eBay is providing a new way for shoppers to ask questions about generic products on catalog product pages, and any seller (and apparently other buyers) can answer those questions. The new Questions & Answers feature is not specific to particular sellers and is made possible by eBay’s Structured Data Initiative.
Announcement follows:
Introducing eBay Questions & Answers
A potential buyer may be this close to purchasing your product. But sometimes they just need a little more info before making a purchase decision. Starting next week, you can answer buyers’ questions and close more sales. Our new Questions & Answers (Q&A) feature will enable eBay shoppers to ask sellers and recent buyers questions about products. The answers will help build buyers’ confidence and can help drive higher conversion.
Next week, all eBay sellers will automatically be opted in to Q&A, and the feature will appear on all product pages. We encourage you to participate in Q&A, but you can opt out and choose not to respond to buyers’ questions. Sellers and recent buyers may receive an email to respond to a buyer’s question, but any seller can respond on product pages.
Buyers who have specific questions on your listing, such as shipping options, will still be able to submit them through Ask a question.
Following the launch of Q&A on product pages next week, the feature will be added to View Item pages in October. As a benefit to responding to buyers, your answers will be ranked at the top of your listings on View Item pages. Other buyers can also view your answers, giving you additional exposure.
Similar to Reviews, eBay will moderate buyers’ questions to determine their relevance and screen for inappropriate content. If you have concerns about a question or answer, you can notify us via the Report button.
eBay Team Members will also be available to answer your questions about this new feature on this eBay discussion board. As always, thank you for selling on eBay.
Source: eBay Announcement
Great now someone else can answer the question ” What color is the red sweater in the auction ” Nothing like catering to the idiot who can’t or won’t read the description.
Well, it will be interesting to see if this tool ends up being sharp and useful, or gets bogged down with dumb questions and convoluted sales pitch answers.
It may help with search engine optimization. Google likes content on product pages, like product reviews.
For sellers, it could show off their expertise – it certainly will be interesting to see if it’s worth sellers’ time.
This sounds a lot like Amazon’s Q&A system (surprise, surprise), and I have had negative experiences with that in the past. I have had bad transactions before where a buyer asked a question about a product before buying, got an INACCURATE answer from another random Amazon user, and then wanted a return and accused me of giving them the bad info. I had to explain to the buyer that the Q&A was an open forum that anybody can answer and that their answer came from another random buyer…. I doubt that made them any happier but it was all I could do in my defense. And, of course, had to eat that return at my own expense. In my opinion, nobody should be answering questions about my products but ME.
I sell a lot of used items which vary in condition. I don’t want to see item-specific questions like “Does this come with original box? Yes!” attached to my listings without me approving it first. I might be opting out of this.