eBay Stores sellers,

Thank you all for joining us for today’s Brown Bag Lunch. I’d like to start this session by discussing yesterday’s announcement about reverting search back to the way it worked in early February.

First, I want to emphasize two points that may have not been clear given the main message:
1. Buyers still get an option to search the way they do today. When we change search in a few weeks, we will add a Store Inventory check box to the list of Search Options on all search and browse pages so that buyers who like the way search is today can continue to see all Store Inventory listings in their search results. More details on that change are in our FAQ.
2. We are not giving up on the goal of including more Store Inventory listings in search results. Despite a lot of modeling and user testing prior to including all Store Inventory results in search, this change has not worked as planned. I apologize for that but that is why we are rolling this change back. However, we know that our goal of getting more Store Inventory results in search is a good one. The only issue is how best to implement it and that is what we will test over the next months.

I have heard from many of you that you are very disappointed by this news and I am truly sorry for the disruption. I know this is no consolation but this was a hard decision to make and not one made easily. Our intention was never to roll this out and then take it back. However, after a lot of analysis, we do believe that this is the right decision until we are able to develop another better solution through further testing and refinement.

The purpose of this Brown Bag lunch will be to answer your questions and respond to your concerns. I’ve heard both positive and negative reaction to this change and want to address the top concerns below.

Since my sales increased, I have a hard time believing this impacted buying. What is the real reason?
We agree with you that some buyers saw the expanded set of search results, liked the changes, bought your items and increased your Store Inventory sales. Unfortunately, these buyers were a minority of the total buyers searching on the site. Our goal with this project was to create a better shopping experience for as many buyers as possible, and that’s why we are rolling this back – we know we can do better.

Why is eBay prioritizing Auction sellers over Stores sellers – don’t we matter?
This change is not about prioritizing one set of users over another; we are committed to all members on the eBay marketplace. Most Stores sellers also represent Auction sellers because they list in a variety of listing formats, which represents a best practice we have stressed in site-wide education. I want to again stress that this decision was made in the best interest of our broader membership base, many of whom were affected by this change.

How can you make this decision after only a few weeks?
Although it has been only a few weeks, based on feedback that we have received from buyers and patterns in site activity -- there are millions of buyers conducting millions of searches across millions of items each day -- we believe this is the right decision.

I realize that the above may only address some of your concerns, so I welcome additional questions on other topics.

The Way Forward
I also want to stress that we are committed to Monday’s decision to change search to the way it was in the beginning of February. Having said, that, we are also committed to finding the best way to show Store Inventory listings in search so that the majority of buyers and sellers benefit. I would appreciate input from anyone who would like to provide suggestions on variations of including Store Inventory listings in search results that we might test in the future.

It's been quite a month…

eBay figures that it shot itself in the foot by expanding searches to include all store listings and decides to pull the rug out from under those store sellers who had benefited from the search expansion. Store sellers who did not benefit from the search expansion think these sellers are lying about their increased sales. eBay makes the ludicrous claim that Auction-style and Fixed Price listings became harder to find for buyers due to the search expansion.

eBay expands store categories from 20 to 300 and thousands of sellers simultaneously experience cache issues that prevent them from editing their store categories.

eBay expands the listing header into a listing frame to show store category links within listings, using code that is not allowed within item descriptions. Unfortunately, it is not going to work for us because it will cause horizontal scrolling among most viewers of our listings unless we go back and shrink all of our photos and edit all of our listings and add extra steps to every future listing. I would only consider doing that if I could place the category links within our item descriptions so that they don't mess up our message banners. No thanks, I'd rather work on St. Elsewhere, which I had put on hold due to our increased eBay store sales. The listing frame also does not work consistently.

eBay introduces a poorly designed item page top layout section with redundant links to feedback and store listings.

Promotion of the incredibly buggy and poorly designed Turbo Lister 2 continues while the complaints of the sellers who were silly enough to think that it was a viable product are publicly ignored.

Cross promotions, gallery photos and preview photos continue to fail to work like they should. Listings continue to mysteriously disappear and reappear, as they have for years now.

Just one gaffe after another.

I have gotten headaches from the latest flood of store seller complaints and demands and threats on the stores board.

Ah well, I do love the store breadcrumb paths.

Beware the eBorg collective!

Hello! I have a question for today that I know a few people have been talking about on here. Has eBay thought about putting a Stores tab on the top of the items search page along with the All Items/Auction/Buy it now?

It is my understanding that for a returns policy to be enforceable, it must be included within the auction listing itself.

Until recently, there were 2000 characters available to enter a returns policy. However, in the past couple of weeks (okay, maybe only the last week -- I'm not sure), it has been reduced to 500 characters.

I don't recall seeing an announcement about this -- it may be that I didn't know where to look. Can you tell me why it was reduced? And is the 500 characters now set in stone? I'd really like to see the 2000 characters back.

Thanks,

Terry


KIDiddles Music for Kids

Chris, you said:

Although it has been only a few weeks, based on feedback that we have received from buyers and patterns in site activity -- there are millions of buyers conducting millions of searches across millions of items each day -- we believe this is the right decision.

Exactly how did you GET this buyer feedback???? And one store owner got an email saying complaints ran about 50 a day. Do you really think that is a good representation of sentiment about this?

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"Choose Your Battles Wisely" -- the smartest woman I know

Chris, I think the best answer for all parties is to have a store search tab along with the auctions and buy it now tabs. That's a simple and straightforward answer and lets buyers choose where they wish to shop.

Beware the eBorg collective!

Will the Cross Promotions glitch be fixed anytime soon?

I'm talking about the one where you select random items to appear, but instead it shows the same 4 items on every listing. The 4 items that show are the items that end the soonest.