eBay announced a series of changes last week, and today it fielded questions from sellers who will be impacted, with topics ranging from new Store features to eBay's new cost-per-click (CPC) "Promoted Listing Advanced" ads program.
Can eBay explain what's changing in the new User Agreement it announced last week to save sellers time?
When are the changes to eBay Stores going to roll out?
When will the new "advanced" Promoted Listing ads become available?
When Promoted Listing Advanced ads roll out, how will eBay handle trademarked keywords?
How about announcing the dates of future updates in advance?
Those were some of the burning questions on sellers' minds during eBay's weekly chat devoted to the topic of the Fall Seller Update. Here's a quick summary of some of the answers eBay provided:
On the timing of new Store features rollout: "As of right now the plan for the stores feature expansion is to release this broadly for ebay.com so there shouldn't be too much of a delay."
On the timing of eBay's Promoted Listing Advanced CPC-ad rollout: "We don't have a more definite date outside of what we shared in Seller Update (starting in late September)."
On whether sellers will be able to bid on more than one keyword through Promoted Listing Advanced ads: "It can be a combination of words to make the 'keyword', not exceeding ten words or 80 characters in the 'keyword'. There is not a way to exclude specific keywords though."
On whether eBay would consider keyword exclusion in the future: "I haven't heard of anyone discussing the option to exclude keywords but I'll get this feedback passed on."
On how eBay will handle trademarked keywords in the new Promoted Listing Advanced ads: "Great question. Although I don't have any details on this yet but I will make sure that the community team gets an answer for you when we hear back."
On whether eBay would announce the dates of future Seller Updates in advance: "This is on my wish list as well. Thank you for providing your feedback, it helps us to know that this will be helpful to sellers by providing notification on Seller Update dates in advance."
On a lack of specifics about changes to certain Categories and Item Specifics: "We thought that we had this covered in the Category Changes where we mention: 'When the category structure changes, your listings may be automatically moved to another category, based on the item specifications that you provided.' Thank you for providing this feedback to us. I can take this back to the team and use it as a learning for next time."
eBay had also set up a
discussion board devoted to the Fall Seller Update and made experts available to answer questions, although they were only available to answer questions between 9 - 4 on the day of the announcement (September 8) and eBay locked the board from further comments 2 days later (September 10).
eBay Sellers Have More Questions about Fall Changes Ahead
by: Rexford