New Seller features

[bigbrickshop]

I was reading some Announcements on the US boards (as they never seem to make any announcements here) and eBay US is trialling a couple of new seller features. I would love to see both!

Two new features are rolling out this week in Seller Hub.

Edit Price, Quantity & Custom Labels

You’ve asked for the ability to edit listings directly from the active listings page in Seller Hub for awhile now. Good news. We’re rolling out a staggered release of this feature, one that will allow you to edit price, quantity, and custom labels for all listings right from the active listings page. We plan to introduce this time-saving feature to additional sellers in the coming months.

To try out our new feature, hover over price, quantity, or custom label fields and click the pencil icon to add or edit. Your listing will be updated when you save.

Make Offers to Watchers

Sellers have also reached out to us asking for the ability to make offers to Watchers, AKA potential buyers who are watching their items. We heard you, and we’re making it happen. With this new feature, you’ll have another tool to help close potential sales.

Like our other new feature, we’re testing this one out with a small group of sellers to ensure a great experience for everyone involved. If testing goes well, we plan to make this feature available to all sellers in the coming months.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Seller-Hub-Updates-for-Active-Listings/ba-p/29158673

[Anonymous]

"The converse of that is also the effect of buyers learning that watching items instead of buying them means they might get a cheaper price."

This situation would have a positive side. It would indicate that a buyer stopped long enough and was interested enough

in the item to actually place your item on their watch list. Competitors aside I like the idea of sending an offer to an 'interested' buyer.
Getting a direct offer from a seller would be a consequence of 'watching' so our watchers could become a pool of 'interested' buyers
while other would for fear of being spammed.

[Anonymous]

Should have read

....watchers could become a pool of 'interested' buyers
while others would delete the item from their watch list for fear of being spammed.

[Anonymous]

Not quite sure why this uproar is occuring.

If I have an item on my watch list with a view to being interested in a purchase

then I would love to receive an offer.

I would know that the seller is prepared to let go of the item at the offered price.

If I am just spying on a competitor then too bad for me. If I don't like the 'spam'

I just remove the item from my watch list.

I am only sorry that there won't be means of identifying competitors and giving

them the boot for the sheer pleasure of it.

[digital*ghost]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Not quite sure why this uproar is occuring.

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It's not an uproar, lol.

I didn't post "why all the love for such a ghastly feature?", I just posted that I wouldn't use it, why, and included some reasons why buyers might not like it, just like you posted why you would use it. It's just a different opinion. 

Like I said, if I were prepared to have offers on my item, they would already be there, either through Best Offer, or promotions manager. 

Why should I reward people who "watch", over anyone else? 

[countessalmirena]

Termalert, I am a buyer only. (Not a competitor.)

My objections include my view that what items I watch are my business... that if I wanted to buy now I'd be either offering or buying now... and I have far too many emails coming in as it is.

There are going to be buyers like me who will be put off, not enticed, by the seller making an offer when one hasn't indicated an interest in the item. ("Watching" is passive. It's not supposed to signal to a seller that one would buy that item if the seller contacted one with some sort of blandishments.)

[knewdoors]

selling? what does that word mean??? one sale this month...the WORST EBay has ever been.. the only "new seller" features we are experiencing is little to ZERO sales...

[digital*ghost]

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@countessalmirena wrote:

There are going to be buyers like me who will be put off, not enticed, by the seller making an offer when one hasn't indicated an interest in the item. ("Watching" is passive. It's not supposed to signal to a seller that one would buy that item if the seller contacted one with some sort of blandishments.)

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Sometimes I receive abandoned cart emails from websites where I was interested enough in buying to add things to my cart and see how much the total would be with postage ( a lot of sites force you to not only go to checkout, but enter an email and delivery address before postage quotes are provided, which I hate, but sometimes postage is the deciding factor, moreso when it comes to purchasing overseas). 

Such emails ensure I never go back to the seller - I hate them. I also hate websites that have popups that intrude upon actually viewing their site, or that stop you from performing what should be simple functions because they're chasing you around with what amounts to pressure to buy. I was on one site recently where they had a pop-up as soon as you arrived, then all through the time I was browsing the site there were others that kept trying to entice me to buy or subscribe to their newsletter, and finally as I went to close the tab, another "before you go....!" pop up. The desperation was palpable, lol. And I will never revisit the site. 

Plus, I really wouldn't feel right providing an exclusive offer to people who were interested but not enough to purchase. I'm sure many of my regulars have items on their watchlist for easy access as well, but if I'm offering a discount, I want it to be available to all as it seems unfair otherwise (I once had someone buy an item I was about to put on sale, I felt so bad I refunded them the amount they would have saved if they had bought the item half an hour later, lol  ). 

[countessalmirena]

Oh, I hear you on the abandoned cart issue!

A few of the sellers whose goods I love have that, and it's one of my least favourite features. (A little like the satnav telling me to do a u-turn when it "knows" a better route but I know that the road ahead is closed because of roadworks.)

[davewil1964]

We used to use a satnav that thought footpaths were roads. Mind you, that was pushing 20 years ago.

[countessalmirena]

I have had a satnav guide me up the side of a mountain, on a "road" that became narrower and more unmade as I drove, until it resembled a goat track and I fetched up against a locked metal gate with a forbidding sign on it.

I spent 15-20 minutes executing the tiniest of incremental movements back and forth, turning the steering wheel as I did so. Finally I had manoeuvred the car to face back down the track.

I've also had a satnav lose an entire suburb - the very one to which I was driving. It was a ferociously hot day, and as I drove over the Westgate Freeway my iPhone flashed distress signals and switched itself off. (I was trying to use the iPhone's map app as a backup satnav to find the vanished suburb.) That was in the day when iPhones ran hot and executed terrifying shut-down procedures in the heat.

Satnavs have also tried to guide me through streets with changed traffic conditions (no right turn, no through road, etc), and through savagely unmade roads where a precipitous drop on the left prevents moving over for any oncoming car, so that's a bit of a dance in itself...

I now have three satnavs, in case one of them wants to play games with me: inbuilt car satnav, voice-controlled satnav, and iPhone satnav (no longer likely to immolate itself).