The eBay Summer Seller Update 2020 has been revealed – and it’s good news for sellers. With improved optimisation tools, security, buyer tools and more platform enhancements, these are just some of the changes that are important to your business.

For over ten years, Intelligent Reach have been helping eBay sellers grow their sales. With the new eBay update, we can help take your business to the next level. Note: If you want to know how we help in managing marketplaces, take a look at our marketplace module.

We’ve summarised the eight updates, starting with the most interesting updates. But you get reading, the following updates are for Australia based sellers. If you’re UK based, you can find the relevant updates here.

Optimise Your Listings

Missing item specifics can make you lose your well-deserved traffic on eBay. That’s why item specifics including the brand, size, colour, make and style are essential in helping shoppers discover your items. The more item specific data you provide, the better eBay can match you’re your products to consumers searches.

To help, eBay has been introducing item specifics requirements in categories over the past year i.e.

• Category ID
• Category Name
• Item Specific Name
• Item Specific Level
• Mandated On

What’s New?

Now, eBay Seller Hub allows you to quickly filter your listing for items that need your urgent attention to improve category structure for a better buying, selling and product search journey.

• Option 1: Overview Tab

Missed any required item specifics from your active listings? eBay will prompt your urgent attention with the task to add your missing data.

• Option 2: Listings Tab

Add more item specifics than the minimum required, to boost your listing quality and increase traffic. Quickly filter the number of your active listings missing required item specifics on your Active listings page. With an “Add Item Specifics” link next to each listing in the action’s column, you can add required items specifics as well as recommended.

Pro Tip:Use “Add Item Specific” to your advantage to optimise your listing quality and increase traffic. You can add more data in a free form way, to push as item specifics on eBay without needing to customise fields e.g. “Warranty”, “Material”, “Waterproof”, “Fit”, “Alternative Part Number”.

Terapeak Enhancements

Businesses that make decisions based on data and insight tend to perform better than others. Taking time to dive into some eBay insights can help with making well-informed decisions on the best way to grow your eBay revenue.

When subscribing to the eBay store, merchants can access Terapeak to give insights around category, pricing, supply, shipping and more.

What’s New?

• Category Selector – Searches can be narrowed by category and transactions can be viewed that occur in a chosen eBay category.
• Type-Ahead Component – Based on the most frequent searches, eBay recommends keyword and category suggestions.
• Data Visualisation for Item Sold, Price Over Time – Identify and analyse trends over time for sold items and their prices.
• Data Visualisation for Market Share – Identify your top competitors’ market share and calculate average item prices.

Pro Tip: High performing eBay sellers challenge their assumptions using multiple sources, including Terapeak. Many of Intelligent Reach’s clients regularly test and learn, helping them understand what drives traffic and conversion. It can include testing the impact of free freight, title changes, price or promotions. After all, low prices may make you seem appealing, but it doesn’t mean you’ll get that sale!

Image Clean-Up Tool

First impressions only happen once, so it’s important to get it right from the get-go!

Typically, listings with a clean white background have the potential to convert better. On the eBay app, the new Image Clean-Up tool helps to optimise and clean listing images as a way to make your items stand out to shoppers looking to buy. With cleaner images, it can improve your product visibility and scale the exposure of your items.

Evolving eBay Plus

eBay Plus badges makes you stand out on eBay, letting buyers know you’re capable of delivering a positive shopping experience. According to the marketplace, an eBay Plus budge increases up to 16% more sales than those without a badge.

From 1st April 2020, sellers must meet the new and existing eBay Plus criteria in order for their listings to earn the eBay Plus badge. You can find the criteria here.

Posting & Tracking Updates

Postage and Tracking play a big part in the customer shopping experience. It’s why it’s crucial to upload tracking your orders accurately to have fewer buying contacts, accurate delivery estimates and more. Merchants who use Australia Post and experience difficulty uploading tracking, eBay Virtual Tracking Number (eVTN) helps meet both the buyer’s and eBay’s standards.

eBay have added a unique code to the first line of the customer’s delivery address, helping to capture accurate tracking information for your orders. It uploads this information to eBay for you to make it visible for buyers, helping to protect you from negative delivery feedback and claims of “item not received”. You can even increase the likelihood of qualifying for an eBay Plus, with the new criteria.

Manage Your Return Requests

eBay are changing how they handle return requests to give buyers enough time to send the item back. They’ll no longer close returns earlier at the seller’s request. They’ll be closed automatically by eBay once they’ve concluded the buyer won’t return the item.

Read about changes for International Sellers and for “items not as described” Return Requests.

Multi-User Account Access

This new feature enables your employees or delegates to access and perform specific selling actions for you, without giving full access to your eBay account.

Updates to Your Seller Protections

Protect yourself by ensuring customers are more confident their orders will arrive. Take a look at how eBay has updated your Seller Protections.

How eBay are Supporting Merchants Affected by COVID-19 Pandemic

For merchants affected by the coronavirus in different parts of their business, eBay have put more measures in place to protect you. As there are some unexpected events out of your control affecting your deliveries, it can lead to poor Facebook reviews or buyers filling in 'item not received' requests.

If your items are situated in China and Hong Kong, or you're selling to customers in those areas, eBay are supporting you by:

• Informing buyers that items may take longer to arrive
• Adjusting estimated delivery dates to prevent 'item not received' claims
• Adjusting late shipment rates and pulling any seller cancellation defects, as well as neutral or negative Feedback

If your stock or deliveries have already been affected, it's important to work closely with your buyers on their order status. eBay advises merchants to:

• Resolve dispute resolution issues as usual
• Refund buyers if you're unable to send items on time
• If you have insufficient stock or deliveries are constantly delayed:
  • Update listing quantities to give an accurate reflection of your stock while activating the "out of stock" feature, and/or
  • Put your store on holiday mode