My store sales are up! Whoo hooo!

I don't know if the shoppers are just back and ready to spend, or if the new store tab has made that much of a difference, but I am getting store sales and I'm thrilled! I've only sold 17 items this month (and received my notice that I'll be losing my Powerseller status ...:-(...first time since I got it 5 yrs ago), but 8 of those sales were store sales! That seems like a lot to me. I'm happy and I hope they keep up! Trying to get my butt in gear and get listing. I hear that the Back to School shoppers are out and buying!

Hallelujah! The Ebay stores tab is coming!

This was just posted in the Ebay announcements:

***eBay Stores Link in Header and Updated Stores Hub***

If we can't have stores back in search, I truly hope this is the next best thing. I can't tell you how many customers I've had in the last 5 yrs or so, mention to me that they didn't even KNOW about Ebay stores! Truly! So many novice users just assume there are only auctions on the site. I really hope this will help all of us store sellers by making the stores more visible.

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.

EBay Moves to Recharge Its Auctions

From the NY Times today:

EBay Moves to Recharge Its Auctions

EBay is also testing new ways to deliver search results. Instead of heading each list of results with items whose auctions are about to expire, the company will in the coming months give users the option of seeing search results headed by items the company predicts will be most appealing to buyers — a measure determined in part by how well sellers have been rated by other buyers on eBay.

This should be very interesting! I have almost 5,000 feedback, 100% rating (lavender-haze). Hopefully I will not be lost among the bigger sellers with 5 digit feedback and higher. For those just starting out or with low feedback that is not stellar, this could be very bad. I think the potential is there for scammers to try even harder to steal some hard-working sellers ID info.

Good news for Ebay store sellers?

I'm really really hesitant to even hope that this may be true. But rumor has it, that it was announced today at Ebay live, that they will be placing an Ebay Stores tab back near the header on all the Ebay pages. There was quite an uproar from store sellers awhile ago when any link to stores was removed when the new header design came out.