items from a Seller.  I don't want to have to go up and down a long list of say 157 items to find 3 that are similar ... like WWI Biplane models ... or sort through HO scale listings to find other O Gauge trains ...

copy to @go-bad-chicken