EventHorizon1984 Blog Log

From eBay Stores Forum - Best Match

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

FYI apologist itspostingtime posts spin and damage control for eBay ...

The above eBay/LiveWorld Public Relations person is spinning a big one.

eBay - Search Engine Comments by eBay Express Employees
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/ebay_search_eng.html

eBay - Rotating Servers, Smart Manipulated Search by Odie
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/rotating_server.html

From eBay Forum - What in the he he happend to core this week?
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/from_ebay_forum_7.html

From eBay Stores Forum - I got a best match for Ya'
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from-ebay-sto-5.html

From eBay Stores Forum - Project San Dimas - eBay Coming to Your Desktop ...
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from-ebay-sto-2.html

From eBay Stores Forum - I thought best match search was NOT the default?
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from-ebay-sto-1.html

AuctionBytes - PESA Organization Lays out Recommendations for eBay
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/auctionbytes_pe.html

From eBay Search Forum - What's going on with search and stores?
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from_ebay_searc_1.html

From eBay Stores Forum - $0 earning for the past 3 days....what is happening eBay?!?!
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from_ebay_store_16.html

eBay Throws Changes at Sellers During eBay Live Keynote
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/auctionbytes_eb_6.html

From eBay Search Forum - Announcement: *** New Search Test till mid-June ***
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from_ebay_searc.html

From eBay Employee jeffking@ebay.com Senior Director Finding - **A Message from Jeff King: Improving the Finding Experience***
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from_ebay_emplo.html

From eBay Stores Forum - Cobb's BIG Townhall Lie
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from_ebay_store.html

From eBay Stores Forum - Join us: May Brown Bag Lunch on 5/30 @12noon PT
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/from_ebay_store_19.html

From eBay Search Forum - Thread - ***Introducing Best Match: A new sort option based on relevance***
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/from_ebay_searc_1.html

AuctionBytes - eBay Tests New Search-Results Interface
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/auctionbytes_eb.html

eBay Web Services Guide Release Notes - Search & Best Match Updates
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/ebay_web_servic.html

Spotlight on eBay Employee Esteban Kozak estebankozak@ebay.com Finding Team
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/ebay_spotlight_.html

From eBay Finding Team Employee matt.olson@ebay.com - EXPRESS ITEMS NOW SHOWING ABOVE CORE ITEMS IN SEARCH!!!!!
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/from_ebay_findi.html

From eBay employees jeffking@ebay.com and jacque@ebay.com - Announcement: *** New Search Test till mid-June ***
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/from_ebay_emplo_1.html

From eBay Forums - shanem@ebay.com eBay Pink Shane's take on, Sort by total cost including shipping
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/from_ebay_forum_3.html

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From eBay Stores Forum
Best Match
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000527396&tstart=0&mod=1184529985573

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dac**  Jul-14-07 15:49 PDT
I just did a search for "motorcycle trailer" on all of ebay. I was given a "best match" result. I did not choose best match, ebay chose it for me.
I do not like this one bit.

cho**      Jul-14-07 16:07 PDT     1 of
yup, ebay is overriding user preference to make sure mine is set to country/region sort down. The default I set is still just that... It's not set to Best match. Just continues the belief that ebay is not interested in me finding stuff. THey want me to buy the stuff they stick in my face

It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood!
Say outloud Edit It over and over. Isn't that funny

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dac**  Jul-14-07 16:17 PDT     2 of
Well normally, until this, I have my preferences set to newly listed, with feedback, store name and shipping showing. However I went to the search direct from the stores board and not from my ebay, so I wasnt even signed on according to the search, I was just any ole Joe, so that has to be why any ole joe isnt finding what we are selling. Only what ebay deems they want to see.

Ebay don't even try to read my mind. You have no clue what I really want.

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art**  Jul-14-07 16:34 PDT     3 of
Guess I don't see the problem...did you really want to see everything with TRAILER in the title and everything with MOTORCYLE or did you only want to see what you asked for?

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itspostingtime  (2 )      Jul-14-07 20:13 PDT     4 of
I tried this and I think the key point is you weren't signed in. I wasn't signed in, and I also got Best Match...however, there was also a little clickable note above the results that said something like "Sign in to see your customized search results"....once I did that, I was shown search results with my pre-selected preferences.

I doubt this is having any serious negative effect on sales. Many people DO sign in before shopping, so they are seeing their normal preferences. Those who haven't signed in can do so quite easily, or, for that matter, can select using best match. It's not as if best match shows the customer a blank page....the customer IS seeing items to buy. Why would you think the customer isn't seeing your item?

Remember, Best Match does NOT alter which items are shown....it merely alters the ORDER in which they are shown. If your item would show in a "ending soonest" sort, it will show in a "best match" sort. This is really no different than "ending soonest" and "recently listed"...same items, different order.

I don't see a problem with this. The buyer who doesn't want Best Match can either change the option or sign in. No big deal. And---believe it or not---I think there are going to be buyers who will come to PREFER Best Match.

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coc**    Jul-14-07 20:26 PDT     5 of
Just continues the belief that ebay is not interested in me finding stuff. THey want me to buy the stuff they stick in my face

You are correct, and eBay so chooses at times not to show items at all. I am not home now, but on my computer I have an eBay employee's description of how the search works. It may be up on the Express board. I will go look.

The search is based, from what I recall, on popular items, undisclosed  seller ranking, etc.

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cho**      Jul-14-07 20:27 PDT     6 of
IPT, the order I think is going to be significant. Try searching via the playground you'll see there what I mean. There's also no way to change the option.

I agree there are going to be buyers who prefer this. I actually like how it loads fast (like ee) but not the best match

best match on EE does remove items from search. Am not sure if its a bug or design. Would feel more comfortable knowing what is what though

It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood!
Say outloud Edit It over and over. Isn't that funny

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coc**     Jul-14-07 20:32 PDT     7 of
            It is by design. I found these:

On eBay Express, we are trying to present the "best matching" items to buyers. A wide variety of factors from the listing, sellers and buyer are taken into account, including the category the item was listed. Sometimes an item does not meet those criteria, and as such, we have elected not to show those items in either search or browse.


or


"The default search results on eBay Express are based on what we're calling Best Match, which means that best selling items are ranked higher. An outstanding aspect about Best Match is that it actually learns, and never stops learning. Best Match, learns from aggregated buyers' activity over time, and accordingly adjusts product rankings on eBay Express. Product rankings are dependent on what buyers are looking for and clicking on. Buyers can also use other criteria, such as price."


The underline is mine.

There were many discussions back then on "product" ranking. eBay would not disclose the criteria (mentioned above) so that sellers could not adjust their ranking in this type of search.

If it becomes the norm, I truly think it is going to be a mess.

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cda**      Jul-14-07 20:34 PDT     8 of
I was researching completed listings the other day and it kept reverting to best match;I'd reset and sure enough the next item I would search for it's on best match again.7 times and then it finally remained on highest price first.Also notice the stores tab is in it's first weekend and seems to be a failure so far.When are they going to learn that the only thing that is going to bring buyers and sellers back is site wide general search for all formats.The more games they play the more they're going to lose.

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itspostingtime  (2 )      Jul-14-07 20:55 PDT     9 of
This has been discussed before, although I don't know if the thread is still up. You folks are confusing ebay Express's search with ebay's "Best Match" search option.

THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING AND DO NOT FUNCTION THE SAME WAY.

True, Express works in such a way that some items the DotCom site would consider "Matching", Express does not (I think it also works that some items DotCom would not show, Express does show.)

This is because they are two different search engines.

But the Express eearch has NOTHING to do with the DotCom's Best Match.

Again, I don't know if it's still posted somewhere and I didn't keep a copy, but eBay confirmed what I said in my first post. Think of the DotCom engine as a two part process. the DotCom search engine first creates a list of matching items, and THEN puts that list in a certain order as directed: ending soonest, recently listed, whatever.

But the original list is the SAME. It is ONLY the order that is different. The criteria used to create the list in the first place...not to order it, but to create it....those criteria are the same, regardless of whether the list is afterwards put in order by price, ending soonest, best match, or whatever.

Now, obviously it's very simple for the engine to order "ending soonest"...it only needs to look at one parameter, the ending time. DotCom's Best Match looks at a number of parameters, and then creates an order based on weights assigned to those parameters. But....and this is important....it does so only AFTER the list has been created...so the LIST is the same whether ending soonest or best match, the order of the list is the only difference.

So, PLEASE, do not confuse DotCom "Best Match" with Express. They are two different creatures.

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coc**    Jul-15-07 05:46 PDT     10 of
PLEASE, do not confuse DotCom "Best Match" with Express.

That is good to know, for the Best Match on Express truly advantages some sellers over others with the same products, and is less influenced by key words. Why would they call the .com search by the same name?

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cum**     Jul-15-07 05:51 PDT     11 of
Best Match is the search on ... The Playground....

If you do a search in regular eBay you get all of the listing.

Do a Best Match search on the Playground and only percentage of the listings show up... The computer is telling you these are the listing you... should... be looking at.

Best Match works if your item is 100 % definable... a book as an example where you know the title, author, year published, publisher... everything is definable.

Best Match in anything else presents nonsense... Listings are selected in an arbitrary , non-logical manner.

I have done searches on .. The Playground. for art glass... Chalet glass, Altaglass. Each listing is different than every other listing for Chalet or Altaglass... so why does the Beat match select.... The buyer should do the selecting... not the computer program.

What every one sees is a few listings that are the Best Match as defined by the computer program... In many instances the Best Match is more comical than true to the search.

As long as Best Match is not applied as the only search, and is only an option... it is OK. If Best match is applied as the primary search as in ... The Playground... then eBay better duck.. because some listings will never show up in search... and fees are being paid....

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cda**      Jul-15-07 08:40 PDT     12 of
Fine and dandy,I'm hearing Express-Playground-Main Site.Where best match showed up 7 times in a row for me was on the main site in completed listings.Not active listings but completed listings.So to say there not messing with the main site on best match just isn't so when it shows up on completed listings.

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pos**     Jul-15-07 09:45 PDT     13 of
The playground search WILL be on the .com site as soon as they have conditioned the servants to accept it!

Mark my words.

We were told last year that BC loved the Express search and that it would come over here. He said it again in a recent town hall meeting.

IT IS COMING!

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pos**      Jul-15-07 09:46 PDT     14 of
OK, my hostility is showing again.

My Store is permanently closed, and if everyone will leave my name out of their postings (as in misquoting me) I will go back to my own little world which consists of core listings and my own off ebay website.

Will it work? I don't know but an ebay store costs me hundreds and it costs me $29.95 so it sure can't hurt!

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dac**  Jul-15-07 13:05 PDT     15 of
            Best match DOES NOT show all the listings available.
I just did a search on all of ebay, best match for auction templates. On page one none of mine, page 2 one of mine, page 3 one of mine, page four the same one on page two is on page four, and page five the same one on page 3 is on page 5. So two of my core listings are not showing at all on best match. I only have four running but best match is hiding two of them. Also how is it that others match the terms auction template, better than mine which all begin with auction template. Some of the best matches showing dont say template, but templates.
To me this is deliberate misrepresentaion, to not show items which plainly are exactly what was searched for. Seems kinda like breach of contract to me.

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dac**  Jul-15-07 13:06 PDT     16 of
            Oops correction I searched auction template, not templates.

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Event Horizon 1984 Blog Log

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 4 One Year Old

eBay Express was officially one year old on 14 June 2007.

• If you missed the Official Announcement from eBay regarding the anniversary, don't worry about it.  They never issued one.
  

eBay Corporate proclaims that eBay Express is a popular success.

    http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/32757
    eBay Q1 2007 Earnings Call Transcript
    April 18, 2007 5:00 pm ET

• "Lastly, eBay Express continues to experience increased adoption and growing success. For those of you who remember our eBay velocity statistics from the old days, on eBay Express an article of clothing sold every 67 seconds during the quarter, while a piece of jewelry sold every 2.5 minutes." Meg Whitman

But despite the glowing praise, and after over a year of promotion to the world, is eBay Express really popular? Or is this a Corporate eBay Urban Myth?

To answer this, let's use the free Alexa (www.alexa.com). There are always questions of accuracy with any tool, and Alexa is no exception. While there exist several subjective reports regarding Alexa's measuring methodologies, there are NO objective reports or hard proofs showing Alexa's lack of accuracy. Each reader will have to judge whether findings from Alexa meet their own criteria for usefulness.

Keep in mind that if you want Professional numbers, you have to pay Professional prices. Alexa is FREE.

Sites will be pulled from the often referred to Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite. And we'll throw in some extras and ringers. The ringers provide a means to compare like sites, and to show the accuracy limitations of Alexa.

For the number of items on eBay Express, let's use eBay Corporates' assumption that everything on eBay.com is on eBay Express. We'll leave out the ongoing contribution from Half.com, given eBay does not provide those numbers.  eBay Store counts are left out because eBay provides no day-to-day counts, and as of the end of April 2007 eBay began pursuing an aggressive policy of reducing the visibility of eBay Stores products.

Ultimately, as can be seen from the charts below, the number of items available is not necessarily proportional to the number of potential buyers. Or as put by the old saw, 'size doesn't matter.'

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Reach:
Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. For example, this means if you took random samples of one million Internet users, on average 19,400 of them visit eBay.com

Page Views per user:
The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site.

Statistics quoted as of 16 June 2007

............................................... Page Views ...... Reach per
.............. Number of ... Traffic Rank ..... per user ........ million users
............... Listings .... Now . 3 mos AVG .. Now . 3 mos AVG . Now . 3 mos AVG
eBay ......... 11,486,992 ..... 20 ....... 19 . 14.3 .. 14.9 ... 19,400 .. 20,240
eBay Express . 11,486,992 .... n/a ... 49,658 .. n/a ... 1.7 ...... n/a ...... 35
Bidville ...... 1,049,214 .... n/a ... 83,845 .. n/a .. 10.7 ...... n/a ..... 8.6
eCRATER ......... 572,505 . 12,004 ... 13,003 .. 6.3 ... 5.3 ....... 80 ...... 81
uk.ebid.net ..... 532,266 . 15,494 ... 20,655 . 29.3 .. 14.7 ....... 30 .... 30.5
Blujay .......... 174,511 .... n/a .. 117,485 .. n/a ... 2.7 ........ 9 ...... 11
Tazbar .......... 151,023 . 73,229 ... 50,160 . 11.2 .. 16.2 ....... 10 .... 11.5
ePier ........... 127,203 . 86,224 .. 129,260 .. 5.5 ... 2.1 ....... 10 .... 10.5
Wagglepop ........ 94,198 .... n/a .. 131,138 .. n/a ... 7.5 ...... n/a ..... 6.5
Yahoo! ........... 66,426 ...... 1 ........ 1 . 13.7 .. 14.5 .. 250,500 . 253,500
AuctionQuests .... 54,502 .... n/a .. 112,093 .. n/a .. 11.3 ........ 7 ..... 5.9
HiBidder ......... 37,599 . 77,150 ... 55,659 . 27.7 .. 34.9 ........ 6 ..... 8.2
PlunderHere ...... 30,827 .... n/a ... 69,762 .. n/a .. 47.1 ........ 7 ..... 5.4
Bid-Alot ......... 28,014 .... n/a .. 221,684 .. n/a ... 2.4 ...... n/a ..... 5.6
Overstock ........ 21,344 .. 1,162 .... 1,187 .. 7.0 ... 6.3 ...... 630 ..... 630
StuffPals ........ 18,397 .... n/a .1,183,176 .. n/a ... 4.0 ...... n/a ..... 0.4
WeBidz ........... 17,621 .... n/a ... 66,734 .. n/a .. 19.5 ...... 7.5 ..... 8.5
Lowbid ........... 11,344 .... n/a .. 451,411 .. n/a ... 6.6 ...... n/a ..... 1.3
Ewaey ............... n/a .... n/a .. 609,259 .. n/a ... 5.9 ...... n/a ....... 1

Amazon .............. n/a ..... 32 ....... 31 .. 5.5 ... 5.8 ... 17,050 .. 16,995
BestBuy ............. n/a .... 531 ...... 527 .. 6.3 ... 5.8 .... 1,350 ... 1,345
Buy.com ............. n/a .. 1,409 .... 1,402 .. 3.7 ... 3.8 ...... 730 ..... 697
CompUSA ............. n/a .. 3,157 .... 2,209 .. 4.9 ... 4.8 ...... 305 ..... 398
eBay ProStores ...... n/a .. 9,275 ... 11,288 .. 6.8 ... 5.2 ...... 100 ...... 90
WalMart ............. n/a .... 509 ...... 431 .. 6.2 ... 6.1 .... 1,400 ... 1,565

** Per conflict of interest notice, we have in the past or currently have items on or have bought from eBay, eBay Express, Yahoo!, Bidville, eCRATER, Blujay, Wagglepop, Overstock, Ewaey, Amazon, BestBuy, Buy.com, CompUSA, WalMart, Google. All shares of eBay stock were sold in the summer 2004.

Let's move measures of popularity, Page Views and Reach, leftward.

Remove Yahoo! as they have closed shop on auctions. They're still Number 1 anyway.

Organizations have good and bad days. Let's use 3 months data to average this out. Round up everything. Order lists according to Page View and Reach.

3 Month Average
............. Page Views .. Reach per .. Number of
.............. per user . million users . Listings
PlunderHere .... 48 ............. 6 ....... 30,827
HiBidder ....... 35 ............. 9 ....... 37,599
WeBidz ......... 20 ............. 9 ....... 17,621
Tazbar ......... 17 ............ 12 ...... 151,023
eBay ........... 19 ........ 20,240 ... 11,486,992 <=
ebid ........... 15 ............ 31 ...... 532,266
AuctionQuests .. 12 ............. 6 ....... 54,502
Bidville ....... 11  ............ 9 .... 1,049,214
Wagglepop ....... 8 ............. 7 ....... 94,198
WalMart ......... 7 ......... 1,565 .......... N/A
Overstock ....... 7 ........... 630 ....... 21,344
Lowbid .......... 7 ............. 2 ....... 11,344
Amazon .......... 6 ........ 16,995 .......... N/A
BestBuy ......... 6 ......... 1,345 .......... N/A
ProStores ....... 6 ............ 90 .......... N/A <==
eCRATER ......... 6 ............ 81 ...... 572,505
Ewaey ........... 6 ............. 1 .......... N/A
CompUSA ......... 5  .......... 398 .......... N/A
Buy.com ......... 4 ........... 697 .......... N/A
StuffPals ....... 4 ............. 1 ....... 18,397
Blujay .......... 3 ............ 11 ...... 174,511
ePier ........... 3 ............ 11 ...... 127,203
Bid-Alot ........ 3 ............. 6 ....... 28,014
eBay Express .... 2 ............ 35 ... 11,486,992 <===

eBay Express is dead last in Page Views per user.  eBay should reconsider touting to the Press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

3 Month Average
.......... Reach per .... Page Views . Number of
......... million users ... per user .. Listings
eBay ......... 20,240 ....... 15 .... 11,486,992 <=
Amazon ....... 16,995 ........ 6 ........... N/A
WalMart ....... 1,565 ........ 7 ........... N/A
BestBuy ....... 1,345 ........ 6 ........... N/A
Buy.com ......... 697 .........4 ........... N/A
Overstock ....... 630 ........ 7 ........ 21,344
CompUSA ......... 398 ........ 5 ........... N/A
ProStores ........ 90 ........ 6 ........... N/A <==
eCRATER .......... 81 ........ 6 ....... 572,505
eBay Express ..... 35 ........ 2 .... 11,486,992 <===
ebid ............. 31 ....... 15 ....... 532,266
Tazbar ........... 12 ....... 17 ....... 151,023
Blujay ........... 11 ........ 3 ....... 174,511
ePier ............ 11 ........ 3 ....... 127,203
HiBidder .......... 9 ....... 35 ........ 37,599
WeBidz ............ 9 ....... 20 ........ 17,621
Bidville .......... 9 ....... 11 ..... 1,049,214
Wagglepop ......... 7 ........ 8 ........ 94,198
PlunderHere ....... 6 ....... 48 ........ 30,827
AuctionQuests ..... 6 ....... 12 ........ 54,502
Bid-Alot .......... 6 ........ 3 ........ 28,014
Lowbid ............ 2 ........ 7 ........ 11,344
Ewaey ............. 1 ........ 6 ........... N/A
StuffPals ......... 1 ........ 4 ........ 18,397
 
In Reach per million users, eBay Express is less popular than Overstock, eCRATER, and it's sibling ProStores, and barely more popular than the much smaller sites.

3 Month Average
............... Traffic .. Number of
................ Rank ..... Listings
eBay ............... 19 . 11,486,992 <=
Amazon ............. 31 ........ N/A
WalMart ........... 431 ........ N/A
BestBuy ........... 527 ........ N/A
Overstock ....... 1,187 ..... 21,344
Buy.com ......... 1,402 ........ N/A
CompUSA ......... 2,209 ........ N/A
ProStores ...... 11,288 ........ N/A <==
eCRATER ........ 13,003 .... 572,505
ebid ........... 20,655 .... 532,266
eBay Express ... 49,658 . 11,486,992 <===
Tazbar ......... 50,160 .... 151,023
HiBidder ....... 55,659 ..... 37,599
WeBidz ......... 66,734 ..... 17,621
PlunderHere .... 69,762 ..... 30,827
Bidville ....... 83,845 .. 1,049,214
AuctionQuests . 112,093 ..... 54,502
Blujay ........ 117,485 .... 174,511
ePier ......... 129,260 .... 127,203
Wagglepop ..... 131,138 ..... 94,198
Bid-Alot ...... 221,684 ..... 28,014
Lowbid ........ 451,411 ..... 11,344
Ewaey ......... 609,259 ........ N/A
StuffPals ... 1,183,176 ..... 18,397
 
Compared to the previous reports (see bottom), eBay Express has been slowly sinking in this ranking. But by Traffic Rank eBay Express remains fair compared to other substantially smaller competing sites.

To comprehend the magnitude of these numbers, let's use Yahoo! and Google in this last list.

3 Month Average
............ Reach per .. Page Views . Number of . Traffic
.......... million users . per user .. Listings ... Rank
Yahoo! ....... 250,500 ...... 15 ........ 66,426 ...... 1
Google ....... 238,850 ....... 7 .... EVERYTHING ...... 3
eBay .......... 20,240 ...... 15 .... 11,486,992 ..... 19
ProStores ......... 90 ....... 6 ........... N/A . 11,288
eBay Express ...... 35 ....... 2 .... 11,486,992 . 49,658

Is eBay Express leading the competition? According to the metrics, mixed results.

Is eBay Express popular?

What do you think?

This article is a followup to:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 3
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular
• The Online Competition To eBay And Industry (Loss) Leader eBay Express

See also addendum:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2 Compete   

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From eBay Employee Lara Housser - ***Updates on eBay Express***

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200706.shtml#2007-06-08100657

		***Updates on eBay Express***
		June 08, 2007 | 10:16AM PST/PT     Lara Housser Hi everyone...this is Lara Housser with eBay Express. Like many folks around here, my team and I are gearing up for eBay Live! Not only is this one of our favorite events of the year, it's also a special occasion for another reason -- eBay Express turns 1 year old! Did you know that on eBay Express an item of clothing is sold every 67 seconds, a piece of jewelry every 2.3 minutes, and a DVD every 4 minutes? The word is building that eBay Express is THE place for buyers who want that great eBay deal and who at times prefer fixed-price items. Furthermore, 9 out of 10 buyers have told us they love the shopping experience that eBay Express offers. This is all excellent news for a site that's barely one year old, and we want to thank the eBay Community for all your support in helping to make eBay Express's first year a success. If you haven't visited eBay Express lately, I invite you to come check it out. We�ve added a host of new features recently to make it even easier to buy and sell. Here�s a quick rundown of what's new:   More convenient shopping features, such as the ability to search for wish lists, see your recently viewed items on the eBay Express home page, and send notes to sellers during the Check Out process.   More merchandising exposure for sellers, such as the new 'Added-to-Cart' page. Once a buyer adds your item to their cart, we showcase more of your merchandise to them, highlighting shipping discounts where offered, as well as related items. (See for yourself by adding an item to your shopping cart.)   More integration with eBay.com, including a new section in My eBay with your eBay Express shopping cart details and a handy link to eBay Express from the eBay.com navigation header.   Inclusion of Half.com listings for Half.com sellers who opt in. (Read our previous announcement to learn more.) A note to our sellers � Remember that getting your listings included on eBay Express requires no additional work beyond what you're already doing to sell on eBay.com! (For more information about qualification, read our eBay Express Selling Checklist.) Stay tuned for more improvements in the future. And if you're heading out to Boston for eBay Live! next week, make sure to stop by the eBay Express booth so we can meet you. Sincerely, Lara Housser Director, eBay Express Link to this announcement

From eBay Stores Forum - Chung cmc@ebay.com - SYI Form and Express - Future or Fluke?

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

//

From eBay Stores Forum
SYI Form and Express - Future or Fluke?
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000382054&start=40

cmc@ebay.com

View Listings | Report                 Jun-07-07 15:01 PDT                 59 of 79                                     

Hi,

This is Chung from the eBay Express team. I wanted to provide some clarification on the eBay Express tab -- the tab is a bug and should not be showing up on eBay.com.

We have an eBay Express-only format which we provide in Germany and UK as part of their eBay Express sites. Some recent product changes inadvertently caused pieces of this format to start showing up on eBay.com. We working to get this addressed.

thanks,
Chung

fairly_dinkum

View Listings                   Jun-08-07 11:24 PDT                 79 of 79                        

Jeeze, we've progressed to the point where ebay relies upon the "acceptability" of their glitches to explain-away doppelgangers.

"No sir, the bridge didn't collapse due to the materials we provided, it collapsed due to our shoddy workmanship."

I'd have just went to a PR response that included how we let Store Sellers have a sneak peek at the newest enhancement...we're considering, only considering!

"Balancing the needs of the sellers" does not equate to a choice between delivering paid-for services, or not delivering those services. The only things balanced by such failures are your books.
~unknown

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2 Compete

We'll change the methodology somewhat in this version.

Instead of the free Alexa (www.alexa.com) service, we'll use the services of the free Compete (http://snapshot.compete.com) service.

Compete advertises itself as a more accurate and better than Alexa.

Since there are no hard facts to support or deny claims of accuracy, for Alexa or Compete, judgement should be reserved on the exact details provided.

The current data from Compete covers up to April 2007. We will use this baseline. Also the Compete data is a snapshot in time and not a running average. Situations can change rapidly on the Internet. Numbers can go from good to bad and back again in days.

For a June 2007 view using Alexa (www.alexa.com) see:
    Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 3

In April 2007 eBay Express was one year old. After a year of promotion to the world, was eBay Express popular?

To answer this, let's use the free Compete (http://snapshot.compete.com), Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite (www.powersellersunite.com). And throw in some ringers.

For the purpose of relative site comparison only, inventory counts will be left out.

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Rank:
The Compete Rank is based on People Counts and does not consider page views or number of visits made to the site. Rank is often used as a complement to People Count to privide a relative metric that shows the significance of a site.

Pages Per Visit
Pages Per Visit is used as an engagement metric. Pages are also known as Page Views and represent how many clicks a person makes on a given website.

People Count:
People Counts are also known as unique visitors - they only count a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month. People Counts are typically used to determine how popular a site is.  


Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
................. Traffic . Pages Per .. People
.................. Rank .... Visit ... Counts (Hits)
eBay .................. 3 ... 29.0 .... 78,533,631
eBay Express ...... 2,336 .... 3.4 ....... 785,870
Bidville ......... 59,173 ... 33.3 ........ 27,364
Yahoo ................. 1 ... 21.4 ... 116,096,827
eCRATER ........... 8,172 .... 6.2 ....... 235,799
ebid.net ......... 84,652 ... 15.1 ........ 17,944
Blujay ........... 34,903 .... 6.6 ........ 49,971
Tazbar .......... 480,518 ... 14.0 ......... 2,037
ePier ............ 23,312 ... 11.6 ........ 78,490
Wagglepop ........ 50,455 .... 6.0 ........ 32,820
AuctionQuests ... 284,729 .... 8.8 ......... 4,048
HiBidder ........ 266,370 .... 4.5 ......... 4,382
PlunderHere ..... 446,558 .... 4.4 ......... 2,259
Overstock ........... 159 ... 12.4 ..... 5,916,812
StuffPals .......... > 1M .... 1.0 ........... 585
WeBidz ........... 94,849 .... 6.6 ........ 15,587
Lowbid .......... 242,242 ... 26.8 ......... 4,900
Bid-Alot ........ 158,023 .... 6.0 ......... 8,289
Ewaey .............. > 1M .... 1.3 ........... 325

Amazon ................ 9 ... 10.4 .... 47,608,312
BestBuy .............. 78 ... 20.7 ..... 9,971,408
Buy.com ............. 779 .... 6.6 ..... 1,978,685
CompUSA ........... 1,364 ... 10.1 ..... 1,251,416
ProStores.com ..... 7,029 .... 9.9 ....... 273,962
WalMart .............. 18 ... 14.9 .... 24,144,210

Let's remove Yahoo! The site measures for Yahoo! include listings and everything Yahoo! They are Number One, so let's move on.

Numbers will be rounded up. Order the above list according to Pages Per Visit, People Counts, Traffic Rank.

Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
............. Pages Per ... People ...... Traffic
.............. Visit    . Counts (Hits) .. Rank
Bidville ....... 34  ....... 27,364 ...... 59,173
eBay ........... 29 .... 78,533,631 ........... 3 <=
Lowbid ......... 27 ......... 4,900 ..... 242,242
BestBuy ........ 21 ..... 9,971,408 ......... 779
ebid.net ....... 16 ........ 17,944 ...... 84,652
WalMart ........ 15 .....24,144,210 .......... 18
Tazbar ......... 14 ......... 2,037 ..... 480,518
Overstock ...... 13 ..... 5,916,812 ......... 159
ePier .......... 12 ............ 15 ..... 128,551
Amazon ......... 11 .... 47,608,312 ........... 9
CompUSA ........ 11  .... 1,251,416 ....... 1,364
ProStores.com .. 10 ....... 273,962 ....... 7,029 <==
AuctionQuests ... 9 ......... 4,048 ..... 284,729
Buy.com ......... 7 ..... 1,978,685 ........ > 1M
eCRATER ......... 7 ....... 235,799 ....... 8,172
Blujay .......... 7 ........ 49,971 ..... 134,206
WeBidz .......... 7 ........ 15,587 ...... 94,849
Bid-Alot ........ 6 ........ 78,490 ...... 23,312
Wagglepop ....... 6 ........ 32,820 ...... 50,455
HiBidder ........ 5 ......... 4,382 ..... 266,370
eBay Express .... 4 ....... 785,870 ....... 2,336 <===
PlunderHere ..... 4 ......... 2,259 ..... 446,558
Ewaey ........... 2 ........... 325 ........ > 1M
StuffPals ....... 1 ........... 585 ........ > 1M

eBay Express is near the bottom in Pages Per Visit.  And given the prime visibility afforded it, eBay Express still performs poorly compared to eBay ProStores. eBay should reconsider touting to the Press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
.............. People ...... Pages Per .. Traffic
........... Counts (Hits)..... Visit     .. Rank
eBay ......... 78,533,631 ..... 29 ........... 3 <=
Amazon ....... 47,608,312 ..... 11 ........... 9
WalMart ...... 24,144,210 ..... 15 .......... 18
BestBuy ....... 9,971,408 ..... 21 ......... 779
Overstock ..... 5,916,812 ..... 13 ......... 159
Buy.com ....... 1,978,685 ...... 7 ........ > 1M
CompUSA  ...... 1,251,416 ..... 11 ....... 1,364
eBay Express .... 785,870 ...... 4 ....... 2,336 <===
ProStores.com ... 273,962 ..... 10 ....... 7,029 <==
eCRATER ......... 235,799 ...... 7 ....... 8,172
Bid-Alot ......... 78,490 ...... 6 ...... 23,312
Blujay ........... 49,971 ...... 7 ..... 134,206
Wagglepop ........ 32,820 ...... 6 ...... 50,455
Bidville  ........ 27,364 ..... 34 ...... 59,173
ebid.net ......... 17,944 ..... 16 ...... 84,652
WeBidz ........... 15,587 ...... 7 ...... 94,849
Lowbid ............ 4,900 ..... 27 ..... 242,242
HiBidder .......... 4,382 ...... 5 ..... 266,370
AuctionQuests ..... 4,048 ...... 9 ..... 284,729
PlunderHere ....... 2,259 ...... 4 ..... 446,558
Tazbar ............ 2,037 ..... 14 ..... 480,518
StuffPals ........... 585 ...... 1 ........ > 1M
Ewaey ............... 325 ...... 2 ........ > 1M
ePier ................ 15 ..... 12 ..... 128,551
 
In People Counts, eBay Express is less popular than the much smaller Overstock.com, but does have significant leads over the other substantially smaller sites.

Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
................. Traffic . Pages Per .. People
.................. Rank .... Visit ... Counts (Hits)
eBay .................. 3 ... 29.0 .... 78,533,631
Amazon ................ 9 ... 10.4 .... 47,608,312
WalMart .............. 18 ... 14.9 .... 24,144,210
BestBuy .............. 78 ... 20.7 ..... 9,971,408
Overstock ........... 159 ... 12.4 ..... 5,916,812
Buy.com ............. 779 .... 6.6 ..... 1,978,685
CompUSA ........... 1,364 ... 10.1 ..... 1,251,416
eBay Express ...... 2,336 .... 3.4 ....... 785,870
ProStores.com ..... 7,029 .... 9.9 ....... 273,962
eCRATER ........... 8,172 .... 6.2 ....... 235,799
ePier ............ 23,312 ... 11.6 ........ 78,490
Blujay ........... 34,903 .... 6.6 ........ 49,971
Wagglepop ........ 50,455 .... 6.0 ........ 32,820
Bidville ......... 59,173 ... 33.3 ........ 27,364
ebid.net ......... 84,652 ... 15.1 ........ 17,944
WeBidz ........... 94,849 .... 6.6 ........ 15,587
Bid-Alot ........ 158,023 .... 6.0 ......... 8,289
Lowbid .......... 242,242 ... 26.8 ......... 4,900
HiBidder ........ 266,370 .... 4.5 ......... 4,382
AuctionQuests ... 284,729 .... 8.8 ......... 4,048
PlunderHere ..... 446,558 .... 4.4 ......... 2,259
Tazbar .......... 480,518 ... 14.0 ......... 2,037
StuffPals .......... > 1M .... 1.0 ........... 585
Ewaey .............. > 1M .... 1.3 ........... 325

By Traffic Rank eBay Express is a solid number 2, again compared to other substantially smaller competing sites.

To comprehend the magnitude of these numbers, let's use Yahoo! and Google, in this last list.

Month Snap Shot In Time - April 2007
.............. People ...... Pages Per .. Traffic
........... Counts (Hits)..... Visit     .. Rank
Yahoo! ...... 116,096,827 ..... 16  .......... 1
Google  ..... 113,883,603 ..... 13 ........... 2
eBay ......... 78,533,631 ..... 29 ........... 3 <=
eBay Express .... 785,870 ...... 4 ....... 2,336 <===
ProStores.com ... 273,962 ..... 10 ....... 7,029 <==
 
 
Is eBay Express leading the competition?  Mixed results based on the metrics.

Is eBay Express popular?

What do you think?

This article is an addendum to:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 3
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular
• The Online Competition To eBay And Industry (Loss) Leader eBay Express

// 
//
//

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From eBay Employees Darlene darleneb@ebay.com Jacque jacque@ebay.com Clarification: Store Inventory and eBay Express in Search

Clarification: Store Inventory and eBay Express in Search
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000485642

darleneb@ebay.com Apr-30-07 11:59 PDT
Hi everyone,

As a follow-up to Jake Jake’s post at last week’s Brown Bag Lunch, I wanted to quickly stop by to clear up the recent confusion about the Store Inventory expansion module in search results.

On the 22nd we had a glitch where the Store Inventory expansion module (which displays up to 30 Store Inventory listings when 30 or fewer Auction-style and Fixed Price listings are found in search) wasn’t displaying when it should be. This also affected the Shop eBay Stores module in the left navigation. This was fixed within a few hours of it hitting the site, and we’re sorry that it happened.

In the past day we’ve received questions about Scot Wingo’s blog post theorizing that we had replaced the Store Inventory module with an eBay Express module. This is not the case. There are different rules for when the Express module displays, and if you look at the example he uses, there are over 5 pages of results that were returned for that search. Since the Store Inventory module displays when 30 or fewer listings are found, it wouldn’t have displayed regardless of whether Express was there or not. This is working as it’s supposed to - we’re not swapping out the Store Inventory module for Express. Some people have also contacted us asking if these two incidents were related as part of us testing how to give Store Inventory more or less exposure on the site. The answer to that is no – these were completely separate, and not part of any test. We are committed to increasing the value of eBay Stores and the Store Inventory listing format, not decreasing it.

I hope this clears things up!

Regards, Darlene

eBay Stores

eBay removed the store search from the left column??????
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000355122&tstart=0&mod=1178232237494

jacque@ebay.com      May-03-07 15:00 PDT     7 of 8
Hi folks,

In case you hadn't seen Darlene's post on the Stores board (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000485642), I wanted to follow up on this thread.

On the 22nd our Finding systems had a glitch where the Store Inventory expansion module (which displays up to 30 Store Inventory listings when 30 or fewer Auction-style and Fixed Price listings are found in search) wasn’t displaying when it should be. This also affected the Shop eBay Stores module in the left navigation. This was fixed within a few hours of it hitting the site, and we’re sorry that it happened.

The Finding team is working closely with the Stores team to increase the value of eBay Stores and the Store Inventory listing format.

Regards, Josh

eBay Finding
Jacque
eBay Product Management

From eBay Stores Forum - eBay Express now being pushed at TOP of auction search pages

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

This should be getting increased news article and review coverage in the coming months.

If you're selling on eBay Express, check your titles for optimum keyword placement.

//

eBay Stores Forum
eBay Express now being pushed at TOP of auction search pages
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000489277&tstart=0&mod=1178486061245

stu**       May-06-07 13:16 PDT
Maybe this is not new... it is new to me. I was doing a search for a hobby interest and the search came up with 84 items. A the top of that list - right below where it says "84 items found..." it says, with a light bulb icon and a clickable link: "Get it new. Buy it now: 6 items on eBay Express!"  Then, finally, below that is the list of auction items.

Pinks deny favoring eE over Stores at the bottom of listings when less than 30 items come back... yeah, they don't need to favor eE there... because eBay is favoring eE over ALL items - over auctions and stores - at the TOP of searches.

Try this simple search: Glass Ball - it shows over 900 items at auction and then points to - and with a clickable link to that eE search page - "over 100" on eE.

This is getting crazy. Anything to drive a sale to failed eE! Certainly do it on the backs of storeowners - and now clobber auictions too. And auctions is their (current) favorite. Frankly, this does little to bring the magic back to auctions.

3 replies     Date posted     Reply #

pos**     May-06-07 13:25 PDT     1 of 3
I brought that up last month. It has been going on for some time now.

Ebay is desperate to make EE A success at any cost.

val**     May-06-07 13:43 PDT     2 of 3
I noticed that last night when I was searching for some stuff. I didn't click on the Express link because most of what was being displayed as Express items were nothing close to what I was looking for (but the .com search was right on, I'm happy to report).

daz**     May-06-07 14:14 PDT     3 of 3
also auctions are included in ee when searching - HUH? how's that expressy?

Remember That Bridge For Sale - eBay Express continues to experience increased adoption and growing success, Meg Whitman

eBay Express is a year old, and this is all eBay Corporate had to say about it.
Nothing $pecific or current of cour$e.

//

http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/32757
eBay Q1 2007 Earnings Call Transcript
April 18, 2007 5:00 pm ET

"Lastly, eBay Express continues to experience increased adoption and growing success. For those of you who remember our eBay velocity statistics from the old days, on eBay Express an article of clothing sold every 67 seconds during the quarter, while a piece of jewelry sold every 2.5 minutes." Meg Whitman

//

Related entries:

• The Online Competition To eBay And Industry (Loss) Leader eBay Express
  
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular

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From eBay Search Forum - Announcement: *** New Search Test till mid-June ***

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

//

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000487822&tstart=0&mod=1178305517546
Announcement:  *** New Search Test till mid-June ***

 gle**                 May-03-07 20:23 PDT                                     
Copying this from the Announcement Board, posted May 3:

Hi...I'm Jeff King, and I lead the Finding team here at eBay. As part of eBay's strategy, the folks on my team have been working on improving how people find things on eBay. After all, you can't win that item if you can't find it. Redesigning something so crucial to eBay is a huge undertaking, but, fortunately, we’re coming from a strong base of knowledge in this area.

For years, eBay's proprietary search technology has supported a marketplace that gets hundreds of millions of searches a day. In addition, my team has gained valuable insight from other new finding experiences that we've introduced on eBay – like eBay Express, our redesigned search results test (which we ran last winter), Best Match, and Motors 2.0. Your input and feedback on these projects has been invaluable, helping us figure out what works well and what does not.

The development cycle for projects like this requires lots of research, good design and development and, most importantly, ample testing in real market conditions. In the next few weeks, we'll be running a test of our latest Finding technology. For about six weeks, a small percentage of buyers (around 1%) will see a different search experience than what is currently available on eBay. This is project is similar to the "New Way to Shop" which we first tested back in 2005, although it has evolved significantly since then.

We think that this new technology will make eBay's search one of the most intelligent on the web, putting the right items in front of the right buyers more than ever before. In this new Finding experience, we'll still return listings where the item titles and descriptions match your search terms. And now we'll also use other elements of a listing as well (such as item specifics and category). This gives buyers the best chance of finding what they want without having to "guess at" all the terms the seller could've used in their item title.

As a simple example, if a buyer in the test searches for "red size 12 shoes," instead of looking just for listings with the words "red," "size," "12," and "shoes," the search engine will find all of the items in the shoe category that are size 12 in the color red. In the end, the buyer should see more relevant items. Plus they'll see a new way to narrow their listings results according to important details such as size, color, type, etc.

Because Finding is so important, you can continue to expect extensive testing like this as we work to ensure our designs and technology work for the marketplace. We expect this particular test to run about six weeks to allow us time to collect data and member input.

On behalf of my entire team, we appreciate your feedback and support.

Sincerely,

Jeff King
Senior Director, Finding

Glenda

--
V3  You can write to eBay support by clicking on Help then Contact Us.

 

kar**                 May-03-07 21:49 PDT                 1 of 11                                     
Get your hip~waders on now Glenda....you're gonna be one busy woman in a few weeks

So the #($*&#$( Express Search/Magellan is coming to Core?! Go to Express and search for "Red Shoe Size 12"...and see how long you last, HA!

Only 1% of users for about 6 weeks - just like the last test....oh wait, that was 70% for 6+ months....eBay math again!

There goes any <30 Store exposure. No wonder they removed the UK listings. How long will AU and CA listings last in default core?

This Board will be hoppin' crazy in another week or so.

helping us figure out what works well and what does not

God Speed to us all.....especially you, Glenda

K³

 kar**                 May-03-07 21:54 PDT                 2 of 11                        

 

  I just noticed your Title:

*** New Search Test till mid-June ***

Smart Cookie

I sincerely hope this brings all of us more sales, but I'm not holding my breath....too many changes all at once - I don't think the buyers can handle much more - at least that's the feeling I get from emails, site traffic, listing counts, etc.

K³

 gle**                 May-03-07 23:30 PDT                 3 of 11                        

Hi K3

I've been to eBay Express a couple of times.  "Hated it" would pretty much be an understatement.....

Glenda

--
V3  You can write to eBay support by clicking on Help then Contact Us.

web**                 May-04-07 03:01 PDT                 4 of 11                                     
Bye-bye everyone. The amount of arrogance and utter disregard for their customers is absoutely obscene.

 sto**                 May-04-07 05:24 PDT                 5 of 11                        
I don't think that ANY eBayers should be forced to participate in eBay's "testing." If eBay wants to do "live" testing, then participants should be allowed to choose whether they want to be included.

eBay already has Keyword Search Category Expansions. So how is this "testing" different? Or is this just more of that Item Specifics carp?

Jeff ...if you are reading this, please understand that I want to see search results that match EXACTLY what I type in the search box! And, I want all items, that match what I type in the search box, TO SHOW UP EVERY TIME!!!

 jsg**                 May-04-07 09:50 PDT                 6 of 11                                     
Oh boy.

dig**                 May-04-07 10:03 PDT                 7 of 11                        
Yesterday, I was dumped into the new search tool for eBay Motors as a "tester." I wish I had been given the option to use it or not.

HOWEVER...it was great!!! Now I wish I could use it some more. Is there a way to get back into it? It is WAYYYY better than the current standard search!

eld**                 May-04-07 10:13 PDT                 8 of 11                        
What the heck?! After 8 years of using eBay, this is the first time something has happened that I feel I need to vent about.

I decide to search for something this morning and of course, I come to eBay. I type in my search and get a very strange result: a weird page telling me what I'm looking for and giving me tons of options that I think may lead me to listings. But don't expect me to click on them. I'm not here looking at stores, I'm not here to see pictures of items. I'm here to see listings. I'm here to browse the virtual marketplace, not get filtered results that the computer thinks I want to see.

Unfortunately it appears that I am part of that 1% that is getting the new search results. I don't like them. I know what I'm looking for and I know how I want to see them. Get rid of this new thing, or give me the option to avoid it. I don't need somebody holding my hand telling me what I'm looking for. There's a reason I come to eBay: it's no-holds-barred shopping where the consumer is in control. Until now.

I'm going to go to work now. I've wasted enough time getting angered by this new search feature that has me confounded and puzzled as to what to do to reveal all possible results.

.

jeffking@ebay.com View Listings | Report                 May-04-07 10:47 PDT                 9 of 11             Good Morning everyone,

Thanks for the early feedback. You'll all have a chance to take a look at this soon and provide feedback even if you aren't in the test group (which is really just 1%). We’ll post a link to this board. Also, this time around, there is a very clear ‘opt out’ of the test so users who really want to can get out of the test group.

Stoneware,
No worries, you'll always be able to get exact match on just keywords. Just like today you can use quotes around the search terms for this.

Digadee,
Glad you like it. The Motors team is using some of the new finding technology we’ve developed and we’re learning a lot from that test as well.

Webpaper,
This is all about the customer. We’re focusing on making buyers more successful, creating an experience where users can easily, search, refine and find what they want so that in the end sellers sell more.

Eldren coralon,
We haven’t started the test yet, if you’d like to post your query, the folks on this board are great at helping folks out. We believe that control is important, advanced users will still have controls and we hope to give even more ‘power’ to the power users. Would love your specific feedback on the current product and the new one when it’s ready.

The ‘red shoe’ example is a simple one but it’s an important example. We’ve studied how people search and browse and we know that buyers aren’t seeing all the inventory on eBay (not seeing all the size 12 red shoes on eBay) or they are completely overwhelmed by the massive abundance of items. We’re in a state currently that I’m not sure anyone can argue is acceptable. Here are some searches for red size 12 shoes:

Red sz 12 shoes (44 items)

Red size 12 shoes  (64 items)

Red shoes with attribute of size 12  (109 items)

Red 12 in category Men’s shoes (432 items)

We’re trying to strike the balance where we can return all the relevant inventory and give buyers easy to use tools to refine down to what they want to buy. We’ve done a massive amount of research on this and we have hundreds of millions of queries to learn from but nothing beats watching what actual users do in real world conditions with the new product. If buyers aren’t more successful, we’ll keep iterating. There is nothing we’re doing that we won’t throw out if it’s not performing well. And of course, we welcome your positive and constructive negative feedback. I’m committed to engaging with you to achieve what we all want: more successful sellers and buyers on eBay!

Have a good weekend everyone,

Jeff

.

wgf**       Jun-04-07 17:48 PDT       279 of 279
I've never posted to, or even looked at, an eBay discussion board before. That had to change today.

Somehow, as of today, I ended up as a part of this test for the new search. I went through my Favorites, and started looking at my saved searches. I was a little put out by the format, but tried to ignore it. Then I realized that, in some of my searches, the numbers of items found seemed to be low. Oh well, I shrugged it off.

I went back later into one of my searches (same new search format - *sigh*), and was going to look for an item whose auction had recently completed, but I forgot to save it in my watched items. Wait - where is the sidebar search for Completed Items!? OK - now I'm not liking this.

Then I look closer at the results. In this particular search, I've searched in "all categories" with the words pearl rack (no quotes). What I'm looking for are drum parts, but as I've learned, people put things in the wrong categories, so I do an all encompassing search, and narrow down as I see fit. So, in the new search format, I get nine (9) results in drums and percussion, and 64 results in other categories - some of which don't even have the words pearl rack in them. Now I'm getting upset.

At this point, I start to give up, but then notice that I can opt out of this (ridiculous) test. I click on the opt out, and get kicked to the eBay home page (why?). I go back into my Favorites, and search. Thanks goodness, it's back to "normal." And, under the search for pearl rack, I get 19 (not just the nine I got in the test search) results in drums and percussion, and only 5 results outside of of that. And I'm noticing that the bids seem to be low on some of the equipment. Now I'm wondering just how big this "test" is, and maybe, just maybe, a lot of other people are not finding all the items that they are looking for, and I can score some deals (uh-oh! - sellers beware).

I was going to list some items this week, but now I think I'm going to give *GASP* Craigslist a shot before I throw them on eBay. I want to make sure I get top dollar for my items, and I'm concerned that they may not show for all potential buyers with this search "test". Even if they don't sell on CL, I'm not out any money, and maybe eBay will have come to its senses on this search issue when I am actually ready to list my items.

.

jeffking@ebay.com       Jul-24-07 13:28 PDT       436 of 438
Hi all,

We are reading the boards & this feedback is important to us. I hope you'll take the time to read and provide feedback on the new thread I've started.
I've outlined a number of long standing community complaints that are limitations of the existing search system that we're working to address in the new system.

I also want to be clear that we're not done with this. Your specific feedback is encouraged & needed to help improve the system. I hope you can take the time to tell us what you specifically like and don't like about it so that we can continue to make changes.

We're already addressing a number of items that have been posted to this board, so keep the details coming.

Thanks!

Jeff & the eBay Finding team

.

web**      Jul-24-07 14:42 PDT     437 of 438
I've outlined a number of long standing community complaints that are limitations of the existing search system that we're working to address in the new system.
Who exactly complained about the "limitations" addressed in your new thread? What you describe will make ebay completely useless to core users.

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Technorati Profile

Event Horizon 1984 Blog Log

eBay Favoring Express over Store Listings?

Definite coordinated programming effort to end eBay Stores.

Best guess expect implementation of this gem after eBay Live.

See related blog:
The eBay Store Killoff Continues - Store Items NOT showing up at bottom of search like they are supposed to!
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/06/from_ebay_store_3.html

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eBay Favoring Express over Store Listings?
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m04/i30/s03

                               

By          Ina Steiner                                AuctionBytes.com              April 30,  2007

Reports are surfacing that eBay Store listings may get replaced in search results by eBay Express listings. Randy Smythe wrote on his blog that he believes eBay may be testing the display of eBay Express listings instead of eBay Store listings at the bottom of core search results and has a screenshot showing an example. ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo posted on his blog that eBay either has some unusual bugginess or is doing some A/B testing on store discoverability (http://digbig.com/4stah). He said sellers have been noticing reduced visibility of Stores in several places. eBay introduced eBay Express, a fixed-price marketplace, in June 2006 in the U.S. It launched in Germany in August and in the UK in October. eBay Express draws from fixed-price listings on eBay.com and eBay Stores, and allows shoppers buy from multiple sellers with one transaction with the use of a shopping cart. Some sellers are upset that eBay left out eBay Stores on the new header that displays at the top of every page, which does include links to "eBay Categories," eBay Motors, and eBay Express directly under the search box (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000358593). Storeowners are still sensitive about reduced exposure for Store listings after eBay's efforts last summer to shift listings from Store to core listings in an effort to "rebalance" the marketplace.

From eBay Stores Forum - Store Items NOT showing up at bottom of search like they are supposed to!

The eBay Store Killoff Continues -
Store Items NOT showing up at bottom of search like they are supposed to!
Originally Posted Apr-20-07 15:54:26 PDT

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

eBay makes policy changes near or on the weekends. Limits news exposure and seller complaints.

If this is a permanent change, say goodbye to what little eBay Store exposure you had.

And if you haven't been looking at alternatives, start.

UPDATE 20 April 2007 1:46 PM HST

eBay programmers have reversed the eBay Store exclusion code.
Also on cue, eBay's unofficial spokesman passed on the Corporate spin that what happened "was a glitch."

Let's get one thing understood. The code EXISTS to essentially kill eBay Stores. Notice how easy and fast it was to implement the change. Switch on, switch off.  The only glitch that happened was some eBay programmer let everyone know this implemented kill code exists.

You DO NOT create expensive code, unless there is some possibility of using it.

If you are an eBay Store owner, consider this a warning of things to come.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!" Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

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Store Items NOT showing up at bottom of search like they are supposed to!
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000355140&tstart=0&mod=1177108620248

sa** Apr-20-07 14:37 PDT
Hi everyone! I was wondering why business had been so slow for the last 2 days and I think that I may have found out why! If you do a search for an item on core, Buy It Now store items were listed at the bottom...if there are alot of items the Buy It Now link is still there for potential buyers to click on. However, I was under the impression that when search results didn't show many listings in core that SOME of the store listings would show up at the bottom....all it says now is let's say "14 items in ebay stores...showing -0- of listings....suppose buyers don't KNOW to click on ebay stores!!

Why is Ebay doing this to us? Aren't we THEIR bread and butter with the 10% FVF's? Anyone have any idea why? Thanks for reading my post...it is greatly appreciated! Sandee

ka* Apr-20-07 14:39 PDT
Hi Sandee! I'm mad as he!! too. I just posted this on another thread, but I'll put the image here to, so that Store Owners can see what they're doing to us:

K³

sa** Apr-20-07 14:50 PDT
Hi Karen! You know I could have sworn that 2 days ago, before my business DIED, that it wasn't this way! I was having an awesome month for store sales and then it went to nothing. That is the exact same thing that I am seeing. Did anyone hear any announcements about this or is this their latest glitch?

po** Apr-20-07 14:55 PDT
            That would explain why I haven't had a store sale in several days

po** Apr-20-07 14:56 PDT
            Yep, I'm seeing it too...glitch or permanent change.

If this is the way it is going to stay I'm finally doing it....closing the store and opening the website!

eg** Apr-20-07 15:14 PDT
Actually I think It's since few hours not 2 days. Because I always watch my store position when I search for a particular item why this sudden death?

bo* Apr-20-07 15:20 PDT
            Hummm...my store sales went to zero lately too.

If this is just a glitch, it sux. If it's permanent why don't Meg and Bill just close the stores program once and for all instead of tightening the noose a little at a time?

eg** Apr-20-07 15:30 PDT
Well this is always the eBay strategy...

mo** Apr-20-07 15:37 PDT
Ebay Stores lack Exposure especially in using the search engine - Its been getting worst over the last few years. In addition the decline of eBay's loyal powersellers will only get worst . X-(

sorry to say Windows Live Expo by Microsoft will be the future for ebay powersellers.

ti** Apr-20-07 15:44 PDT
            I guess this is all so they can display the advertisement 'sponsored links' on the bottom and make more money.

Hip, Chic and Unique Decor & Gifts

po** Apr-20-07 15:46 PDT
            It apparently is a change to appease the UK sellers.  Their items show while ours only get a link.

dorothysew  (778 ) Apr-20-07 15:49 PDT     11 of 11
I may kind of like it-

Before if 30 items weren't returned, and there were 80 store items, only x number (without gallery) were returned on that first page, under the general search.

Now if buyers click on that link-which is right in your face-they will get all store items with gallery. I really think that might clue buyers into stores more.

Time will tell.

D

eg** Apr-20-07 15:58 PDT
Why they always get things complex on eBay was better than this now when It was simple and nice Not to think what you will do now if they change a line? why they didn't keep It's page as the google search? why they have to transform every dot in the web page to Money to eBay regardless of the millions of seller that use eBay?

ya** Apr-20-07 16:00 PDT
"Now if buyers click on that link-which is right in your face-they will get all store items with gallery"
As Smokey Robinson wrote and sang, I SECOND THAT EMOTION!!

skip at yatrecords

pop** Apr-20-07 16:07 PDT
I had live chat with a supposed supervisor "Jake P." and a "Heather" and they said there was nothing wrong. I was told that if there was something wrong tech support would know about it. I stated there was nothing in the system announcements about this, tho it does say routine maintenance until 2pm Friday. This problem has been ALL day, since Thursday. I was told there was nothing wrong. So, go figure. Looks to me like ebay may be changing their policies without telling store owners. I also asked on a different topic why Live Chat doesnt do anything and the response "This is all we can do".....chat. Hmmmmm. Thanks eBay...Get on live Chat, get on the phone, email the he!! out of ebay to get their butts off the floor, hands off the tetris, and do something...reply I got from Frank P. was there is so much ebay has to take care of on a daily basis its amazing...wrong, Frank. If ebay charges fees, ebay must own up to its tech problems...this is not the first.

cah** Apr-20-07 16:11 PDT
I notcied this too, sales had just started to pick up after the taxes were done, now it's dead again. They need to make a decision do they want stores or not! I am not going to pay for a featured store if my listing aren't going to show up anywhere.

pos** Apr-20-07 16:28 PDT
Half the ebay shoppers never look at the links. If they don't see actual items displayed they aren't going to notice that tiny little link.

If they did click links they would see all items with gallery anyway.

PUT IT back the way it was!!!!

nea** Apr-20-07 16:29 PDT
Meg: "Hey, Bill! Check out my latest 'magic'. I made the store listings disappear from the search with less than 30 core items!"

Bill: "Whoa...sweeet! Hey, wait a minute. There's still a link where the store listings can be seen! It's not very big, but it's stil there!"

Meg: "Shoot, you're right. Boy, your eyesight must be really good! I'll get rid of that as soon as I'm done counting my quarterly bonus money."

neg** Apr-20-07 16:35 PDT
            Not only are Store items not listed but there are TONS of foreign items shown in results:

gnr** Apr-20-07 16:37 PDT
They're showing up for me now and they weren't just a few minutes ago using the same exact search. I'm sure it was just a glitch.

itspostingtime  (2 ) Apr-20-07 16:38 PDT
neglius,
the absence of store listings was a glitch, and it's been fixed. Try your search again, and see the other thread about this.

Oh, and that's my tenth post of the day, so I guess I'll have to actually list stuff now instead of procrastinating here.LOL

pos** Apr-20-07 16:47 PDT
Neglus,

They have rolled it back. But, I don't believe for a second it was a glitch.

I'm 99.99999% sure it was a test.

Now, a test for what? To see our reaction? To see what it will look like when it is rolled out?

This kind of change does not happen out of the blue in a glitch. It didn't happen during last nights maintenance. It was rolled out this afternoon.

It may have been a mistake by some programmer (we weren't supposed to see it YET), but it definitely was toooooo smooth to be a glitch.

I'm still concerned...but for now, I'm relieved.

kar** Apr-20-07 16:56 PDT
Postcards - I kinda agree with you. All 3 items relating to Stores went all at the same time:

1. The "Shop eBay Stores" Box on the Left
2. The listings by line item under Core and before Int'l
3. The sellers Store Name next to their Core items

There is nothing else relating to Stores that I can think of. All exposure gone in a flash. Makes ya think, huh?

With all the other glitches around here, how were they able to "contact the Finding team and quickly" fix it, just like that?! What about fixing the My eBay/Bid glitch that is over 2 weeks old?

Anyways, I'm glad it was a short glitch - would hate to go through the whole weekend like that :)
K3

nea** Apr-20-07 17:02 PDT
Act 2.

Meg: "Boy, Bill...did ya see the stores board light up after I hid their listings in search?"

Bill: "Stores Board? Do they have their own discussion group now? When did THAT start?"

Meg: "Oh, Bill...you silly! Anyway it didn't get by 'em. I'm afraid it's too close to ebay Live to try anything else. I'm gonna put it in my bag-o-tricks for AFTER the convention."

Bill: (rubbing hands together) "That's what I love about this job! We can get 'em all feel goody during the convention then...WHAM! By the next convention half of 'em'll be gone, the other half won't come, and we have a whole new bunch to play with!"

pos** Apr-20-07 17:03 PDT
I did get a quick response from Storesteam to my email.

They said it was only a glitch and NOT a permanent change.

So, here's hoping....

Have a good weekend all.

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Comments

elaboriquedesigns ( 345)

View items for sale

yup! I saw that earlier...i am planning on closing mine down too once I get my website going..then a few core auctions a days and that is it :(

Apr-20-07 15:57:31 PDT

 

iiapco ( 673)

View items for sale

that really sucks......... makes a person want to get a web site and sell outside of ebay instead

Apr-20-07 16:06:09 PDT

 

kiwiscastle ( 2958)

View items for sale

Does ebay realize HOW MUCH $$$ they will lose in store fees?

Apr-20-07 16:10:02 PDT

 

bitplayer52 ( 826)

View items for sale

We store owners aren't ebay's bread & butter, I think get the bulk of their income from auction listing fees.

Apr-20-07 16:11:12 PDT

 

kiwiscastle ( 2958)

View items for sale

How many stores X $15.95+ a month-
Im sure its a Hefty amount.

No, not as much as auctions, but not penny change either~

Apr-20-07 16:12:25 PDT  

 

From eBay Forum - Ebay EXPRESS - Important update - Traffic increase ..Sales./

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

//

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000316431
Ebay EXPRESS - Important update - Traffic increase ..Sales./

nonsport  (2392 ) Feb-19-07 19:45 PST
http://stores.ebay.com/NONSPORT-NETWORK

In the last 60 days, of the 392 items I have sold 50 have been from EE. That is a huge incerease from the 4-5 per month I was having before the holidays. I had been trying to figure out why the sudden increase because whatever was going on it was working

I'm still confused as to why anyone thinks this is a good thing.

From other posts both on the PowerSeller board and elsewhere, it seems the sales on EE are 99% to eBay members. Why then doncha all think you wouldn't have these sales from your store if there was no EE, no EE advertising and no EE listings showing up in .com searches?

I know, I know...it's there so why miss the exposure...welp let me tell ya, once someone gets onto the EE site the rest of your items are chopped liver. They don't see your store and they don't even know you have a store. Bringing customers in to your store through eBay shows them your other stuffs and will bring you more sales...not to mention, repeat customers 'cuz they've seen what you have available.

So, either get on the band wagon and sell a few items or tell eBay they've made a mistake, to cut the carp and give the same opportunity to stores instead of EE. They'll have the same (or better) response, therefore, more fees, and stores will have better exposure.

Now that's a win-win situation!

M


SAME NIGHTMARE / DIFFERENT DAY 

From eBay Express Forum - Incorrect invoicing on items purchased on eBay Express, Anyone else?

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

From eBay Express Forum
Incorrect invoicing on items purchased on eBay Express, Anyone else?
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000497234&tstart=0&mod=1180663736749

thisisbuyeridfornow  (14 )        May-19-07 12:09 PDT
I am going to simply copy and paste the chat, changing buyer ID only. I believe it will give the information needed for you.

While waiting for your chat to begin, you can start...

SELLER: Unable to combine an invoice, buyer paid, but they paid and extremely understated amount of shipping, Not sure if they changed this or if it was an eBay invoice that was not properly populated, but in an attempt to send them a new invoice, am unable to combine the items. BUYER ID is BUYER . Buyer purchased 4 items on eBayExpress.

Your chat session has started..
Randi W.: Hello, my name is Randi. Thanks for using Store Live Help. Sorry for the long wait, we are quite busy today. Please give me one moment to review your question.

SELLER: Buyer also purchased a 5th item now as well, paid, but we refunded this as well, so we could send one combined invoice for it all, but are unable to do so.

Randi W.: let me take a look and see what I can find

SELLER: If they did not adjust the original invoice, it appears that eBay express payment only charged them for one of the 4 lots that were being paid for and we do NOT have such arrangements in our shipping preferences. This has happened once before as well, a week or so ago and chat told me to come back if it occurred again on an invoice, so before doing anything additional, I contacted you all back, but back then, I was at least capable of creating a new invoice for the buyer.

Randi W.: ok you may need to contact eBay express help because i cannot see items that are sold there, but let me see if I can find anything

Randi W.: the 5 item that they bought was that on express or just on eBay?

SELLER: Express, all 5 items

SELLER: They bought one item on eBay back on May 4th, also accidently refunded that one as well. But will invoice it all back once I am capable of doing so, if necessary, will just send a paypal invoice to them, but wanted to try and get this bug figured out.

Randi W.: ok thank you

Randi W.: ok I have looked into it and you will need to contact ebayexpress about this further, I am sorry I cannot see all the information and their checkout works a little different than ours does

SELLER: How do I do that and is that available today?

SELLER: And do not close the chat please, until I can copy the chat, as there is not a way to send myself a transcript any longer and I want to copy and paste it in an email to myself, both for eBayExpress and my customer to know what is going on.

Randi W.: As soon as you close this window, a pop up will appear on your computer asking for your email address. Please make sure you've disabled any pop up blockers you may have running on your computer to make sure you get that pop up. Once you enter your email address, we will send a copy of this entire chat to that email address.

SELLER: aww, okay.

SELLER: How do I contact Express though?

Randi W.: If you go to eBay Express there is a help link on the first page in the corner

SELLER: okay, thanks for your help

Randi W.: your welcome and Thanks again for using Live Help. One last thing I would like to mention that we will be sending you a survey regarding this chat, feel free to fill it out at your convenience. Good luck with your future eBay endeavors and have a great day!

Seller: okay, thanks.

Your chat has ended. Please click the Quit button
  In respect to buyers perceived intrusion into privacy, we are no longer leaving feedback, until feedback is received, as we will use this as our indicator that we have your permission to post feedback in such a public format on your feedback page.        

3 replies     Date posted     Reply #

llskitty  (82 )      May-30-07 12:30 PDT     1 of 3
Thanks for your post. It is very interesting. I will read it later if I have time.

cockytoo  (25  Listings | Report     May-30-07 17:47 PDT     2 of 3
Apparently ther is no "combined" shipping that works on eBay eXpress purchases. Refund your buyer, explain such and send them the links to your store items. From there all should proceed appropriately.

Let us know how it turns out.

aquanut51  (49 )      May-31-07 19:08 PDT     3 of 3
I am having the same problem with a Buyer that purchased 1 item and paid and then wanted to purchase a second item. I refunded the first and now it will not let me send a combined invoice and the poor buyer is confused and cannot figure out how to pay for either item now!! What a mess. Fortunately the buyer is patient so far....
Grrrrr....I sure would like to hear a resolution to all of this.

From eBay General Announcements - 2006 Launch of eBay Express

Depending on when you start the clock, eBay Express is or will be a year old.

• eBay Express, The Preview Mode, opened 24 April 2006.
• eBay Express was brought out of Preview Mode on 14 June 2006.

Here's a look back at the announcements leading up to the 14 June 2006 official opening.

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/archive.shtml

		***A Message from Bill Cobb***
		January 18, 2006 | 01:27PM PST/PT             Bill Cobb Hi...For a little over a year now, I’ve had the pleasure of being President of eBay North America. Through Town Hall events, eBay Live!, email, and countless board discussions, you’ve told me and my team what’s important to you. Listening to our Community – and making sure eBay delivers maximum value to you – is my job. And I want you to know how much we appreciate your business. I’d like to start the year by making some announcements and filling you in on exciting new developments at eBay. Thanks to the continuing input and innovations of our Community, the eBay marketplace keeps evolving -- creating new opportunities for buyers and sellers alike. 2006 Fee Adjustments As you probably know, we periodically make changes to our fee structure. We’ll be making some adjustments to our fees, and I want to highlight the most important ones. The following changes will go into effect on February 22, 2006:   For core insertion fees for auctions and Fixed Price listings on eBay.com, we’re again lowering the lowest tranche fee (i.e. for items with a starting price of $0.01 to $0.99) – from a quarter to twenty cents.   For feature fees -- We’re making Picture Show and Sales Reports Plus free for everyone. We’re reducing the fees for the second and third tiers of Picture Manager and increasing the storage you get at these higher levels. And we’re trying something that has worked well for us on eBay Motors. For the first time, we’re offering two new bundles of optional listing features that can save you up to 39% per listing. (Read here for details.)  For final value fees for auctions and Fixed Price listings on eBay.com, we are increasing one fee this year – the final value fee for the middle tranche, which will increase from 2.75 to 3%. There are no changes for eBay Stores fees.   I encourage you to take a moment to learn more about the upcoming fee adjustments here.     Investments in Advertising We know that bringing high-quality buyers to your listings is a critical part of the value eBay provides. To make sure we keep delivering this traffic, we made significant investments in advertising in 2005 which will continue throughout this year. This past holiday season we debuted the "it" campaign, eBay’s largest advertising investment to date. Through a fully integrated marketing campaign including television, print ads, internet marketing, catalogs, onsite merchandising, publicity and more, "it" spotlights the depth and breadth of products available on eBay. And the campaign is working. "It" was one of the most-recalled ad campaigns of the holiday season, according to Advertising Age magazine. Also in 2005, with internet advertising costs spiraling, we put considerable effort behind developing new ways to bring more buyers to your listings who use search engines like Google and Yahoo. Behind the scenes, we’ve been optimizing our site content for this unpaid or "natural" search. We’ve encouraged the Community to use About Me pages and a few months ago, we launched Reviews & Guides. The content members create through these features not only makes the site a richer experience -- these pages get picked up by search engines. This means buyers searching the internet for product information or other keywords are naturally driven to eBay. Product Innovations Another important part of our job is staying in touch with your changing business needs and developing innovative products that meet them. Last year, we delivered some important improvements like the Best Offer feature, better shipping integration with U.S. Postal Service® and UPS, cross-promotion enhancements to give sellers more visibility to your listings, and many new features you asked for in Want It Now. This year, we’ll continue to stay focused on products and features to help you grow your business and improve your buying experience. For instance, for eBay Stores, you’ve told us that 19 categories and only one level is not enough. So this spring, we’ll be releasing a new structure that allows you to have up to 300 custom categories in three levels of categories and sub-categories. I’m also pleased to tell you that we’re soon introducing something many of you have wanted for a long time: At the end of any eBay search, all matching Store inventory listings will be displayed. For sellers, this means much more exposure for your eBay Stores and Store items – for buyers, every search will return many more qualified listings. It’s a win/win for everyone. You can read here for more details on the change to add Store Inventory items in Search which will launch in a few weeks. Introducing eBay Express Finally, I want to tell you about a new specialty site called eBay Express that will launch this spring. eBay Express will be an exciting new buying experience, offering items that are available for purchase right away. We think eBay Express will encourage more shopping among our existing buyers, who today may only buy on eBay for certain purposes or types of products. We also think it will attract new buyers to eBay who prefer a more conventional e-commerce shopping experience. While eBay Express will be a specialty site, it’ll be part of the eBay marketplace, so Store and Fixed Price listings that qualify will automatically appear on both eBay.com and eBay Express – at no additional cost. Many sellers will benefit from the additional exposure without having to list their inventory twice, or change the way they sell. eBay Express will offer quick and easy ways to search and browse, a shopping cart (yes, at last!), and payments via credit card or PayPal. And because payments are made at the point of purchase, sellers will not experience unpaid items. We’re consciously making the buying experience on eBay Express different. And to deliver that experience, we’ll be opening eBay Express to sellers who have a positive track record on the site and who list items that are available for immediate purchase. Only sellers with 98 percent positive feedback or better – and a feedback score of at least 100 – will be eligible to sell on eBay Express. Sellers must also accept PayPal. There are a few other requirements for selling on eBay Express. To learn more now, please click here. eBay Express is a complicated undertaking; we’re now finalizing our planning and development work, and we’ll have more details to share in the months ahead. At launch, eBay Express will be available only for US-based sellers, although we have plans to expand in the future to our international sellers on eBay.com. I hope this gives you a sense of what we’re focused on as we head into the new year. On behalf of everyone at eBay, thanks for being part of the eBay Community. As e-commerce continues to grow and evolve, we look forward to continuing to shape the future together. Please join me for my first Town Hall event in 2006 next week – Thursday, January 26 at 2 pm Pacific time. My North American leadership team and I will be answering questions about whatever is on your mind. I always look forward to these sessions, and I hope you’ll join us. Sincerely, Bill Cobb President, eBay North America

		***eBay Express Brown Bag Lunch Event on Thursday, January 26th***
		January 23, 2006 | 04:22PM PST/PT                 Chung Cheong                     Adam Nash Hi everyone...This is Chung Cheong and Adam Nash, and we’re part of the eBay Express team. As Bill Cobb mentioned in his announcement last week, eBay Express is a new specialty site that will deliver a new shopping experience for buyers, as well as more exposure for many sellers – at no additional cost. In reading your posts and emails, we know many of you are excited about eBay Express. We also know that you have a lot of good questions. We’d like to share more details about eBay Express and help answer many of your questions. We’re inviting everyone to a Brown Bag Lunch event on the Seller Central discussion board on Thursday, January 26th from Noon to 1pm PT. We hope to see you there. Sincerely, Chung Cheong and Adam Nash eBay Express team

***Get Ready for eBay Express – Add Item Condition to Your Store Inventory Listings*** February 02, 2006 | 01:53PM PST/PT                     Adam Nash Hi everyone...This is Adam Nash again, part of the eBay Express team. As mentioned in Bill Cobb's message to the Community, eBay will be launching eBay Express later this spring. (If you haven't heard about eBay Express, please visit our pages to learn about this new specialty site that offers a tailored shopping experience.) We know that many of the items on eBay Express will be Store Inventory listings, so we're making it easier for sellers to prepare their Store Inventory listings in advance. In the next few days, the current bulk editing functionality within My eBay and Selling Manager will be updated to allow sellers to add or edit their Item Condition for up to 25 Store Inventory listings at one time. To do so, go to your My eBay Selling page, select the Store Inventory listings you want to edit, and hit the Edit button at the top of the Items I'm Selling table. For Selling Manager users, go to the Selling Manager Active page, select the Store Inventory listings you want to edit, and hit the Edit button at the top of the Active Listings table. As a reminder, item condition must be specified on a listing as one of the requirements for appearing on eBay Express. We hope this addition to My eBay and Selling Manager makes updating listings with item condition faster and easier for sellers who are looking forward to the increased exposure eBay Express will bring to their listings – at no additional cost.   For more information about eBay Express, including the other requirements needed to have your listings included, please see our information page. Sincerely, Adam Nash eBay Express

		***eBay Express – Supported Categories and Item Condition Details***
		March 02, 2006 | 03:54PM PST/PT                   Adam Nash Hi...this is Adam Nash from the eBay Express Team. As Bill Cobb mentioned in January, eBay Express will be a new shopping experience designed to meet the needs of today's busiest shoppers, and we're extremely excited about the enthusiasm its upcoming launch has generated. Many of the categories on eBay.com will be available on eBay Express at launch, but not all of them. We've also stated in earlier messages that Item Condition will be a listing requirement for your item to appear on eBay Express. This is true for many, but not all, categories that will appear. I want to clarify these points below:   There are categories where standard Item Condition values like New, Used or Refurbished are not applicable since the condition of the item can vary significantly. An example is a category such as Roman Antiquities. In these cases, Item Condition will not be introduced into these categories prior to the launch of eBay Express, and these categories will not be included in eBay Express at launch.    There are also categories where Item Condition is not relevant for a product. Here an example would be a category such as Tickets. In these cases, Item Condition will not be introduced in these categories but these items will be included within eBay Express at launch. To provide more information about which categories will and will not be included in eBay Express at launch, we've put together two different lists: Click here to see which categories will not included at launch. Click here to see categories that will be included at launch. As you'll notice, the Collectibles categories make up a large share of these categories. We have started a thread on the Collectibles discussion board to provide further information about which categories in Collectibles will and will not be included in eBay Express at launch, and whether Item Condition will be available. Sincerely, Adam Nash eBay Express

***A Message from Bill Cobb – eBay Express is Here!*** April 24, 2006 | 05:03PM PST/PT       Bill Cobb I'm pleased to announce that eBay Express is now available as a preview site at www.ebayexpress.com. As you know from reading my message in January, eBay Express offers a completely new buying experience for eBay inventory. You'll notice right away that eBay Express has a unique feel to it – the overall presentation of eBay Express is rich in photography with a clean look and feel. Buyers on eBay Express will be able to purchase only Fixed Price and Store Inventory Format items, and will benefit from an easy, yet intelligent new way to find products – and, at last, a true shopping cart!     As I've said before, we think eBay Express will encourage more shopping among our existing buyers and will attract new buyers to eBay who prefer a more convenience-oriented shopping experience. This makes a better marketplace for all of us.     Plus, Sellers Get Additional Exposure     The best part of eBay Express is that it's still part of the eBay marketplace. This means that qualifying sellers whose eBay listings meet the criteria for eBay Express will automatically get the additional exposure. (Read here for seller and listing requirements for eBay Express.) To learn if you meet the seller criteria, or to opt-out if you do not wish to have your listings shown on eBay Express, sellers should refer to your Selling Preferences within My eBay. There are some important details to know about seller requirements, listing requirements, and supported categories at launch, so please make sure to read our eBay Express FAQs.     Preview Launch of eBay Express     All site features are up and running today in eBay Express – it is a fully functional site. eBay staff have been testing and purchasing through eBay Express for several weeks. I've used it to buy a variety of things myself, and the site is fantastic. We'll be doing some fine-tuning of the site over the next several weeks. And more importantly, we'll be listening to your suggestions, comments, and concerns. I want to take a moment to thank the huge team of dedicated people at eBay and PayPal who have worked together on this enormous undertaking. I'm very proud of all the thought and effort that have gone into delivering what we hope will delight and inspire you. Finally, the eBay Express team will be spending time with you on  our new eBay Express discussion board, so shop eBay Express for your next purchase, and come let us know what you think!     Sincerely,     Bill Cobb     President, eBay North America * Original message posted April 24, 2006 at 11:32AM PST/PT. It has been edited to reference an updated URL

***Update on eBay Express*** May 23, 2006 | 10:27AM PST/PT       Lara Bridges Hi...I'm Lara Bridges, Director of eBay Express. It's been about four weeks since the eBay Express Preview released. On behalf of the entire eBay Express team, I want to thank our Community for the time and energy that many of you have put into getting your listings ready for Express – and the enthusiasm you've shown for shopping on the site. Your help "kicking the tires" during this period has been key to helping us improve and fine-tune this new specialty site. During this time we’ve received a lot of great feedback – thank you for telling us what you think! I want to share a few of the comments that we've received through our Comments on eBay Express survey, and provide you with an update on what we’ve been working on during the Preview period. Many of you have had positive feedback on eBay Express: "I like the search features, in particular the narrow your search feature. I really like the fact you can search on size, color or price range by clicking on it. I think this is a strong feature of eBay Express." "Overall I would say this was a great buying experience. It is very similar to my .com site where I also sell, which is eBay's stated goal with Express…. One other note... I strongly suggested to my wife that she do her shopping on eBay this past Christmas. I sat with her as she shopped, and I became as frustrated as she did with the countless different auction terms, hard to find shipping costs, low feedback scores, etc. She went back to the .com sites to do her shopping, understandably. Based on my experience with Express today, I can invite her to come back for another try!" "My first experience visiting the Express site as a buyer was an absolutely positive one. I found it easy to navigate and fairly intuitive. The site is clean and fast loading, and isn't filled with extraneous befuddlement. ... I know you guys have a lot of glitches to get behind you, and that may bring with it a lot of negativeness, but I'll bet the raves outswell the nays. I definitely think it is a positive asset to eBay and you did a great job with it." "Fast easy sales...great for new eBayers...great for sellers..it's a win win." We've also heard a number of questions and suggestions: "The only feature that I thought was missing: if I clicked on the 'continue shopping' button it brought me back to the main Express page -- NOT where I was shopping before I added the item to my cart or the items page I was viewing." "I can't figure out why my listings don't appear." "If it’s possible I would like to know what items of mine sell through Express, maybe have it included in the email stating that my item sold." "It would be nice if a potential customer could see other items for sale by the seller without having to first click on the sellers User Id." The Express team has been working to deliver some of the features you've asked for as we continue to fine-tune the site. I'd like to tell you about a few of the enhancements that have recently released or are coming soon:   Item number search. You've told us it's important to be able to search for an item on eBay Express using the item ID number. This feature was launched last week, so you are now able to do so. Just type the item number in the search box on any page of eBay Express. "Continue shopping" from shopping cart. We've improved the "Continue Shopping" button to make it more convenient and intuitive. Now it takes you back to the category where you were last shopping. Self-Hosted Gallery Photos. Currently, listings that provide a self-hosted Gallery URL, but do not include a standard image URL or Enhanced Picture Services picture, do not qualify for eBay Express. We are working to add support for these listings within the next few weeks. There are still some areas that need improvement, and we are working hard on those now. Some of the specific issues that we are working on include:   Providing a tool to help sellers identify why their account, or their listings, aren’t qualifying for eBay Express Providing more tools for sellers to view their business performance and manage their listings on eBay Express Improving the ability for buyers to shop for more items from a single seller. We'll continue to work on eBay Express, and I'll be back soon with more details as we have more announcements to share. In the meantime, I encourage you to keep telling us what you think! The Comments on eBay Express survey is available from the eBay Express homepage, and we're also actively monitoring the eBay Express discussion board. And for those of you attending eBay Live! in Las Vegas in June, I'll be there with my entire team – we hope you’ll stop by, say hello, and give us your feedback. Sincerely, Lara Bridges Director, eBay Express

***A Message from Bill Cobb from eBay Live! in Las Vegas*** June 14, 2006 | 09:07AM PST/PT       Bill Cobb Hello from Las Vegas! Over 720 employees from eBay, PayPal and Skype are here with me along with more than 15,000 registered attendees – a new record! The energy is incredible, the interactions that are happening between staff and buyers and sellers are invaluable...and the $5 buffets are fantastic. Last night, I delivered the keynote address with Meg, where we shared some reflections of the last year, plus some news we have about the eBay marketplace. For those who couldn't join us here in person, I invite you to listen to an audio file of the keynote speech. Meg announced an important milestone for the eBay Community. Last Saturday, the 200 millionth member of the global eBay Community registered on the site. As Meg pointed out – if the eBay Community were a nation, we’d be the fifth largest in the world. Wow. Meg also announced a Skype test on eBay.com. We'll provide more details on this separately – but eBay.com sellers in certain categories will be able to opt in to this test and add "Skype Me" buttons to their listings. This will be a great way to see how Skype can improve communications between buyers and sellers -- particularly in categories with complex transactions, or where people want to connect with others who share their interests and passions. There will be follow-up announcements with more details in the next few days, but here are some of the highlights: New Community Products – eBay Blogs and the eBay Wiki The "social web" is a hot topic these days, but here at eBay, we've been pioneering online communities for over a decade. Every day, millions of people around the globe connect and share their expertise via eBay discussion boards, the Answer Center, eBay Groups, Reviews & Guides, and other forums. Now we’re pleased to introduce eBay Blogs and the eBay Wiki – they're on the site now. Rachel Makool, Senior Director of Community Development, will be sharing more details about how these technologies offer new ways to connect on eBay. We also announced the introduction of MyCollectibles, a great new destination for eBay’s collectibles categories where members can organize their treasures and share them with the eBay Community. Update on New Trust & Safety Policy Enforcement A few months ago, Matt Halprin's global policy management team began revamping how we enforce our policies, so that we’re more effective and consistent in cleaning up the site and fairer to the vast majority of our sellers who want to comply. Sellers told us that the old system of warning after warning -- followed by a long suspension -- created confusion and fear. Matt’s team has made our policies clearer, created more education and improved communications, and developed guidelines that allow us to slow down and penalize repeat violators. Overall the number of actual suspensions has gone down, replaced by brief selling restrictions intended to be less disruptive. We’re making good progress, although we realize it hasn’t always seemed like it. Our goal has been to minimize the unnecessary disruption to our sellers’ businesses and create a safer, fairer marketplace. But in some cases, we realize, we’ve actually caused our sellers more concern. I told our live audience last night that we realize that this has not been smooth for some sellers, and we are listening and working with the Community to fine-tune our processes. For example, a seller who runs thousands of listings a week may take a bit longer to revise all their listings to be in compliance. We will keep working on this until we get it right. Excessive Shipping As many of you who listen to my monthly audio Town Halls know, I have personally committed to making sure the problem of some sellers charging excessive shipping costs gets addressed. You’ve told us and we agree -- excessive shipping has become a serious issue that needs a solution. It sets up unfair competition through fee avoidance and search manipulation, and, most importantly, it is eroding buyer trust in the eBay marketplace. In fact, we completed research that found this is the number one reason that buyers leave eBay. That said, this is an open marketplace, and we’ve been very reluctant about telling our sellers what they can charge for shipping and handling. Our sellers sell everything from pianos to t-shirts. Over the last few months, the best talent in the company has been looking at solutions to this issue. We’ll continue to look at site changes and other solutions, but I’m pleased to announce that one major change we are instituting – starting Monday, June 19th - is new aggressive enforcement against Excessive Shipping & Handling.  Now, before sellers become unnecessarily concerned, let me make it clear – this policy is geared for those egregious cases that are clearly taking advantage of the system and our buyers. You all know the listings that I mean – the .01 BIN listings with $25.00 shipping & handling for an item that weighs less than a pound to ship. We’re going to clean up the site and stop this type of listing -- which does a disservice to the whole Community. We are going to proactively search for the worst offenders -- those whose business model is predicated on a low Buy It Now cost offset by outrageous shipping charges. Last night I gave these sellers a clear message: stop this practice, or you’re no longer welcome on eBay. Now please understand -- if you’re charging simply to cover your actual shipping, packaging and overhead costs, you have no reason to be concerned. If you’ll be charging for custom crating, or other services, just say so in your listings. Cross-Border Trade – A Privilege, Not a Right Last night, I also told eBay Live! attendees that later this year, we’re going to introduce more stringent requirements for sellers who wish to sell across borders on eBay. In the U.S., we’ll require non-U.S. sellers to be PayPal verified, or to have a credit card merchant account. Other eBay sites will similarly raise the bar for international sellers in their markets – but we’ve concluded that around the world, selling internationally on eBay should be a privilege, not a right. You’ll hear more about this initiative before any changes are made that affect you. Grand Opening for eBay Express And, finally, last night, I had the pleasure of announcing the Grand Opening of eBay Express! During the last several weeks that eBay Express has been available as a preview, our sellers and buyers have been using the site and giving us all kinds of good input and suggestions. The Express team has been hard at work fine-tuning and adding enhancements based on your needs, and we are delighted by the results so far. In fact, it’s living up to its name – so far, the record for filling a cart and checking out is 7 seconds! Stay tuned for a letter from Lara Bridges that will offer more details about new features. I also gave a preview of the eBay Express marketing campaign, which will be hitting the airwaves soon. To properly launch eBay Express, we wanted to break the pattern and create some intrigue. We’ve developed an out-of-the-ordinary campaign that includes 30 different TV commercials, each with the same simple message: "Get It New, Buy It Now, on eBay Express." We’ll provide more details on the eBay Express marketing campaign soon. That’s it for now. I encourage you to watch the General Announcement board for more news on these and other topics. I hope you’ll tune into my Town Hall that we’ll be audio streaming from eBay Live! this Thursday at 11:00 a.m. PT. And for daily updates on eBay Live! don’t forget to read our eBay Chatter blog at www.ebaychatter.com. Sincerely, Bill Cobb President, eBay North America

		***Lifting the Preview on eBay Express!***
		June 14, 2006 | 02:06PM PST/PT       Lara Bridges Hi...I'm Lara Bridges, Director of eBay Express. As Bill Cobb announced in last night's keynote here at eBay Live!, I am excited to let you know that we are bringing eBay Express out of Preview mode! eBay Express has been live for almost two months now, and we are pleased with the results to date. We have well over 19 million listings available on the site, and the feedback we've received from buyers on eBay Express has been overwhelmingly positive. We owe a lot of thanks to the many sellers and buyers who have helped us "kick the tires" over the last few weeks. We've heard from many of you about what works well and what has needed some improvement. We've already released several rounds of enhancements, with more on the way in coming weeks. Here's a summary of some of the highlights we’ve been working on: For sellers: eBay Express sales tracking in My eBay.  You've asked for this and we listened. Now it’s here! You can see which listings sold on eBay Express within My eBay. Self-hosted gallery. Sellers can now use a self-hosted Gallery photo without needing to specify the URL. New Search API. We've introduced a new Search API based on our new search engine, redesigned from the ground up to more easily allow developers and affiliates to drive traffic to eBay Express. Same seller merchandising. Buyers can now "See more items from this seller" on View Item pages within eBay Express. This will make it easier to shop for more items that qualify for eBay Express from the same seller. For buyers: "Continue shopping" from shopping cart. We've improved the "Continue Shopping" button to make it more convenient and intuitive. Now it takes you back to the category where you were last shopping. Related Searches. We'll be adding links for "Related Searches" (similar to what we have on eBay.com) to direct users to merchandise that similar shoppers have purchased. Spell Check. We'll help you find what you are shopping for when there is a typo in your search term.  Save for Later. Not only will the shopping cart hold your items for a longer period (in case you are interrupted while shopping), you will also have the ability to save items in your cart for up to 90 days. Cart Reminder Email. We'll send buyers who've left items in their cart a new reminder email to encourage them to complete the sale. Search by Item Number. You can now search for an item on eBay Express using the item ID number. Just type the item number in the search box on any page of eBay Express. Finally, as Bill mentioned at the keynote, and as we committed to you earlier, we're launching a major integrated eBay Express marketing campaign for the back-to-school selling season. The centerpiece of the campaign will be TV commercials that build on the strength of our highly successful "it" campaign. Stay tuned for more details on the General Announcements Board. So we'll keep working hard on more enhancements to eBay Express over the summer, and I encourage YOU to keep telling us what you think! The Comments on eBay Express survey is available on the eBay Express homepage, and we're actively monitoring the eBay Express discussion board.   Sincerely, Lara Bridges Director, eBay Express http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200706081016052.html ***Updates on eBay Express*** June 08, 2007 | 10:16AM PST/PT     Lara Housser Hi everyone...this is Lara Housser with eBay Express. Like many folks around here, my team and I are gearing up for eBay Live! Not only is this one of our favorite events of the year, it's also a special occasion for another reason -- eBay Express turns 1 year old! Did you know that on eBay Express an item of clothing is sold every 67 seconds, a piece of jewelry every 2.3 minutes, and a DVD every 4 minutes? The word is building that eBay Express is THE place for buyers who want that great eBay deal and who at times prefer fixed-price items. Furthermore, 9 out of 10 buyers have told us they love the shopping experience that eBay Express offers. This is all excellent news for a site that's barely one year old, and we want to thank the eBay Community for all your support in helping to make eBay Express's first year a success. If you haven't visited eBay Express lately, I invite you to come check it out. We�ve added a host of new features recently to make it even easier to buy and sell. Here�s a quick rundown of what's new:   More convenient shopping features, such as the ability to search for wish lists, see your recently viewed items on the eBay Express home page, and send notes to sellers during the Check Out process.   More merchandising exposure for sellers, such as the new 'Added-to-Cart' page. Once a buyer adds your item to their cart, we showcase more of your merchandise to them, highlighting shipping discounts where offered, as well as related items. (See for yourself by adding an item to your shopping cart.)   More integration with eBay.com, including a new section in My eBay with your eBay Express shopping cart details and a handy link to eBay Express from the eBay.com navigation header.   Inclusion of Half.com listings for Half.com sellers who opt in. (Read our previous announcement to learn more.) A note to our sellers � Remember that getting your listings included on eBay Express requires no additional work beyond what you're already doing to sell on eBay.com! (For more information about qualification, read our eBay Express Selling Checklist.) Stay tuned for more improvements in the future. And if you're heading out to Boston for eBay Live! next week, make sure to stop by the eBay Express booth so we can meet you. Sincerely, Lara Housser Director, eBay Express // // // // // // Technorati Profile Copyright © 1984-2007 Event Horizon, All Rights Reserved Event Horizon 1984 @ Event Horizon 1984 Blog Log eCRATER EventHorizon1984 Ewaey WorldSecurities2001 eBay World_Securities

From eBay Seller Central Forum - I am trying to spend some money here ebay and this is what i get

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

More of eBay's slow killing off of eBay Stores ..........

Cross reference with eBay Express ( ebayexpress.com ).

//

From eBay Seller Central Forum
I am trying to spend some money here ebay and this is what i get
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000497696&tstart=0&mod=1179691649666

wor**     May-20-07 12:25 PDT
I usually am a seller. I do try to support the community and spent a good 10 thousand last year in ebay BUYING.

I just went to buy some cosmetics.

First search cannot get the first category page to stop sending me to ebay express

second search cannot get the category page to roll to the items just stuck then slow blah blah blah

third search page comes up with three of the biggest most distracting banners i have ever seen on A page, they are so big they are actually distorting the .35 cent pictures sellers are paying for.

fourth time could not get into stores , impossible to find.

finally went to NORDSTROMS ordered my stuff i hate to say .

THIS IS WHY ARE SALES ARE DOWN !!!!!!!

4 replies     Date posted     Reply #

den**     May-20-07 12:37 PDT     1 of 4
And all this time I thought it was my bad breath


tro**    May-20-07 12:47 PDT     2 of 4
First search cannot get the first category page to stop sending me to ebay express

I had that happening yesterday too. Ebay Express was at the top the way Featured Listings usually are only I don't usually buy in any category where people sell Featured Listings because I hate that!
It completely throws off the search.

ezy**    May-20-07 12:58 PDT     3 of 4
And all this time I thought it was my bad breath
denim, I think that's part of it!
Sorry, you set yourself up.




postie_mcpost  (0 )      May-20-07 13:07 PDT     4 of 4
denim mavin,

you may want to check out item #190114644187

Adam Nash of eBay Express Leaves eBay - The Time Has Come…

Adam Nash announced in his blog, below, that he has left eBay.

eBay appears on the self-destructive path of dumbing-down. They are going from this level of expertise,

http://forum.stanford.edu/events/calendar/abstract.php?eventId=1504
Adam Nash holds a Masters of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School. He also holds both Bachelors and Masters degrees in Computer Science from Stanford University, where he also taught Computer Science in the undergraduate teaching program.

to middle managers with NO computer expertise. And programming departments run by the programmers with little management.

The Time Has Come…
http://psychohistory.wordpress.com/2007/05/12/the-time-has-come/

The Time Has Come…

May 12th, 2007 — Adam Nash

Friday, May 11th was my last day at eBay. I’ll be posting a bit more about my new role soon, but for now, I thought I’d just share the email that I sent out late Friday afternoon.

E veryone,
B efore I get into
A ll of the nitty-gritty details on how
Y ou can reach me, I just wanted to say a couple of things.

E bay has always been about people, and I feel
X tremely fortunate to have had four years here to learn and work with some of the best
P eople in the world.  When I think back on everything I’ve done here, I
R ealize just how lucky I was to land that first product role on
E bay Verticals.  Since then, I’ve had the chance to work with hundreds of passionate and
S mart people across dozens of teams and projects, and I’ve learned
S o much from every one of you.  All I can say is thank you.

The time has come for me to take on a new role and a new adventure, but I have every confidence that you’re going to take eBay & eBay Express to incredible new levels in the coming months and years. You’ll find me actively cheering you on, as a shareholder and as an active community member, selling my way to that red star.

Please feel free to reach out to me and keep in touch. I truly believe that the most valuable things we create through our careers are relationships with people we respect & trust. In fact, that’s pretty much what I’m going to be focusing on.  I will always have guilt-free M&Ms waiting.

My personal contact information:
Email:               <…>
Skype:              <…>
Cell:                 <…>
Web:                http://www.adamnash.com
eBay:               http://myworld.ebay.com/adamnash

And of course, if we haven’t already, please set up a profile and connect with me on LinkedIn.

Take care.
Adam

eBay is a wonderful company, filled with wonderful people, working to make life better for millions of people. I started selling on eBay in 1998, and joined the company in early 2003. I will truly miss it. However, I am also extremely excited about my new company, and the opportunity that lies ahead.

However, for the next two weeks, I am unemployed. A good time to reflect and enjoy time with family & friends before digging in on a new adventure.

From eBay Express Forum - SO HOW IS THIS NEW EBAY EXPRESS DOING ANYWAY?

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

The Adam Nash ( adamnash  (671 ) ) of the last post is in charge of eBay Express.

He has an eBay store currently stocked with 3 items.  And maintains PowerSeller status.
eBay sales over the last 90 days
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=adamnash&ftab=FeedbackAsSeller
eBay sales, "Sellers Sold Items & 30-Day Turnover.."
http://www.goofbay.com/getSellerLists.html?seller=adamnash&Submit=Check

//

From eBay Express Forum
SO HOW IS THIS NEW EBAY EXPRESS DOING ANYWAY?
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000458738&tstart=0&mod=1179011056620



bel** Mar-16-07 10:47 PDT
I AM JUST GETTING BACK TO SELLING REGULARLY AGAIN .ITS AMAZING ALL THE NEW STUFF THAT POPS UP ON EBAY WHEN YOU ARE AWAY FOR A WHILE. I HAVEN'T LISTED OR BOUGHT ANYTHNG ON EBAY EXPRESS JUST TOOK A GLANCE AND WASNT REALLY IMPRESSED.

13 replies     Date posted     Reply #
den**     Mar-16-07 15:40 PDT     1 of 13
(shhhhh....neither has anyone else been impressed......)
:O

kim** Apr-16-07 09:51 PDT     2 of 13
It's not advertised very much. When I asked my friend, nobody knew about it. Ebay should have called it a different name and advertise the hell out of it. Just like Amazon did with their shoe website.

lls** Apr-16-07 10:52 PDT     3 of 13
Just like Amazon did with their shoe website.

Never heard of it.

bey**    Apr-16-07 18:00 PDT     4 of 13
"It's not advertised very much"

Uhhhh ... that's *not* true.

Television ads, print ads, radio spots, banner ads, SEO -- these things cost real dollars, and much was made about it.

bey** Apr-16-07 18:02 PDT     5 of 13
Re: Amazon = endless.com

Funny that it was noted as having been heavily advertised. We certainly never saw the ads, just read the PR's.

bey**     Apr-16-07 18:02 PDT     6 of 13
EE = a dog.
beyondthetreeline : BTTL : : Beyond the Treeline : blog
Exceeding the needs of serious athletes. : rss feed : guides

oak**     Apr-19-07 10:04 PDT     7 of 13
A lame one at that

rlr**     Apr-22-07 21:19 PDT     8 of 13
About the only Ebay site with less traffic than EE is this board.



Check out my Guides!


jed**     May-09-07 16:22 PDT     9 of 13
EE= a creaky empty brokern down shopping cart with 4 rusted wheels all squealing "EEEK-EEEEEEK-EEEEEKKKK=EEEEEEEEEEKKK" as the cart rolls lopsided downhill across the store parking lot into the speeding oncoming traffic of the super-information-highway :) nice try, though, but no cigar !

kar**     May-09-07 18:40 PDT     10 of 13
About the only Ebay site with less traffic than EE is this board.

Well, it looks as though Adam Nash has plenty of time to devote to his personal blog:

http://psychohistory.wordpress.com/

Too bad he can't spend the time to monitor the issues that are reported on this forum.

Hey Adam - I know if I send you an email, you'll go "oh wow, I missed that thread" and you'll get right on it ;)

So why is it that the See Seller's Other Items tab has been dysfunctional for over 6 weeks?

This is your pet project, right? Or is personal blogging more productive during work hours?


K3

kar**     May-09-07 18:41 PDT     11 of 13
EE= a creaky empty brokern down shopping cart with 4 rusted wheels all squealing "EEEK-EEEEEEK-EEEEEKKKK=EEEEEEEEEEKKK" as the cart rolls lopsided downhill across the store parking lot into the speeding oncoming traffic of the super-information-highway

:^O I just can't stop giggling over that one!


K3

jed**    May-10-07 21:44 PDT     12 of 13
EEEEEEEKKKKKK!!!! Thanks...I am sending that to Jay Leno....:)



adamnash  (671 )  -12-07 16:04 PDT     13 of 13
Hi karens_krazy_klozet,

Imagine my surprise to see quite a few visits to my personal blog coming from the boards.

I will admit, honestly, that like most people I spend evenings and weekends at home, and not at work. I have quite a few hobbies in that time, and my blog is one of them.

For example, here is a post I wrote on how to best search for average selling prices for items on eBay:
http://psychohistory.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/looking-at-prices-for-george-washington-dollar-coins-and-how-to-search-ebay-like-a-champ/

Here is the list of all the posts I've had about eBay on my blog to date:
http://psychohistory.wordpress.com/tag/ebay/

eBay Express offers live customer service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you find problems, please report them there.

If you have comments directly for me ("Hey Adam..."), feel free as always to send them via email.

Take care.
Adam

From eBay Finding Team Employee matt.olson@ebay.com - EXPRESS ITEMS NOW SHOWING ABOVE CORE ITEMS IN SEARCH!!!!!

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

Earlier this month eBay implemented "Smart Search" in core.  The phase in will be slow and not all at once.  "Smart Search" is eBay's new search method where customers, more often than not, will only see popular items or eBay "catalog product" items.

In otherwords, the same scheme used in eBay Express.

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
http://blogs.ebay.com/world_securities/entry/Urban-Myth-or-Fact-eBay-Express-Is-Popular-Part/_W0QQidZ131937010

Read Matt Olson's posts.  In case you're wondering about your sales this month, or want to improve product visability.

And you may ask what is Matt Olson's employment history?
http://www.linkedin.com/in/olsonmatt

Hint, he's been a middle "manager".

The big search engine Google hires PhD's in mathematics and related fields.
eBay required:

Matt Olson’s Education
      Santa Clara University
      BS, Psychology, 1994 — 1998
      Minors in Economics and English.

//


From eBay Stores Forum
EXPRESS ITEMS NOW SHOWING ABOVE CORE ITEMS IN SEARCH!!!!!
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000364765&start=40


matt.olson@ebay.com May-09-07 08:10 PDT       42 of 93
Hi Everyone!

Matt from the Finding team here.

The "Best Matching Products" box you are seeing at the top of search results does not display Express listings, it is showing Core catalog products, not eBay or Express listings. Since these are catalog products, not listings, sellers are not buying this placement. If you click on one of these products, you will end up on our Product Details Page, which will show you all of the associated listings. I can see why there's confusion between "Best Matching Products" and the Express recommendation and I am working with the Express team on a solution.

I'd like to give you a little background on "Best Matching Products"... This is a redesigned version of the original Core "product recommendation" that chopsueysisters screen-captured in their post. We have done analysis that shows that presenting catalog products to buyers helps them find the items they want quickly and easily. This is why you are starting to see the module more frequently; we want your items to sell!

Cheers,
Matt
Finding



matt.olson@ebay.com May-09-07 10:22 PDT       51 of 93
Hi Everyone!

Thanks for all the great feedback! Keep it coming!

beachgal - Yep, eBay does have catalogs, and we are showing the catalog products in the "Best Matching Products" module.

postcards - A "catalog product" is just an item with a group of like attributes that lives in one of our catalogs (such as an Apple iPod Nano).

Sellers have the opportunity to list with a catalog product through SYI or other seller tools and we encourage you to list with them whenever possible to take advantage of "Best Matching Products". As Jeff King noted in his post, the listings shown on the Product Details Page can also be found on the Search Results page where "Best Matching Products" appear, so no one is hidden...

Thanks!
Matt



matt.olson@ebay.com May-09-07 18:06 PDT       62 of 93
kbird999 - If you are listing an item through SYI and have chosen a catalog enabled category, you will be prompted to "Find your product". This prompt will only appear if you've chosen a catalog enabled category and the prompt is different than selecting item specifics. Please note that this is an optional feature and is not required. However, choosing to list with a catalog product will allow you to take advantage of "pre-filled item details".

beachgal - Just to clarify, sellers can list their item with a catalog product, not add their listing to the product catalog.


Cheers,
Matt
Finding



matt.olson@ebay.com May-10-07 08:56 PDT       74 of 93
kbird, postcards and rhinestone - Here is a Help page that describes how to use "Pre-filled Item Information" (aka "product catalog"):

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/prefilled-information.html

It's relatively light on details, but gives you a general idea. We are working with the eBay University team to put together a tutorial about using product catalogs and the "Pre-Filled Item Information", so stay tuned!

Matt
Finding

From eBay Employees - Clarification: Store Inventory and eBay Express in Search

Clarification: Store Inventory and eBay Express in Search
Originally Posted May-07-07 14:06:42 PDT
http://blogs.ebay.com/world_securities/entry/Clarification-Store-Inventory-and-eBay-Express-in/_W0QQidZ206025010

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

Clarification: Store Inventory and eBay Express in Search
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000485642

darleneb@ebay.com Apr-30-07 11:59 PDT
Hi everyone,

As a follow-up to Jake Jake’s post at last week’s Brown Bag Lunch, I wanted to quickly stop by to clear up the recent confusion about the Store Inventory expansion module in search results.

On the 22nd we had a glitch where the Store Inventory expansion module (which displays up to 30 Store Inventory listings when 30 or fewer Auction-style and Fixed Price listings are found in search) wasn’t displaying when it should be. This also affected the Shop eBay Stores module in the left navigation. This was fixed within a few hours of it hitting the site, and we’re sorry that it happened.

In the past day we’ve received questions about Scot Wingo’s blog post theorizing that we had replaced the Store Inventory module with an eBay Express module. This is not the case. There are different rules for when the Express module displays, and if you look at the example he uses, there are over 5 pages of results that were returned for that search. Since the Store Inventory module displays when 30 or fewer listings are found, it wouldn’t have displayed regardless of whether Express was there or not. This is working as it’s supposed to - we’re not swapping out the Store Inventory module for Express. Some people have also contacted us asking if these two incidents were related as part of us testing how to give Store Inventory more or less exposure on the site. The answer to that is no – these were completely separate, and not part of any test. We are committed to increasing the value of eBay Stores and the Store Inventory listing format, not decreasing it.

I hope this clears things up!

Regards, Darlene

eBay Stores

eBay removed the store search from the left column??????
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000355122&tstart=0&mod=1178232237494

jacque@ebay.com      May-03-07 15:00 PDT     7 of 8
Hi folks,

In case you hadn't seen Darlene's post on the Stores board (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000485642), I wanted to follow up on this thread.

On the 22nd our Finding systems had a glitch where the Store Inventory expansion module (which displays up to 30 Store Inventory listings when 30 or fewer Auction-style and Fixed Price listings are found in search) wasn’t displaying when it should be. This also affected the Shop eBay Stores module in the left navigation. This was fixed within a few hours of it hitting the site, and we’re sorry that it happened.

The Finding team is working closely with the Stores team to increase the value of eBay Stores and the Store Inventory listing format.

Regards, Josh

eBay Finding
Jacque
eBay Product Management

eBay Favoring Express over Store Listings?

eBay Favoring Express over Store Listings?
Originally Posted Apr-30-07 10:51:58 PDT
http://blogs.ebay.com/world_securities/entry/eBay-Favoring-Express-over-Store-Listings/_W0QQidZ199503010

Definite coordinated programming effort to end eBay Stores.
Best guess expect implementation of this gem after eBay Live.

See related blog:
The eBay Store Killoff Continues - Store Items NOT showing up at bottom of search like they are supposed to!
http://eventhorizon1984.typepad.com/event_horizon_1984_blog/2007/05/the_ebay_store_.html

eBay Favoring Express over Store Listings?
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m04/i30/s03

                               

By          Ina Steiner                                AuctionBytes.com              April 30,  2007

Reports are surfacing that eBay Store listings may get replaced in search results by eBay Express listings. Randy Smythe wrote on his blog that he believes eBay may be testing the display of eBay Express listings instead of eBay Store listings at the bottom of core search results and has a screenshot showing an example. ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo posted on his blog that eBay either has some unusual bugginess or is doing some A/B testing on store discoverability (http://digbig.com/4stah). He said sellers have been noticing reduced visibility of Stores in several places. eBay introduced eBay Express, a fixed-price marketplace, in June 2006 in the U.S. It launched in Germany in August and in the UK in October. eBay Express draws from fixed-price listings on eBay.com and eBay Stores, and allows shoppers buy from multiple sellers with one transaction with the use of a shopping cart. Some sellers are upset that eBay left out eBay Stores on the new header that displays at the top of every page, which does include links to "eBay Categories," eBay Motors, and eBay Express directly under the search box (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000358593). Storeowners are still sensitive about reduced exposure for Store listings after eBay's efforts last summer to shift listings from Store to core listings in an effort to "rebalance" the marketplace.

eBay - January Brown Bag Lunch, 1/30 at 12 noon PT

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

//

January Brown Bag Lunch, 1/30 at 12 noon PT
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000296935

storesteam@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-09-07 09:42 PST
Host: eBay Store Staff

Date: Tuesday, January 30th, 2007

Time: 12-1:30PM PT

Location: Stores Discussion Board

Hello and Happy New Year,

Please join us for our monthly discussion on the eBay Stores board.

We look forward to your participation and will attempt to answer all of your eBay Stores questions as quickly as possible. Based on your questions, we'll also offer tips to ensure that you're using Stores to maximize your business. We are committed to answering your questions as quickly as possible. In order to accomplish this equitably, we ask for your cooperation -- please limit your questions to two (2) per user.

We look forward to seeing you here at 12 noon PT on Tuesday, 1/30.

Regards, eBay Stores Team

Previous   1 | 2   Next See last post
48 replies     Date posted     Reply #

storesteam@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 11:53 PST     1 of 48
Hello,

Thank you for joining our first Brown Bag Lunch discussion of 2007. This is your opportunity to ask questions, and post your comments about Stores.

We're committed to answering all of your questions as quickly as possible. In order to accomplish this equitably, we ask for your cooperation -- please limit your questions to 2 per user.

All questions posted prior to 1:00 PDT will be addressed by one of the staff. Our responses to questions near the 1:30 mark will appear after the thread has been locked.

If this is your first time using the discussion boards, please see the following tutorial on how to post messages and view updates. http://forums.ebay.com/thread.jspa?threadID=200066500&tstart=0

We will be joined today by the regular members from the eBay Stores Product, Customer Service and Marketing Teams. We have also invited Chad from Internet Marketing group. Chad’s role focuses on Search Engine Optimization. He is the first of many monthly “special guests” that we will be inviting to the Stores BBL per your suggestion. If you have thoughts on what other eBay team should be invited to the Stores BBL, please send us an email at storesteam@ebay.com.

Last week, we asked for you to submit questions ahead of time for the BBL. The most common question asked was:

Q: When will Stores Markdown Manager be available?

A: Thank you for your question. We are very excited for this feature. As Chris and Lori mentioned in their post we will be releasing Markdown Manager before April. Please stay tuned for an announcement and more details.

We will also be making some improvements to the Stores Merchandising Tools as well as launching a great Marketing Promotion to educate buyers on the benefits of shopping with eBay Stores sellers and then rewarding them for buying from an eBay Store seller. Stay tuned!

Again, thank you for joining us. We will be unlocking the thread shortly; we look forward to speaking with you!

Regards, eBay Stores Team.

minibeesknees  (533 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:07 PST     2 of 48
Is the back button broken or is this a permanent change?

darleneb@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:08 PST     3 of 48
Hi everyone,

I hope you all had a great holiday season! Given this is our first BBL of the New Year, we are interested in hearing how your holiday selling went. Did anyone try anything new (e.g. marketing, etc.) that helped them generate good results?

Best,
Darlene

beachcombers!  (4541 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:09 PST     4 of 48
            First, Welcome Lori and goodbye Chris! 

I'd like to know more about the Stores marketing that was mentioned in the Goodbye Chris, Hello Lori post.

Thanks!
Jody


Vote on my guides here.

storesteam@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:10 PST     5 of 48
Hi minibeesknees

Where exactly are you expieriencing this problem? In the View Item page, HP, ??

Stores Team

minibeesknees  (533 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:12 PST     6 of 48
It is not my browser, my computer, or my settings, and it is not necessary for me to delete cookies or clear my cache.

It is a common occurance, read the stores board...there are 25 complaints about it now.

minibeesknees  (533 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:14 PST     7 of 48
I notice it most when clicking on a store link of a seller after I have done a search in a category. You can't get back to the search results with the back button, you have to go back using history.

The back button problem is well-documented on every board. When going into a seller's listing then hitting the back button, the back button does not work. We've actually had buyers mention it to us.

Jody


Vote on my guides here.

darleneb@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:16 PST     9 of 48
beachcombers! (re: #4),

Thanks for attending and thanks for the question. In the next couple of weeks we’ll be launching a promotion that provides incentives to buyers if they shop with eBay Stores sellers. To be entered to win over $10,000 in daily prizes, buyers just need to register and then purchase an Auction-style, Fixed Price or Store Inventory item from an eBay Stores seller during the promotion period. We’re really excited about this not only because the prize level is so high, but also because we’ve secured some great spots to promote the event both onsite and in emails. When we get closer to launching the event we’ll provide more details as well as screenshots of all of the placements here on this board.

Best,
Darlene

minibeesknees  (533 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:16 PST     10 of 48
must be just you and I today Beach.

jakejake@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:18 PST     11 of 48
Hi. I'm trying to track down the Back button issue with the Search team. Can someone please post a couple of affected URLs? Thanks.

Jake Jake

minibeesknees  (533 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:18 PST     12 of 48
I'm glad you are excited...sounds like buyers will be getting get rich quick spam to me.

Stores are hidden...will they be more visible or is this just a way for ebay to sign up more newbies who never know how to find them anyway.

annapaw  (10591 )  View Listings | Report       Jan-30-07 12:19 PST       13 of 48
You tested a new display format in Stores. Is the testing completed? If so, do you have any information as to whether the new format will be implemented?

minibeesknees  (533 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:19 PST     14 of 48
Try the boards Jake Jake.

darleneb@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:20 PST     15 of 48
minibeesknees (re: #10) -- Yes, it is a bit quiet today, huh :)

Everyone,

I just wanted to provide a reminder to everyone that our guest today is Chad from eBay's Internet Marketing group. We view Chad as the in-house expert on Search Engine Optimization, so if you have any questions you'd like to run by him, please do so.

Best,
Darlene

loristoresteam@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:20 PST     16 of 48
beachcombers! (re: #4),

Thanks for your warm welcome! I'm really glad to be here.

Thanks also to you and all the other folks attending today. We appreciate hearing from you!

Lori

minibeesknees  (533 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:22 PST     17 of 48
Has it occured to you folks that your validity is in question and that most sellers consider this a waste of time? Merely a chance for you to give us canned answers, or no answers.

beachcombers!  (4541 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:24 PST     18 of 48
Darlene,

Thank you. That sounds great. I'd like to offer a suggestion. How about some prominent links to the Stores search along with showing buyers how to customize search results to show Store names.

Jake Jake,

Just do any general search click into an item, stay there a little bit then try to hit the back button to get back to the search. It works sometime, but more often than not you have to go to your history to get back or use the eBay link.

If you take a look at any of the boards, you will see tons of complaints about it.

When I first encountered it, I thought it ws malicious code until I saw that my items were doing it too.

Jody

darleneb@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:27 PST     19 of 48
minibeesknees (re: #12),

This promotion is really targeted at existing eBay buyers -- one of the key goals is to educate these buyers about why and how to shop with eBay Stores sellers. When all of our promotion landing pages launch in a couple of weeks, you’ll notice links to the below buyer-focused pages that highlight the benefits of shopping with Stores.

Why Shop with eBay Stores
http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/shop.html

How to Shop eBay Stores
http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/howtoshop.html

Overall, we believe this will benefit Stores owners both in the short-term and long-term.

Best,
Darlene

evan2@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:29 PST     20 of 48
Hi everyone,

Since its a bit quiet, I'll take some time to talk about the upcoming release of Markdown Manager.

Buyers love a Sale. Sellers can give them what they want with Markdown Manager.

Evan

jakejake@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:29 PST     21 of 48
Dear annapaw (re: 13),

Hi. I think you're referring to an updated display of search results (in Stores and elsewhere on the site) that would look a little snazzier and give buyers more useful information on the search results page (so they could do more evaluation before going to the View Item page). The testing is still going on, and we don't have a specific target timeline for the change. We want to be very sure that such a change would be a good thing, so we're taking our time. We'll let you know in advance of launching anything sitewide. I'm hopeful that this could be a significant improvement for buyers and Store sellers.

Thanks. Take care.

Jake Jake

bearman1904  (243 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:29 PST     22 of 48
Chad- I know very little about Search Engine Optimization. Can you give me a push in the right direction, beyond what I have already read in the Manage Your Store section? Can you please expand on that for a non-techie?

beachcombers!  (4541 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:31 PST     23 of 48
Another suggestion for the Stores Team...

I know that the boards can be brutal and you must dread coming here, even for the BBL. I think if some pinks had a regular presence of the boards, this would build some trust among boardies (though it would take some serious time).

People are harsh because they feel that you don't really care or you would be more involved. People feel that the BBL is done because you have to do it. I remember when you could actually get into a conversation with Store Board pinks. It felt like there was someone there listening. It doesn't feel like that anymore.

Jody


Vote on my guides here.

darleneb@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:32 PST     24 of 48
beachcombers! (re: 18),

Thanks for the suggestion – we can certainly look at adding that education to our “How to shop eBay Stores” page.

Best,
Darlene

minibeesknees  (533 )  View Listings | Report       Jan-30-07 12:33 PST       25 of 48
Is there any assurance that markdown manager will actually work without glitches, or will we be victims of beta testing where suddenly all our store items are purchased for pennies on the dollar because it didn't work right?

minibeesknees  (533 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:35 PST     26 of 48
vaporware

storesteam@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:35 PST     27 of 48
We would also like to introduce a new member to the Stores Marketing team. Please welcome Stinson. Stinson has been at eBay for over 1.5 years working in several groups such as Category Management and Site Experience.
Please welcome him to the Stores Community!

chadw@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:37 PST     28 of 48
            bearman1904 (re #22):

There are a few pages on the site that are meant to help you understand the basics of natural search and what tools you have at your disposal.
http://pages.ebay.com/education/SEO-eBay-Store/index.html

http://pages.ebay.com/education/SEO-best-practices/index.html

Beyond that, there are an infinite number of blogs, articles, etc., out on the web that can help you quickly understand the basics. A few good websites to check out: http://searchenginewatch.com and http://seomoz.org are also good resources.

Hope this helps,

ChadW

evan2@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:37 PST     29 of 48
            Hi Minibeesknees,

I appreciate your concern, but I assure you that this new feature has been tested thoroughly.

With this feature you will be able to select Fixed Price listings individually or in bulk, and markdown the prices. The savings will then be displayed to buyers.



-Evan

annapaw  (10591 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:40 PST     30 of 48
Are you at liberty to give some information as to what improvements we will see with the new Stores Merchandising Tools?

Welcome Stinson!

stinson@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:40 PST     31 of 48
Hello eBay Stores Sellers,

Happy New Years! I am thrilled to have been given the opportunity to work closely with the Stores community to help grow your business. As Chris and Lori have mentioned in past posts we have some exciting new features and marketing programs planned for eBay Stores in 2007. I look to forward to working with you all this year.

Best regards,
Stinson

beachcombers!  (4541 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:46 PST     32 of 48
            Will the Markdown Manager be available for third party listing software, Marketworks specifically?


Welcome Stinson.  We hope to see more of you!

Jody


Vote on my guides here.

evan2@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:47 PST     33 of 48
            Re: Post 30

Hi Annapaw,

I appreciate the question. One of the things that you will see with the lauch of new Stores Merchandising Tools will be Stores Promotion Boxes that are more attractive to buyers. Other than that- my lips are sealed!


Evan

darleneb@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:48 PST     34 of 48
beachcombers! (re: #23),

Thank you for this feedback – I have seen this sentiment expressed on this board and have also heard it first-hand when speaking to sellers. I want to emphasize that we host these BBLs because they give us a great opportunity to interact with our Community – we’ll always keep these on the calendar.

Now getting back to your suggestion, although this is never a popular answer, I have to again emphasize while we do read the threads on the boards each day, we don’t always have the time to respond because we spend the majority of our time working on activities such as improving the product, marketing eBay Stores, developing educational resources, fixing bugs, conducting research with users, etc.

The purpose of the discussion boards is to provide users with a vehicle to network with other eBay users. If there is a particular comment or question that needs to be addressed, we encourage you to send an email to storesteam@ebay.com and a team member will respond.

Best,
Darlene

evan2@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:52 PST     35 of 48
Re: Post 32

Hi Beachcombers,

Markdown Manager is being released to 3rd party listing software, however it is up to that 3rd party to integrate with the tool.

While we don't expect these 3rd party tools to support Markdown Manager at launch, they should be fully capable to do so. It is up to Marketworks to give you a timeline.

Thanks for all of the great questions! Keep them coming!

-Evan

stinson@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 12:58 PST     36 of 48
Store Sellers,

Thank you all for making me feel welcome. I hope to see more of you this year as well.

Stinson

rejoicemusic  (2095 )  View Listings | Report       Jan-30-07 13:04 PST       37 of 48
Darlene - first before I forget, thanks for your assistance in getting my numbers corrected for the PS Challenge. I appreciate your assistance!

I think Jody has an EXCELLENT point and one that would be a stellar New Year's Resolution for the Stores Team - treat us Stores Owners the way we treat OUR customers - with prompt follow-up to questions, fast responses and sometimes just a bit of hand-holding!

Just about every Stores Workshop talks about these - treat the customer well, be responsive, make the extra effort. I would really appreciate seeing the Stores Team put forth that same sort of effort here on the Stores Board. Thanks!

And finally, just a bit of a "dig" - if the Stores Teams read the boards daily, why aren't you aware of this Back-button problem noted all over the place?

Patrice

Patrice

Diluting eBay's Magic since 2002!

evan2@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:08 PST     38 of 48
            Have you been using the new automated Seller Email Marketing yet?

Here's a tutorial: http://pages.ebay.com/stores/email-marketing/tutorial/index.html

Its a great way to reach out to your previous purchasers.

Also, with the launch of Markdown Manager, you will be able to not only schedule a Sale, but also a special "Sale" email to go out with it!



-Evan

bearman1904  (243 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:09 PST     39 of 48
I have a Basic Store Subscription. The only reason I would consider upgrading to a Featured Store level would be the eBay Header Reduction Feature to emphasize my own branding more. Is there a real reason why the Header Reduction feature cannot be included in the Basic Level? It is not an extra cost item and would allow smaller stores to "emphacize your own logo and branding" to quote the feature, and help us strenghen our own marketing and branding efforts. Can this be done to help us smaller guys out a little?

darleneb@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:11 PST     40 of 48
rejoicemusic (re: #37),

It’s good to hear from you – glad you joined us today. You’re welcome re: the PS Challenge issue you ran into. This case is a good example of a question that was sent into storesteam@ebay.com and resolved quickly. So again, while we will continue to read the boards, pressing questions and issues that need our attention should be send directly to the team.

Best,
Darlene

arty@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:15 PST     41 of 48
To follow up on what Evan said about Email Marketing,

Email Marketing is a great tool to drive traffic to your Store. Do you have subscribers? It is very easy to verify if you have subscribers. Simply log in to “My eBay” and click on the “Manage My Store” link on the left navigation bar. From here click on the “Email Marketing” link. The summary page will display the total number of subscribers to your mailing lists.

Plus remember…eBay gives you a 75% credit on your Final Value Fees when your Email Marketing efforts generate sales of your Store Inventory listings.

Regards,Arty

storesteam@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:16 PST     42 of 48
Hello there,

Please submit your questions and comments as soon as possible. We'll be locking this thread promptly at 1:30 PM PDT. Any questions that are posted close to the end of the session will responded to after the thread has been locked.

Thank you for joning,

eBay Stores Team

beachcombers!  (4541 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:18 PST     43 of 48
understand you all are busy. So are we. Perhaps you could rotate and have someone spend 30 minutes every day not only going through the threads, but also posting to some of them. I think it would go a long way towards a better working relationship with eBay's business partners (or whatever eBay wants to call sellers these days).

There are many new sellers and they want to get to "know" some pinks. Most new sellers are not even aware that pinks used to post regularly.

It's difficult to get useful feedback from people who feel ignored. I've met many of the Stores team and I know you are some great people. I also know that you have a difficult job. I think in the long run, more pink posting would make your job much easier.

Thanks!
Jody


Vote on my guides here.

jakejake@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:19 PST     44 of 48
Hi. I just spoke with the lead for the Search engineering team, and they are now investigating the Back button issue. I know that's not a final answer, but they are currently working on it.

We'll post to the Stores board when we know more and point you to the Search board for a deeper explanation.

Thanks.

Jake Jake

beachcombers!  (4541 ) View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:20 PST     45 of 48
            Arty,

WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?! Are you sure? It's cool it it's true, but it's my understanding that the 75% off referral credit ONLY works from links outside the eBay system.

Jody


Vote on my guides here.

storesteam@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:30 PST     46 of 48
Thank you for participating in this discussion. The thread is now locked to new posts.
We will be going through the entire thread to make sure all questions are answered. Please check back for our completed posts as well as a summary of the Janauary BBL.

Thank you again for joining us today. Stay tuned for details about the February Stores Brown Bag Lunch event.

Regards, eBay Stores Team

rilla@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 13:35 PST     47 of 48
bearman1904:
Re: Post #39. Glad to hear from you! You pose a very interesting question in regards to the value offering at the higher Stores subscription levels. We believe that as our Stores subscribers look to aggressively grow their business and upgrade to Featured and/or Anchor, they seek increased branding and thus require more customization in the look and feel of their storefront. The Featured and Anchor Store subscriptions offer this flexibility as part of the value of their subscription cost. We offer an increased number custom pages and this minimized header to help achieve this branding control.

In regards to helping our Basic Store subscribers to help strengthen their branding and marketing, we offer access to strong merchandizing tools such as Seller Email Marketing, which can effectively stamp your brand in sophisticated email campaigns. I would also suggest utilizing the Promo Flyer and printing a nice flyer with select items and including it in your packaging. Utilizing such tools can effectively resonate your Store’s brand with buyers. I would also suggest enabling the Listing Frame if you do not already do so. The Custom Listing Frame includes your Store logo and navigation elements in your View Item pages. This greatly increases the exposure of your logo and helps market your Store. Another very effective way to brand your store is to customize your End of Auction Emails and the Checkout Flow and Invoice, which is functionality available to all Stores subscribers.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

Rilla

arty@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-30-07 17:19 PST     48 of 48
            Hi dorothysew,

Your Stores Email Marketing effort do in fact qualify for Store Referral Credit. When you are creating your Email and you select the Custom template, you can then edit the HTML and insert the special referral code to the end of the specific listing. Example for an item page of one of your Store Inventory items

Referral code: ?refid=store

Example: http://cgi.ebay.com/Name-Of-Item_W0QQitemZ4560088038QQcategoryZ378QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem?refid=store

Please note that items that are automatically selected into the Emails are not qualified for the Store Referral Credit.

For more information on how to qualify for the Store Referral Credit please go to: http://pages.ebay.com/help/specialtysites/referral-credit-steps.html

Thanks,Arty

eBay - Search Engine Comments by eBay Express Employees

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

//

Search Engine Comments by eBay Express Employees
Posted Jan-21-07 19:09:24 PST Updated Jan-21-07 19:25:29 PST
http://blogs.ebay.com/world_securities/entry/eBay-Express-Search-Engine-Chung-Comments/_W0QQidZ111513010

eBay Express Brown Bag Lunch (May 5th, 12-1pm)

cmc@ebay.com May-05-06 12:22 PDT 33 of 125

Re: post #8

Hi biddy-biddy,

The eBay Express search engine looks at listings from eBay.com and puts them into eBay Express categories. Sometimes it puts a listing in multiple categories and sometimes it cannot find a suitable category. In the later case, the listing will show up in the Seller's Other Items but not in the general search.

We are working to make sure that eBay Express brings back the most relevant items to the buyer. The team is constantly reviewing cases where items are not being matched to a category and expanding the coverage of search results.

thanks,
Chung

eshmu@ebay.com May-05-06 12:45 PDT 81 of 125

Re: post # 67 --

Hi woadieland,

All listings on Express are eBay.com listings. So, those listings will appear in searches on both Express and eBay.com.

Of course, where and how often a particular listing appears in search may differ between the two sites -- since the two search engines are different.

Hope that helps,
Elliot.

cmc@ebay.com  May-05-06 12:47 PDT 88 of 125

Re: post #52

Hi biddy-biddy,

I can understand why it seems broken not to locate all listings from a category. As you pointed out, browsing eBay.com's brings back all items in an eBay.com category.

On eBay Express, we are trying to present the "best matching" items to buyers. A wide variety of factors from the listing, sellers and buyer are taken into account, including the category the item was listed. Sometimes an item does not meet those criteria, and as such, we have elected not to show those items in either search or browse.

thanks,
Chung

How are express items displayed in a random search?

cmc@ebay.com May-23-06 10:52 PDT 8 of 20

Hi blazebird,

Good question. As you infer correctly, there are a couple of big steps in figuring out how items are shown:
- figuring out what items to show
- figuring out what order to show those items:

(1) Figuring out what items to show

At a high level, here’s how we go about that:

• Match the buyer’s search to the most likely eBay Express results: if I do a search for “Apple 30GB video ipod”, the search engine assumes that I’m looking for a video iPod player (as opposed to iPod accessories) and automatically takes me to “Apple iPods & MP3 Players.”

• Interpret what the buyer is “really saying”: In the case of this search, the search engine interprets that what I want is an MP3 Player where the Brand = “Apple iPod”, Features = “Video Enabled”, Capacity = “30GB” and it displays ALL the relevant listings that match what I’m looking for, even if they don’t match the title exactly. The seller may have conveyed some of the key information (such as capacity) through item specifics or category structure, but the search engine indexes all that information, in addition to the title.

• Keep the category “clean”: The search engine excludes all items from the Apple iPod & MP3 Player category on eBay Express that don’t belong; i.e., arm bands, skins, etc. So a listing for “20GB iPod Video Case” selling for $4 won’t show up in my search results even though it would match a strict title search (and it may have been listed in the iPod category on eBay.com).

(2) Figuring what order to show those items

We then sort these items by "best matches" (default) or by "total cost".

The best match sort pulls in information from many areas to present shoppers with the most relevant results possible. Things we may look at include listing category, item title, item specifics, catalog information, search behavior by previous shoppers on the site, and the current shoppers search terms.

The total cost sort is based on the item price and the cost of the first shipping service that the seller provided.

eBay Express uses a different search technology from that on eBay.com. The reason for this is that we wanted to make it easier to find items on eBay Express for people who are not regular eBay buyers. We’ve heard lots of feedback for a long time about how it’s often difficult to find exactly what you’re looking for quickly on eBay.com.

There are pros and cons to that: some eBay buyers & sellers would say that the “thrill of the hunt” and the joy of discovery is part of the magic of eBay.com. And many of our passionate users have mastered complex search strings and Saved Searches that allow them to pinpoint exactly what they’re looking for in no time at all.

But eBay Express was designed to also attract people who are too overwhelmed or intimidated (or just plain busy) to sort through what they may see as irrelevant listings on eBay.com. So with this search engine, we want to
1) quickly get buyers to exactly what they’re looking for,
2) show them all the relevant items on the site, without having to know any fancy search strings, and
3) filter out listings that are not relevant.

We will continue to test and refine how search works on eBay Express throughout our preview period to ensure the best possible experience for our shoppers.

thanks,
Chung

cmc@ebay.com May-23-06 11:23 PDT 11 of 20

Re: post 9

Hi blazebird,

That's fair feedback. Right now, the search engine thinks that the "Carter Brown" books are the most relevant listings.

This would change over time, as the algorithm learns from buyer behavior and eBay continues to tweak the algorithm on how to sort items. An example of the former is when buyers who searches in Antiquarian & Collectibles Books ends buying other listings.

We haven't really marketed eBay Express to the buyers during the Preview period, and as such, you are not seeing great shifts in how items are sorted due to buyer feedback.

I'll also take this back to the team to see if we can moderate the skew in search results before eBay steps up marketing to the buyers.

thanks,
Chung

cmc@ebay.com May-23-06 11:31 PDT 12 of 20

Re: post 10

Hi chain_man,

When I search on "Apple 30GB video ipod" from the homepage, I'm taken to the "Apple iPod & MP3 Player Accessories" category. I'm also asked if that's not the right category with a short cut to "Apple iPods & MP3 Players".
http://search.express.ebay.com/__Apple-iPod-MP3-Player-Accessories_Apple-30GB-video-ipod_W0QQ_nkwZAppleQ2030GBQ20videoQ20ipodQQ_fxdZ1QQ_ptasZ1Q2cOtherQ5fMP3Q5fPlayersQ5e3

If I click through on that link, I'm taken to the MP3 category with the eBay Express intrepretation of the search (Brand = “Apple iPod”, Features = “Video Enabled”, Capacity = “30GB”).
http://search.express.ebay.com/__Apple-iPods-MP3-Players_Apple-30GB-video-ipod_W0QQ_nkwZAppleQ2030GBQ20videoQ20ipodQQ_fxdZ1QQ_stsZ1

BTW, the Express search engine recognizes that click as me saying that I wanted MP3 players instead of the MP3 accessories. It will use that as feedback in the future on what to show for similar searches.

thanks,
Chung

eBay - Opting out of eBay Express

Opting out of eBay Express
http://blogs.ebay.com/world_securities/entry/Opting-out-of-eBay-Express/_W0QQidZ101653010

//

Copy of original post by "herdof3cats".

Opting out of eBay Express
Posted Jan-07-07 19:37:50 PST
herdof3cats
Jan-05-07 10.57 PST
Store sales at a complete hault! Anyone else?

   

The theory is, opting in or out of eBay Express, putting your store on vacation for a few hours, or bulk editing a bunch of listings causes your items to all be re-indexed in eBay's database and this makes them show up again in Searches. I was a database administrator about 10 years ago and even though I'm sure eBay's database is very different from what I worked on the concepts are probably the same and the re-indexing theory makes a lot of sense to me. Accessing data for a search requires using some kind of index so the proper data can be found quickly, and when data changes as rapidly as eBay's does the index has to be updated pretty often. But updating the index takes CPU time and slows down the system so they probably only re-index each account's data when an event causes a major change to that account's data. Of course, without knowing more about eBay's software than I really want to, I can't say for sure if this is the case. But it sounds good, doesn't it?

//

//

//

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Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 3

eBay Express will be Officially* one year old this month.

eBay Corporate proclaims that eBay Express is a popular success.

    http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/32757
    eBay Q1 2007 Earnings Call Transcript
    April 18, 2007 5:00 pm ET

    "Lastly, eBay Express continues to experience increased adoption and growing success.
    For those of you who remember our eBay velocity statistics from the old days, on eBay Express
    an article of clothing sold every 67 seconds during the quarter, while a piece of jewelry sold
    every 2.5 minutes." Meg Whitman

But despite the glowing praise, and after a year of promotion to the world, is eBay Express really popular?

To answer this, let's use the free Alexa (www.alexa.com), and an Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite. And throw in some extras and ringers.

For the number of items on eBay Express, let's use eBay's assumption that everything on eBay.com is on eBay Express. We'll leave out the ongoing contribution from Half.com. We'll also leave out eBay Store counts because as of the April 2007 eBay began pursuing an aggressive policy of reducing the visability of eBay Stores products.

Ultimately, as can be seen from the charts below, the number of items available is not necessarily proportional to the number of potential buyers. Or as put by the old saw, 'size doesn't matter.'

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Reach:
Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. For example, this means if you took random samples of one million Internet users, on average 18,650 of them visit eBay.com

Page Views per user:
The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site.

Statistics quoted are as of 5 June 2007.

............................................... Page Views ...... Reach per
.............. Number of ... Traffic Rank ..... per user ........ million users
............... Listings .... Now . 3 mos AVG .. Now . 3 mos AVG . Now . 3 mos AVG
eBay ......... 11,629,538 ..... 20 ....... 17 . 15.7 .. 15.0 ... 18,650 .. 20,530
eBay Express . 11,629,538 . 55,637 ... 44,456 .. 1.6 ... 1.7 ....... 35 ...... 37
Bidville ...... 1,017,535 . 64,977 ... 81,030 . 13.8 .. 11.1 ...... 9.5 ..... 8.9
Yahoo ........... 718,801 ...... 1 ........ 1 . 13.8 .. 14.7 .. 247,999 . 255,100
eCRATER ......... 556,089 . 16,034 ... 13,431 .. 3.3 ... 5.5 ....... 80 ...... 79
uk.ebid.net ..... 513,749 . 29,019 ... 20,589 . 12.2 .. 14.4 ....... 25 .... 30.5
Blujay .......... 168,455 .... n/a .. 112,060 .. n/a ... 3.0 ........ 8 ...... 11
Tazbar .......... 156,856 .... n/a ... 44,425 .. n/a .. 17.5 ...... n/a .... 12.5
ePier ........... 127,203 .... n/a .. 126,320 .. n/a ... 2.0 ..... 12.5 ...... 11
Wagglepop ........ 97,357 . 63,829 .. 140,567 . 25.3 ... 5.8 ........ 7 ..... 6.7
AuctionQuests .... 56,961 .... n/a .. 102,366 .. n/a .. 14.0 ........ 7 ....... 6
HiBidder ......... 35,001 . 67,352 ... 52,895 . 22.7 .. 32.1 ........ 7 ..... 8.6
PlunderHere ...... 28,220 . 87,745 ... 69,225 . 12.7 .. 50.2 ........ 7 ..... 5.2
Overstock ........ 23,860 .. 1,156 .... 1,155 .. 6.9 ... 6.3 ...... 625 ..... 640
StuffPals ........ 18,401 .... n/a .1,159,728 .. n/a ... 4.0 ...... n/a ..... 0.4
WeBidz ........... 17,594 .... n/a ... 67,164 .. n/a .. 18.1 ........ 9 ....... 9
Lowbid ........... 12,397 .... n/a .. 318,140 .. n/a ... 6.6 ...... n/a ..... 2.3
Bid-Alot .......... 1,515 .... n/a .. 412,619 .. n/a ... 6.4 ...... n/a ..... 1.4
Ewaey ............... n/a .... n/a .. 731,762 .. n/a ... 6.4 ...... n/a ..... 0.9

Amazon .............. n/a ..... 32 ....... 30 .. 5.4 ... 5.8 ... 18,000 .. 17,130
BestBuy ............. n/a .... 509 ...... 528 .. 6.4 ... 5.8 .... 1,400 ... 1,345
Buy.com ............. n/a .. 1,155 .... 1,369 .. 3.5 ... 3.8 ...... 910 ..... 701
CompUSA ............. n/a .. 2,498 .... 2,035 .. 5.2 ... 4.8 ...... 360 ... 416.5
ProStores.com ....... n/a . 13,376 ... 11,021 .. 4.2 ... 5.2 ....... 90 .... 90.5 
WalMart ............. n/a .... 504 ...... 427 .. 6.3 ... 6.1 .... 1,400 ... 1,580

** Per conflict of interest notice, we have in the past or currently have items on or have bought from eBay, Bidville, Yahoo, eCRATER, Blujay, Wagglepop, Overstock, Ewaey, Amazon, BestBuy, Buy.com, CompUSA, WalMart. All shares of eBay stock were sold in the summer 2004.

Let's move measures of popularity, Page Views and Reach, leftward.

Remove Yahoo! as they are closing shop on auctions. And they're also Number 1.

Organizations have good and bad days. Let's use 3 months data to average this out. Round up everything. Order lists according to Page View and Reach.

3 Month Average
............. Page Views .. Reach per .. Number of
.............. per user . million users . Listings
PlunderHere .... 51 ............. 6 ....... 28,220
HiBidder ....... 33 ............. 9 ....... 35,001
WeBidz ......... 19 ............. 9 ....... 17,594
Tazbar ......... 18 ............ 13 ...... 156,856
eBay ........... 15 ........ 20,530 ... 11,629,538 <=
uk.ebid.net .... 15 ............ 31 ...... 513,749
AuctionQuests .. 14 ............. 6 ....... 56,961
Bidville ....... 12  ............ 9 .... 1,017,535
WalMart ......... 7 ......... 1,580 .......... N/A
Overstock ....... 7 ........... 640 ....... 23,860
Lowbid .......... 7 ............. 3 ....... 12,397
Bid-Alot ........ 7 ............. 2 ........ 1,515
Ewaey ........... 7 ............. 1 .......... N/A
Amazon .......... 6 ........ 17,130 .......... N/A
BestBuy ......... 6 ......... 1,345 .......... N/A
ProStores.com ... 6 ............ 91 .......... N/A <==
eCRATER ......... 6 ............ 79 ...... 556,089
Wagglepop ....... 6 ............. 7 ....... 97,357
CompUSA ......... 5  .......... 417 .......... N/A
Buy.com ......... 4 ........... 701 .......... N/A
StuffPals ....... 4 ............. 1 ....... 18,401
Blujay .......... 3 ............ 11 ...... 168,455
eBay Express .... 2 ............ 37 ... 11,629,538 <===
ePier ........... 2 ............ 11 ...... 127,203

eBay Express is virtually dead last in Page Views per user.  eBay should reconsider touting to the Press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

3 Month Average
.......... Reach per .... Page Views . Number of
......... million users ... per user .. Listings
eBay ......... 20,530 ....... 15 .... 11,629,538 <=
Amazon ....... 17,130 ........ 6 ........... N/A
WalMart ....... 1,580 ........ 7 ........... N/A
BestBuy ....... 1,345 ........ 6 ........... N/A
Buy.com ......... 701 .........4 ........... N/A
Overstock ....... 640 ........ 7 ........ 23,860
CompUSA ......... 417 ........ 5 ........... N/A
ProStores.com .... 91 ........ 6 ........... N/A <==
eCRATER .......... 79 ........ 6 ....... 556,089
eBay Express ..... 37 ........ 2 .... 11,629,538 <===
uk.ebid.net ...... 31 ....... 15 ....... 513,749
Tazbar ........... 13 ....... 18 ....... 156,856
Blujay ........... 11 ........ 3 ....... 168,455
ePier ............ 11 ........ 2 ....... 127,203
HiBidder .......... 9 ....... 33 ........ 35,001
WeBidz ............ 9 ....... 19 ........ 17,594
Bidville .......... 9 ....... 12 ..... 1,017,535
Wagglepop ......... 7 ........ 6 ........ 97,357
PlunderHere ....... 6 ....... 51 ........ 28,220
AuctionQuests ..... 6 ....... 14 ........ 56,961
Lowbid ............ 3 ........ 7 ........ 12,397
Bid-Alot .......... 2 ........ 7 ......... 1,515
Ewaey ............. 1 ........ 7 ........... N/A
StuffPals ......... 1 ........ 4 ........ 18,401
 
eBay Express is slowly sinking in this ranking.  In Reach per million users, eBay Express is less popular than Overstock.com, eCRATER, and it's sibling ProStores, and not much more popular than the smaller sites.

3 Month Average
............... Traffic .. Number of
................ Rank ..... Listings
eBay ............... 17 . 11,629,538 <=
Amazon ............. 30 ........ N/A
WalMart ........... 427 ........ N/A
BestBuy ........... 528 ........ N/A
Overstock ....... 1,155 ..... 21,877
Buy.com ......... 1,369 ........ N/A
CompUSA ......... 2,035 ........ N/A
ProStores.com .. 11,021 ........ N/A <==
eCRATER ........ 13,431 .... 556,089
uk.ebid.net .... 20,589 .... 513,749
Tazbar ......... 44,425 .... 156,856
eBay Express ... 44,456 . 11,629,538 <===
HiBidder ....... 52,895 ..... 35,001
WeBidz ......... 67,164 ..... 17,594
PlunderHere .... 69,225 ..... 28,220
Bidville ....... 81,030 .. 1,017,535
AuctionQuests . 102,366 ..... 56,961
Blujay ........ 112,060 .... 168,455
ePier ......... 126,320 .... 127,203
Wagglepop ..... 140,567 ..... 97,357
Lowbid ........ 318,140 ..... 12,397
Bid-Alot ...... 412,619 ...... 1,515
Ewaey ......... 731,762 ........ N/A
StuffPals ... 1,159,728 ..... 18,401
 
eBay Express has also been slowly sinking in the rankings. By Traffic Rank eBay Express is fair compared to other (substantially smaller) competing sites, including ProStores.

To comprehend the magnitude of these numbers, let's use Yahoo! and Google, in this last list.

3 Month Average
............ Reach per .. Page Views . Number of . Traffic
.......... million users . per user .. Listings ... Rank
Yahoo! ....... 255,100 ...... 15 ....... 718,801 ...... 1
Google ....... 239,450 ....... 7 .... EVERYTHING ...... 3
eBay .......... 23,765 ...... 15 .... 11,629,538 ..... 17
ProStores.com ..... 91 ....... 6 ........... N/A . 11,021
eBay Express ...... 37 ....... 2 .... 11,629,538 . 44,456

Is eBay Express leading the competition? According to the metrics, no.

Is eBay Express popular?

What do you think?

This article is a followup to:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular
• The Online Competition To eBay And Industry (Loss) Leader eBay Express
  

See also addendum:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2 Compete   

See also the post-Part 3 one year anniversary article:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 4 One Year Old

// 
//
//

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Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular, Part 2
Originally Posted Apr-01-07 11:59:16 PDT

eBay Express will be one year old this month. After a year of promotion to the world, is eBay Express popular?

To answer this, let's use the free Alexa (www.alexa.com), and an Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite (www.powersellersunite.com). And throw in some ringers.

For the number of items on eBay Express, let's use eBay's assumption that everything on eBay.com is on eBay Express. We'll leave out the ongoing contribution from Half.com.

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Reach:
Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. For example, this means if you took random samples of one million Internet users, on average 280,000 of them visit yahoo.com.

Page Views per user:
The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site.

............................................... Page Views ...... Reach per
.............. Number of ... Traffic Rank ..... per user ........ million users
............... Listings .... Now . 3 mos AVG .. Now . 3 mos AVG . Now . 3 mos AVG
eBay ......... 12,366,494 ..... 16 ....... 16 . 14.8 .. 15.3 ... 19,900 .. 23,765
eBay Express . 12,366,494 . 73,341 ... 23,794 .. 1.9 ... 1.7 ....... 25 ...... 77
Yahoo ......... 1,053,923 ...... 1 ........ 1 . 14.7 .. 15.3 .. 251,500 . 268,750
Bidville ...... 1,053,332 . 51,990 ... 87,695 . 10.8 ... 8.3 ....... 15 ..... 9.8
eCrater ......... 439,821 . 10,171 ... 17,892 .. 8.0 ... 5.7 ....... 80 .... 61.5
uk.ebid.net ..... 433,724 . 29,515 ... 12,988 . 21.6 .. 16.9 ....... 20 ...... 49
MightyBids ...... 273,710 .... n/a ... 70,427 .. n/a .. 10.7 ...... n/a ..... 9.9
Tazbar .......... 139,789 . 31,804 ... 34,355 . 21.9 .. 18.6 ....... 15 .... 16.5
Blujay .......... 134,206 .... n/a ... 95,174 .. n/a ... 3.9 ......10.5 .... 12.5
ePier ........... 128,551 . 67,963 .. 109,711 .. 6.2 ... 2.2 ....... 15 .... 13.5
Wagglepop ........ 97,894 .... n/a ... 73,537 .. n/a .. 15.7 ...... n/a ..... 9.7
AuctionQuests .... 46,855 .... n/a .. 106,312 .. n/a .. 21.5 ...... n/a ..... 5.4
Bid-Alot ......... 43,658 .... n/a .. 183,398 .. n/a ... 3.2 ...... n/a ..... 6.4
HiBidder ......... 24.979 . 46,034 ... 63,954 . 31.5 .. 32.5 ........ 9 ..... 7.6
TheAuctionMan .... 23,389 .... n/a ...... n/a .. n/a ... n/a ...... n/a ..... n/a
Overstock ........ 21,877 ...1,207 ...... 761 .. 5.7 ... 6.5 ...... 650 ..... 897
WeBidz ........... 21,065 . 97,546 ... 61,318 .. 6.5 .. 14.0 ........ 9 ...... 12
Lowbid ........... 20,690 .... n/a .. 318,140 .. n/a ... 6.6 ...... n/a ..... 2.3
whaBAM ........... 20,347 .... n/a ...... n/a .. n/a ... n/a ...... n/a ..... n/a
PlunderHere ...... 17,481 . 94,519 ... 92,601 .. 111 .. 38.4 ...... 2.5 ..... 4.4
Amazon .............. N/A ..... 31 ....... 26 .. 5.6 ... 6.0 ... 17,000 .. 19,865
BestBuy ............. N/A .... 540 ...... 378 .. 5.3 ... 5.9 .... 1,350 ... 1,745
CompUSA ............. N/A .. 2,465 .... 1,381 .. 4.4 ... 4.9 ...... 385 ... 613.5
ProStores.com ....... N/A . 10,794 .... 9,114 .. 4.3 ... 6.2 ...... 105 ..... 104

Let's move measures of popularity, Page Views and Reach, leftward.

Remove Yahoo! The site measures for Yahoo! include listings and everything Yahoo! They are Number One, so let's move on.

Organizations have good and bad days. Let's use 3 months data to average this out. Round up everything. Order lists according to Page View and Reach.

3 Month Average
............. Page Views .. Reach per .. Number of
.............. per user . million users . Listings
PlunderHere .... 39 ............. 5 ....... 17,481
HiBidder ....... 33 ............. 8 ....... 24,979
AuctionQuests .. 22 ............. 6 ....... 46,855
Tazbar ......... 19 ............ 17 ...... 139,789
uk.ebid.net .... 17 ............ 49 ...... 433,724
eBay ........... 16 ........ 23,765 ... 12,366,494 <=
Wagglepop ...... 16 ............ 10 ....... 97,894
WeBidz ......... 14 ............ 12 ....... 21,065
MightyBids ..... 11 ............ 10 ...... 273,710
Bidville ........ 8  ............ 10 .... 1,053,332
Overstock ....... 7 ........... 897 ....... 21,877
ProStores.com ... 7 ........... 104 .......... N/A <==
Lowbid .......... 7 ............. 3 ....... 20,690
Amazon .......... 6 ........ 19,865 .......... N/A
BestBuy ......... 6 ......... 1,745 .......... N/A
eCrater ......... 6 ............ 62 ...... 439,821
CompUSA ......... 5  .......... 614 .......... N/A
Blujay .......... 4 ............ 13 ...... 134,206
Bid-Alot ........ 4 ............. 7 ....... 43,658
ePier ........... 3 ............ 15 ...... 128,551
eBay Express .... 2 ............ 77 ... 12,366,494 <===
whaBAM ........ n/a ........... n/a ....... 20,347
TheAuctionMan . n/a ........... n/a ....... 23,389

eBay Express is virtually dead last in Page Views per user.  eBay should reconsider touting to the Press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

3 Month Average
.......... Reach per .... Page Views . Number of
......... million users ... per user .. Listings
eBay ......... 23,765 ....... 16 .... 12,366,494 <=
Amazon ....... 19,865 ........ 6 ........... N/A
BestBuy ....... 1,745 ........ 6 ........... N/A
Overstock ....... 897 ........ 7 ........ 21,877
CompUSA ......... 614 ........ 5 ........... N/A
ProStores.com ... 104 ........ 7 ........... N/A <==
eBay Express ..... 77 ........ 2 .... 12,366,494 <===
eCrater .......... 62 ........ 6 ....... 439,821
uk.ebid.net ...... 49 ....... 17 ....... 433,724
Tazbar ........... 17 ....... 19 ....... 139,789
ePier ............ 15 ........ 3 ....... 128,551
Blujay ........... 13 ........ 4 ....... 134,206
WeBidz ........... 12 ....... 14 ........ 21,065
Wagglepop ........ 10 ....... 16 ........ 97,894
MightyBids ....... 10 ....... 11 ....... 273,710
Bidville ......... 10 ........ 8 ....... 992,936
HiBidder .......... 8 ....... 33 ........ 24,979
Bid-Alot .......... 7 ........ 4 ........ 43,658
AuctionQuests ..... 6  ....... 22 ........ 46,855
PlunderHere ....... 5 ....... 39 ........ 17,481
Lowbid ............ 3 ........ 7 ........ 20,690

In Reach per million users, eBay Express is less popular than Overstock.com and it's sibling ProStores, and not much more popular than the smaller sites.

3 Month Average
............... Traffic .. Number of
................ Rank ..... Listings
eBay ............... 16 . 12,366,494 <=
Amazon ............. 26 ........ N/A
BestBuy ........... 378 ........ N/A
Overstock ......... 761 ..... 21,877
CompUSA ......... 1,381 ........ N/A
ProStores.com ... 9,114 ........ N/A <==
uk.ebid.net .... 12,988 .... 433,724
eCrater ........ 17,892 .... 439,821
eBay Express ... 23,794 . 12,366,494 <===
Tazbar ......... 34,355 .... 139,789
WeBidz ......... 61,318 ..... 21,065
HiBidder ....... 63,954 ..... 24,979
MightyBids ..... 70,427 .... 273,710
Wagglepop ...... 73,537 ..... 97,894
Bidville ....... 87,695 .. 1,053,332
PlunderHere .... 92,601 ..... 17,481
Blujay ......... 95,174 .... 134,206
AuctionQuests . 106,312 ..... 46,855
ePier ......... 109,711 .... 128,551
Bid-Alot ...... 183,398 ..... 43,658
Lowbid ........ 318,140 ..... 20,690

By Traffic Rank eBay Express is number 4 compared to other (substantially smaller) competing sites.

To comprehend the magnitude of these numbers, let's use Yahoo! and Google, in this last list.

3 Month Average
............ Reach per .. Page Views . Number of . Traffic
.......... million users . per user .. Listings ... Rank
Yahoo! ....... 268,750 ...... 16 ..... 1,053,923 ...... 1
Google ....... 252,000 ....... 7 .... EVERYTHING ...... 3
eBay .......... 23,765 ...... 16 .... 12,366,494 ..... 16
ProStores.com .... 104 ....... 7 ........... N/A .. 9,114
eBay Express ...... 77 ....... 2 .... 12,366,494 . 23,794

Is eBay Express leading the competition? According to the metrics, no.

Is eBay Express popular?

What do you think?

This article is a followup to:

• Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular

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Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular

Urban Myth or Fact? eBay Express Is Popular
Originally Posted Feb-10-07 16:18:43 PST

While reading the thread WOW!  Opting out of ebay express really boosted our biz I was reminded that eBay has taken the stance that topics negatively impacting the public relations image of eBay Express are "Urban Myths."

Those topics are well documented, with evidence presented by reputable Sellers. In reality the "Urban Myth" is eBay has provided facts to support their suppositions; none have been presented.  But it is eBay's playground, and they are entitled to pout in public about the bad press directed toward eBay Express.

Today let us reverse the table, and look into eBay's contention that eBay Express is a popular buying site. Is this fact or "Urban Myth"?

eBay Express launched in April 2006. Eight months later eBay's official comment was:

"I can't comment on individual seller experiences but I'd say we're certainly in the early days of the site. It's a new channel and we're seeing traffic grow organically"
Lara Housser, Director of eBay Express, U.S.
December 2006

Less enthusiastic comments:

"We've certainly not seen the results we and other sellers anticipated, with sales and traffic generation under 1% of overall eBay activity."
David Yaskulka, marketing chair The Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PeSA)
November 2006

http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-ebay1225,0,2193425.story?coll=bal-business-indepth
"And while eBay's main auction site attracted more visits than any other online retailer in November, eBay Express was at No. 87 on the list of top shopping and classified sites, according to research firm Hitwise Pty. Ltd."

eBay presents this convoluted definition of popular, "historical buyer behavior on the site for similar searches." In normal speaking terms, popular = lots of hits.

For today's demonstration we'll use the free tool Alexa (www.alexa.com), and the Auction Site list from Power Sellers Unite (www.powersellersunite.com).

We have no financial stake or affiliation with either organization. The Power Sellers Unite list is commonly used. Alexa is being used because it is free.

We will use eBay's assumption that everything on eBay.com is available on eBay Express. The separate ebid.net sites are considered one collective. No Google, as Google includes everything. And throw in some ringers.

Here are the terms and the raw data chart.

Reach:
Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that if you took random samples of one million Internet users, you would on average find that 280,000 of them visit yahoo.com.

Page Views per user:
The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site.




................................................. Page Views ........ Reach per
............... Number of ... Traffic Rank ...... per user .......... million users
................ Listings .. Today . 3 mos AVG . Today . 3 mos AVG . Today . 3 mos AVG
eBay .......... 14,497,600 ..... 16 ...... 13 ..  15.5 .. 15.7 ..... 23,650 .. 27,560
eBay Express .. 14,497,600 . 18,626 .. 24,005 .... 2.4 ... 1.7 ......... 90 .... 81.5
**.ebid.net .... 1,138,347 . 29,515 .. 12,988 ... 21.6 .. 16.9 ......... 20 ...... 49
uk.ebid.net ...... 363,355
us.ebid.net ...... 270,653
ca.ebid.net ...... 253,164
au.ebid.net ...... 251,175
Yahoo .......... 1,095,626 ...... 1 ....... 1 ... 15.7 .. 15.9 .... 273,000 . 271,900
Bidville ......... 992,936 . N/A ..... 60,082 .... 7.0 ... 6.2 ........ 5.5 .... 16.5
MightyBids ....... 388,472 . N/A ..... 30,944 .... 1.8 .. 15.4 ......... 11 ...... 22
eCrater .......... 383,571 . 25,057 .. 17,240 .... 5.1 ... 6.0 ......... 45 .... 61.5
Tazbar ........... 132,712 . 54,683 .. 34,055 ... 18.8 .. 14.9 ......... 11 .... 20.5
ePier ............ 128,551 . N/A ..... 96,716 .. . 1.0 ... 3.3 ........ 5.5 ...... 15
Blujay ........... 122,781 . N/A ..... 74,682 .. . 4.8 ... 4.7 ......... 11 .... 15.5
Wagglepop ........ 100,696 . N/A ..... 53,683 ... N/A ... 18.8 ..... N/A ......... 13
TheAuctionMan ..... 24,394 . N/A ..... N/A ...... N/A ..... N/A .... N/A ...... N/A
Overstock ......... 23,769 .... 802 ..... 404 .... 7.3 ... 7.0 ........ 865 ... 1,590
Bid-Alot .......... 22,304 . N/A ..... 71,955 ... N/A .... 8.7 ..... N/A ....... 11.5
HiBidder .......... 21,821 . N/A ..... 88,965 ... 71.0 .. 27.6 ........ 2.5 .... 6.25
whaBAM ............ 20,566 . N/A .. 1,440,270 ... N/A .... 2.3 ..... N/A ........ 0.2
WeBidz ............ 20,161 . N/A ..... 45,798 .... 2.2 .. 19.4 ......... 15 .... 13.5
Lowbid ............ 15,667 . N/A .... 313,279 ... N/A .... 6.2 ..... N/A ........ 2.8
Amazon ............... N/A .... 26 ....... 21 .... 6.2 ... 6.8 ..... 19,600 .. 24,840
BestBuy .............. N/A ... 433 ...... 241 .... 6.1 ... 6.3 ...... 1,650 ... 2,650
CompUSA .............. N/A . 1,889 .... 1,066 .... 5.1 ... 5.0 ........ 480 ... 816.5
ProStores.com ........ N/A . 8,018 .... 8,150 .... 6.9 ... 5.7 ........ 115 ..... 125

Let's clean and reduce this pile of numbers.

This article is about popular, and we'll move measures of popularity, Page Views and Reach, leftward. Also eBay considers these measure of utmost importance. Page Views because the more pages viewed, the more advertising viewed. And Reach because you want a large audience products and spam.

Yahoo! will be removed. The site measures for Yahoo! include listings and everything Yahoo! They are Number One, so let's move on.

Overstock will be removed. Believe the statistics are skewed as they may reflect the viewing a automobile pileup psychology.

Organizations have good and bad days. As a running average is a good measure of performance, we'll remove the Today columns. Let's get rid of decimals and round up everything. Order lists according to Page View and Reach. And let's add statistic change or growth as a percentage.


3 Month Average
............. Page Views ... Reach per .... Number of .... Traffic
.............. per user .. million users ... Listings ..... Rank
HiBidder ....... 28 (+222%) ...... 7 ......... 21,821 .... 88,965
WeBidz ......... 20 (-21%) ...... 14 ......... 20,161 .... 45,798
Wagglepop ...... 20 (+26%) ...... 13 ........ 100,696 .... 53,683
ebid.net ....... 17 (-4%) ....... 49 ...... 1,138,347 .... 12,988
eBay ........... 16 (+1%) ... 27,560 ..... 14,497,600 ........ 13 <===
MightyBids ..... 16 (+107%) ..... 22 ........ 388,472 .... 30,944
Tazbar ......... 16 (-28%) ...... 21 ........ 132,712 .... 34,055
Bid-Alot ........ 9 (-29%) ...... 12 ......... 22,304 .... 71,955
Amazon .......... 7 (-3%) ... 24,840 ............ N/A ........ 21
BestBuy ......... 7 (+5%) .... 2,650 ............ N/A ....... 241
Bidville ........ 7 (-42%) ...... 17 ........ 992,936 .... 60,082
ProStores.com ... 6 (+16%) ..... 125 ............ N/A ..... 8,150
eCrater ......... 6 (-15%) ...... 62 ........ 383,571 .... 17,240
CompUSA ......... 5 (+4%) ...... 817 ............ N/A ..... 1,066
Blujay .......... 5 (+10%) ...... 16 ........ 122,781 .... 74,682
ePier ........... 4 (-11%) ...... 15 ........ 128,551 .... 96,716
whaBAM .......... 3 (-39%) ....... 1 ......... 20,566 . 1,440,270
Lowbid .......... 3 (+44%) ....... 7 ......... 15,667 ... 313,279
eBay Express .... 2 (-19%) ...... 82 ..... 14,497,600 .... 24,005 <===
TheAuctionMan . N/A ............ N/A ......... 24,394 ....... N/A

In Page Views per user eBay Express is virtually dead last.  eBay may wish to reconsider it's touting to the press that Page Views is an all important statistic of site performance.

3 Month Average
.............. Reach per .... Page Views .. Number of .... Traffic
............. million users ... per user ... Listings ..... Rank
eBay .......... 27,560 (-11%) ... 16 ..... 14,497,600 ........ 13 <===
Amazon ........ 24,840 (-13%) .... 7 ............ N/A ........ 21
BestBuy ........ 2,650 (+36%) .... 7 ............ N/A ....... 241
CompUSA .......... 817 (-1%) ..... 5 ............ N/A ..... 1,066
ProStores.com .... 125 (0%) ...... 6 ............ N/A ..... 8,150
eBay Express ...... 82 (+8%) ..... 2 ..... 14,497,600 .... 24,005 <===
eCrater ........... 62 (+51%) .... 6 ........ 383,571 .... 17,240
ebid.net .......... 49 (-10%) ... 17 ...... 1,138,347 .... 12,988
MightyBids ........ 22 (-22%) ... 16 ........ 388,472 .... 30,944
Tazbar ............ 21 (+173%) .. 15 ........ 132,712 .... 34,055
Bidville .......... 17 (-38%) .... 7 ........ 992,936 .... 60,082
Blujay ............ 16 (-3%) ..... 5 ........ 122,781 .... 74,682
ePier ............. 15 (-12%) .... 4 ........ 128,551 .... 96,716
WeBidz ............ 14 (-33%) ... 20 ......... 20,161 .... 45,798
Wagglepop ......... 13 (-32%) ... 20 ........ 100,696 .... 53,683
Bid-Alot .......... 12 (-12%) .... 9 ......... 22,304 .... 71,955
HiBidder ........... 7 (0%) ..... 28 ......... 21,821 .... 88,965
Lowbid ............. 7 (-47%) .... 3 ......... 15,667 ... 313,279
whaBAM ............. 1 (-91%) .... 3 ......... 20,566 . 1,440,270
TheAuctionMan .... N/A ......... N/A ......... 24,394 ....... N/A

In Reach per million users, eBay Express is more "popular" than the other smaller auction sites.

By Traffic Rank eBay Express is number 3 when included with the smaller auction sites.

eBay .......... 27,560 (-11%) ... 16 (+1%) ..... 14,497,600 ........ 13
eBay Express ...... 82 (+8%) ..... 2 (-19%) .... 14,497,600 .... 24,005

Compared to the eBay.com Mothership, eBay Express performance is abysmal.


When compared to the other auction web sites, is "eBay Express popular" a myth?

Leading in the Reach per million does mean popular.  But fact is these are small numbers when compared to eBay.com. Out of 1 million (1,000,000) users, 82 will view eBay Express, followed by 62, 49, etc. views for the competition. If eBay considers an 82 a brilliant success, a 62 share is not that bad of an audience.

Were the statistics for Overstock.com valid, throw them back in and eBay Express loses. On all fronts.

So ... yes and no.

eBay Express will be 1 year old in April 2007. Let's revisit the Myth question then.

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From eBay Express Forum - Opting in/out of Express-Does it help YOU? - Adam Nash

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

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From eBay Express Forum
Opting in/out of Express-Does it help YOU?
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?messageID=2005496059&forumID=2000000000&x#2005496059

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anash@ebay.com        Jan-13-07 18:02 PST       5 of 34
Hi reliablecopy,

Can you send me the details of the date you opted out, and how you are measuring your pageviews before and after? I want to have some people here look at your situation in particular, since your experience seems to be counter to the majority of cases that we've studied to date.

It would also be helpful to look at other activities that might have influenced page views around the same time (seasonality, increased number of listings, different types of products, increase use of feature placements, advertisement for your store, etc).

Obviously if there was a magic feature at eBay to double the sales of every seller, we would have made it mandatory. To date, every investigation into this issue has shown that there is no positive effect to opting out of eBay Express.

You can email me your information directly. If there is some problem here, your help could be crucial to us fixing it for everyone.

Thank you in advance.
Adam


Adam Nash
Director of Product Management, eBay Express
anash@ebay.com

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anash@ebay.com View Listings | Report     Jan-14-07 10:35 PST     6 of 34
Hi polywater,

I appreciate your point of view on this issue, and I can understand some frustration around this complicated issue. Let me see if I can clarify a few things here.

We have investigated this issue exhaustively several times. Each time we have investigated this issue, we have looked at the overall performance of *every* seller that has opted out from eBay Express, not just the small number who have posted on the boards.

You must understand, we take this issue extremely seriously. If there was any evidence that eBay Express was hurting the business of sellers on eBay.com, we would work to fix it immediately.

Every time we have investigated the issue, the result has been the same: on average, sellers who opt out of eBay Express see a slight decrease in sales over the following weeks.

Individual cases can vary for a very large number of reasons - a seller who opts out at Thanksgiving will report a huge increase in sales next week, but that is because the overall site sees a huge increase running up to the holiday season. But a large majority of sellers who didn't opt out of eBay Express also see the same increase, because the increase comes from seasonality, not the preference.

Other times, sellers will change other parts of their business at the same time, clouding the issue. Some will start listing different items, or generate more listings. Others will start putting more listings in auction format, which gets more page views, that store inventory format. Others will be more aggressive about email marketing, or working on off-eBay marketing. They will change their prices, or their listing templates.

Let's not ignore the most important issue here, however, which is that eBay has every interest in seeing the business of its sellers improve. If there is a reason why being included on eBay Express might be hurting a sellers business, we would like to know about it so we can fix it. We have been soliciting examples from people on this issue for a long time now, hoping to find some evidence of how being included on eBay Express might change the performance of an eBay business. Unfortunately, to date, no such evidence has been provided or found.

To date, there has been no verified example of how being included on eBay Express changes the exposure of an existing eBay seller.

Being included on eBay Express does not change the way your listings appear on eBay.com. Sellers on eBay Express get increased exposure on third party search engines, increasing the number of times your pages show up in natural search.

The traffic rank numbers you cite are from a third party, and have not been verified by eBay. The only data that eBay has revealed to date has been the announcement by Meg, on the eBay Q3 2006 earnings call, that eBay buyers who also shop eBay Express spend 25% more on eBay than their counterparts who only shop eBay.com.

Our goal on eBay Express is to delight buyers who are looking for a convenient, fast way to shop some of the great fixed-price items available from the eBay community.

I hope some of the information above is useful. If you, or anyone else, has an example of how inclusion on eBay Express is changing the way their listings appear to buyers on eBay.com IN ANY WAY, please email me directly.

Thanks again.
Adam


Adam Nash
Director of Product Management, eBay Express
anash@ebay.com

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anash@ebay.com View      Jan-15-07 12:36 PST     7 of 34
Hi polywater,

Wow... and I thought my posts were long. :)

I want to first thank you for the kind words about me. And I can sense your frustration in terms of wanting to know some of the more specific details about the analysis, and about Express.

Unfortunately, at this time, you are going to have to trust the fact that what I have been posting is the truth, and that the numbers accurately reflect what I've reported.

eBay is a public company, and as a result, the company has to be very careful about when and how it releases key metrics related to the business. eBay is currently in a quiet period now, before the Q4 earnings release, so releasing additional data now is out of the question.

I cannot give you an exact number of sellers that we analyzed. I can verify for you that it is a relatively small number, but only because so very few sellers have actually opted out of eBay Express. I can assure you the number isn't 1 or 2, though, and it is more than a thousand.

I agree with you completely about the need for eBay Express to reach and market to buyers to make eBay Express successful. As part of launching the new site, eBay has been trying out many different marketing channels (TV, print, online ads, paid search, email, etc) to reach buyers. We've learned a lot about the pros and cons of each for eBay Express, and we're putting those learnings to work in our plans for 2007.

I also want to clarify the 25% number, just for the record. That refers to buyers who shop BOTH eBay.com & eBay Express vs. buyers who only shop eBay.com.

The significance of that number is largely to show the benefits of eBay offering multiple ways for buyers to be successful. The more opportunities we offer to buyers, the more of their shopping they choose to do with eBay.

There is no question that eBay Express is currently quite a bit smaller than eBay.com - with billions of dollars in sales per quarter, it would be impossible not be small in comparison, especially in the first six months of launching a new site!

That is the reason why we designed eBay Express to be automatic, and not require additional effort from eBay sellers. We continue to believe that eBay sellers should focus their efforts and building and running their business on eBay.com. All qualified sellers and listings will appear on eBay Express with no cost, and no effort.

eBay Express sales come through transparently the same as any eBay.com sale, so there is no additional work there either. In fact, they are so transparent that one of our larger problems has been building functionality so that sellers know when a sale does come from eBay Express!

From reading your post, it seems like we agree here on most points. Once again, I understand the frustration and the desire to see all of the data. I hope some of the above helps, however, to explain how we're looking at things.

Take care.
Adam


Adam Nash
Director of Product Management, eBay Express
anash@ebay.com

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anash@ebay.com        Feb-15-07 10:37 PST       21 of 34
Hi fairly_dinkum,

Whew is right! What a post. And I thought I had a reputation for the long ones.

First, let me just say that I really appreciate the sentiment of your post, particularly your faith in the fact that we are all working to make eBay sellers successful, on eBay & eBay Express.

When we look at statistics here at eBay, you are 100% correct that it is difficult. If you look too much at the aggregated, large volumes of data, it can hide problems that might be happening to very small groups. However, if you look too close at small groups, there is always a danger of missing the big picture, and thus missing the cause of an issue. It's a balancing act.

We work very hard here to look at any problem like this from many angles, in order to try and best assess the issue and find solutions to problems. That's why I always am happy to get email from people about specific examples of a problem. Once we have a reproducible example, we can then find the cause and fix it.

In terms of hardware, eBay spends hundreds of millions of dollars on operations every year, and that number has increased every year as eBay itself has grown. It's one of the things that eBay, as a public company, reports quarterly. We have huge data centers, including new facilities that we have just opened in the past two years.

The best way to make eBay better is to work together. Very often, it is a single email from a single concerned seller that will help "crack the case" for us for finding and fixing problems.

Thanks for the post.  Take care.
Adam


Adam Nash
Director of Product Management, eBay Express
anash@ebay.com

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anash@ebay.com        Feb-15-07 10:41 PST       22 of 34
Hi carlmarxx,

The Final Value Fees (FVF) on eBay Express are 100% identical to the fees charges on eBay.com.

- Adam


Adam Nash
Director of Product Management, eBay Express
anash@ebay.com

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From eBay Express Forum - Yes or No on Opting-Out?

For new newsgroup readers, these are not our forum posts. Any comments to the posters below should be made on the applicable thread, marked in bold below.

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From eBay Express Forum
Yes or No on Opting-Out?
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?messageID=1007221719&forumID=2000000000&x#1007221719

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kin**        Nov-30-06 12:16 PST
Hi everyone, I have read through the boards trying to come up with an answer on to opt-out or not. The discusion is scattered in many different places. Therefore I started this thread.

Does it make sense to? Does it somehow make magic appear in your store? Or visa-versa? Thanks!

Hal.

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8 replies     Date posted     Reply #

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wea**     Dec-02-06 09:27 PST     1 of 8
I opted out because the rules of Express say you MUST accept unconfirmed addresses. Who in their right mind does that for large purchases?

Express is a scammer's wet dream.
weaselemu
It's called a
Tweedle Beetle Puddle Paddle Battle

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cockytoo  (25  Listings | Report     Dec-02-06 13:05 PST     2 of 8
Some have said 'opting out' will serve to include their store items on google, etc. once again. For some reason, once listed in Express they become 'invisible' on the net. They are likely invisible on Express, too.....unless they are deemed 'popular' by eBay and the seller rating (secret criteria) is acceptable for them to be included in the new non-keyword driven "smart search" (which remains quite stupid if you've ever tried it).

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kin**     Dec-02-06 13:12 PST     3 of 8
Interesting about Google... I use Google Base to make sure my items are there. I wonder if it really makes a difference with EE?

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cockytoo  (25 )     Dec-02-06 16:06 PST     4 of 8
google your stuff by keyword...see what shows up I suppose.

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stuff-4-me  (29 )      Dec-02-06 21:24 PST     5 of 8
OUT.

1) I opted out, my sales went up.
2) The Google "double-dipping" penalty disappears and your stuff shows higher in Google.
3) The "smart search" in eE won't show my items anyway. Unless you have a popular item, in the right category, and if that item is new - eE "disadvantages" your item in its search. It's true - ask a Pink (OK, see if they'll be honest with you.).

OUT.

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anash@ebay.com View     Dec-07-06 13:42 PST     6 of 8
Hi kingsleyhal,

There is a post on this topic at the top of the eBay Express board from May which still applies:
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000289528&tstart=0&mod=1148576936705

We have researched this thoroughly, and we've had direct discussions with third party search engines on this topic.

To dispell some myths that continue to float around:
1) Opting out of eBay Express by itself will not increase your sales. On average, actually, sellers who opt out of eBay Express see fewer sales on average. Of course, your business may or may not see any impact depending on the type of items and formats you use.

2) There is no validated double-dipping penalty with Google between eBay & eBay Express. We're monitoring this issue on an ongoing basis, since third party search providers can change their algorithms at any time.

However, we have optimized the eBay Express site heavily for natural search, so some sellers have found that their eBay Express page does appear higher in some search engines than their equivalent eBay page.

3) The eBay Express search engine sorts items by relevance, which is called "Best Matches". The search engine looks at a wide variety of factors, including keywords in your title, item specifics, keywords in the buyer search, price, shipping, format, and previous buyer behavior to determine the order.

We do not look at how "popular" an item is, but we do look at the behavior of the millions of buyers who have done a similar search before to make the decision on what order to show the results on eBay Express.

Hope this helps.
Adam

Adam Nash
Director of Product Management, eBay Express
anash@ebay.com

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stuff-4-me  (29 )      Dec-07-06 15:28 PST     7 of 8
Adam,

I think eBay is the one with the myths. If you have data to support anything you say - show us. But you won't.

However, sellers who work these sites every day, have plenty of data that we share with other sellers. And that data continues to show an increase in sales when opted out of eE - or at least an increase when toggling in and out of eE.

The data that we can see suggests a double-dipping penalty... and you show us no date to prove otherwise.

and finally... how can you say, with a straight face, that popularity of an item is not taken into consideration when you admit, "...we do look at the behavior of the millions of buyers who have done a similar search before to make the decision on what order to show the results..." What is that if not how popular an item is???

Again, when I was in eE, my items did not show unless a buyer used nearly the exact wording of my ad title. After repeatedly asking why, I was told by a pink that my item was not popular enough TO EVEN SHOW in the eE search.

.

kat**     Dec-08-06 11:53 PST     8 of 8
I opted out first week of November after a bug kept dropping my items from EE.

November ended up being my best sales month of the year?

Coincidence or related? No way to know either way.

Katiyana's Collectibles

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