EBay's Whitman Says Changes Needed to Placate Sellers...huh?

EBay's Whitman Says Changes Needed to Placate Sellers

You'll see more changes in the next 12 months on our site than you've probably seen in the last three or four years,'' Whitman said in an interview. ``EBay was so successful that we did not keep up with the user experience that was required.

My worst nightmare come true.......more changes!

EBay doesn't allow users to pay through Google Inc.'s rival Checkout service on its sites because only one in seven Checkout users were ``pleased'' with the service, Whitman said, citing an EBay survey. ``That has to get higher,'' said Whitman. ``We will continue to look at Google as a payment mechanism on the EBay marketplace.''

I just can't see this EVER happening....would also love to know how many people took the survey.

Last, there is some discussion about how there are "too many listings" and buyers can't find what they are looking for. One example they gave in the article was this:

"Buyers have a tough time finding what they want. If you're looking for an Apple iPod, you're going to get 5,000 search results, and most will be accessories."

To address this, EBay last year imposed higher fees to reduce the number of fixed-price listings because buyers couldn't find the items. The goal was to increase the number of completed sales, boosting revenue for the company and its sellers, Whitman said.

I can see how this could be a problem for buyers. I truly can. I've had a similar thing happen looking for Gameboys and wanting the system but finding too many games and accessories listed in the wrong catergories to wade through everything.

I think that Ebay's way of addressing the problem though, is wrong. They need to enforce the rules that they have in place for sellers. Instead of enforcing the rules, they count on the community to enforce them. This is not how society works, I don't understand why they think they can make it work for their company. They need to focus on usability issues, and some of these can be addressed just by creating a task force to enforce the rules. Ban those sellers who continually Keyword Spam, list more than 10 duplicate listings or charge exorbanent s/h to bypass the fees. By doing this, not only would it make the buying experience better, but it would also benefit those sellers who play by the rules. Happy buyers, happy sellers = higher bottom line for Ebay.

Is Ebay "Broken"? A telling tale:

I just came across this article on AuctionBytes that talks about the theory that Ebay "broke" sometime in the spring of 2006 when they implemented Stores in Search and then took it out again. Check it out here: Data Points to Problems on eBay.com Be sure to check out the blog discussion that follows here.

I have to agree with this article. It is dead on. My sales were at an all time high the year of 2005, and peaked when they placed Stores in Search. When the took them back out again, my sales have never been the same.

Someone in the blog discussion mentioned that it was also around this time, that they implemented Ebay Express. This was not mentioned in the article and it very well could be a part of what is "broken". I don't know what the hell is wrong, and I think too much time has gone by for even Ebay to know what the is wrong. All I know is that I agree with many other sellers, that something in Ebay's system is broken, and they need to figure it out. If things don't pick up for me this fall, it may be time to call it quits for me there and time for me to go out and get a real job.