eBay to Redesign the Listing Page

by: toolguy

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning

F ebay!

That's how I feel whenever I see anything about the community boards!

eBay's lost a lot of my business to Mercari as a buyer

by: GetAGrip

Its no wonder Ebay is so glitchy. The useless IT fools spend their days redesigning something that works, and screwing it up. To bad they can't find a few minutes to fix all the glitches.

by: The End

Sounds like somebody found some old printouts of an auction page from around 1999.
It was all good at the time. They never should have changed it.
I have one. Everything where it should be.

by: ffi89

Already time to break the website again?

I kid, it's never not time to break the website.  

by: Rexford

I wish that they would get rid of the ridiculous superfluous item specifics in the jewelry and accessories categories. I takes a longgggg time to list a pair of cufflinks on eBay. Note to eBay--novelty cufflinks don't have precious stones and aren't measured in carats.

Compare the time that it takes to list an item on eBay to Poshmark.  It's a breeze on Poshmark.   It is painstaking on eBay.

I welcome anything that enhances the buyer focus of the actual published listing however.

by: Snapped

It makes sense to solicit buyer opinions, albeit pre-sterilized.  They’re the one’s who have to wade through eBay’s idea of what buyers ‘really’ want after all.  It also makes sense to solicit seller input.  All ‘users’ who depend on that critical ‘page’ to connect actually.

But eBay doesn’t value seller experience.  Neither in what those sellers must endure, nor what they might bring to the table. eBay knows better then them, too.

At least they’re firing a warning shot with this one.

by: Psquare75

Idc about desktop. Fix mobile so descriptions are forced viewing.

by: terry55

ugh, I see major glitches coming

by: Fruitylovesyou

I think there's a certain time in everyone's life when you have to make the tough choices.  Stay or go. Get back to the workforce or just cut back... who knows. Only you do!

by: toyman

I design and set up my descriptions and phots for the desktop. (Most of my Buyers are older and prefer the desktop screen).
What I would like to see is a design change that MAKES Mobile users actually read the descriptions that I work very hard to make sure give the necessary info on my Item.

Now, they have to click on a link that says Full Description, (which most don't - they just go on the pictures). There is no point in making sure issues are covered, if the Buyer never reads it, because that would require another click, except to be ready for complaints about why there was an issue they couldn't see in the photos (which is why it was mentioned in the Description).

Ah, well...

by: ebayout

How about a little box that must be checked before bidding...
"Yes, I have READ the description"

by: CT Bay

This crap just murders sales. I sell ten items a day on average. When they are changing the matrix I sell 2 or 3. I can totally tell when the have it “off” and it’s plainly visible in my sales graph. They will quit updating and I will sell 10 items in 2 hours and then normal 10/day for a few days. Then bam a week of 2/day. When Im slow I notice things not working properly and changes to the site. Changes cause slow and changes have caused slow since the beginning. The only difference being that now changes are damn near continual. I have items that sell like hotcakes but then get nearly no views or sales during updates. If you’re store is big enough you can see this plain as day. Im surprised more people are not complaining. The market and the economy can cause slow sales, thats true, but its gradual. This isn’t gradual. Its on and off like a light switch. About the time I start bitching hard like this anywhere I can it comes back on and I am too busy to bitch for two days.
  Since transparency is a foreign concept to ebay we may never understand why this happens. It doesn’t happen over at Amazon. What is the failure? Code? Incompetent coders, is that the problem? Infrastructure? Did they fail to make the necessary investments in equipment?
Do they not care about the multi millions in lost sales that happen twice a month because they need to fix what wasn’t broken?
I feel like if shareholders could see and understand what was happening heads would roll and we would have new leadership. Maybe they will catch on soon.

by: toastedmutt

''Bring critical information like item specifics and seller description higher on the page before any modules that show other items and ads''

It's about darn time eBay put the item and description front and center. Again.  Sellers are disgusted and often angry over ads and promoted listings taking over their listing and obscuring the item they are selling.

Way too many ads cluttering up listings leading to frustrated buyers who give up and shop elsewhere.

eBay had to add ''Item description added by seller'' in bold type so buyers could find it among the visual overload.

Removing the visual clutter or at least showing it below the item description would be a move in the right direction.  

by: Stone Cutter

*** Does it really make a difference anymore? **

The biggest threat to these online companies, is the inability for Sellers to make enough money to stay interested in having an online shop.

And since the U.S. has seen a recent surge in wage growth, getting a real job will make more sense for many. And those with a savings account, you can now make 5% off a T-Bill, thanks to the latest increase in interest rates.

If Sellers can’t pump volume, is it worth the time and effort?

by: Grateful11

Right now it's optimized for mobile devices. Anyone doing a fair amount of listings is going to use a real computer not a phone or a tablet. The ridiculous dropdown menus are such a pain. If they would just go back to the Listing Page they had before I would be happy.  

by: Stone Cutter

“Right now it's optimized for mobile devices. Anyone doing a fair amount of listings is going to use a real computer not a phone or a tablet.”

Etsy is doing the same, optimizing features for their App. I’m 62 and I have an Imac with a large monitor along with an IPad and Iphone. Unfortunately, more consumers, particularly younger adults, have just a phone and maybe a tablet. Too may people are too broke to afford a full blown system, which is nuts!  

by: Marie

Some of the concerns certainly surprise me.  So many times it seems that many people ask for something over and over and over again, only to be ignored by Ebay.  Now Ebay is paying attention to this very important issue that many of us have been trying to get Ebay to redesign for a very long time.  And yet some seem to be very unhappy about this.

For me, if the only thing we get is the removal of all those adds that come BECORE the ISBs or the Description, I will be over the moon.  So many of us have complained about this from the day it was implemented.  It started off as a single row of adds and has now done nothing but grow.

These changes, whatever they may be are NOT coming out site wide.  They are going to the Beta group first.  The group is made up of both buyers and sellers.  I'm in the Beta group.  

This process will likely take a long time as Ebay usually does.  But hopefully the design will be something much better for the majority of the members.  Not everyone will agree.  That type of change simply isn't possible because there are too many of us with too many points of view.  But hopefully we will end up with something that works for the majority of us.  Fingers Crossed.

by: Dreamedreamer

I’ve been selling on eBay for years and up until last October I was a Top Rated Seller. Then over the months following I started having little or no activity, including views of my coins, and almost no purchases. Then I received a couple of emails stating I was now a substandard seller, and that they could add additional fees if it continued.
This was a big surprise to me as I had 100% feedback and I did not leave any returns, which were very few, unresolved. I always went out of my way to make sure that the buyer was content with the outcome.
Not too long ago, Ebay started handling payouts, and they no longer went through PayPal which I preferred, and I had two returns that did not go through their automatic system, so I had to call eBay customer service, and I spent a good hour on the phone, trying to get back to my buyer their refunds. It was eBay’s system that failed, not anything I did. Apparently, Ebay, when reviewing this information looked at it as if I was the one that caused a problem, which I absolutely was not. I called customer service and try to explain this to them and they did not want to hear it.
The real problem is, they began subtracting an additional 6% on top of the 12.9%, they already take for sales on eBay. That’s almost 20% which they were taking out for about 10 coins I sold over the course of a couple of months, because I am not a big seller, and I sell to supplement my SSA and small pension in my retirement. They did not make it clear that they were taking this additional 6%, and if I had realized it earlier, I wouldn’t have sold those coins because I lost too much money on them!
Since I called customer service and they did not listen to what I was saying, and were not willing to change this policy of adding an extra 6%. I had to pull all my coins off eBay, which is unfortunate because the little extra I made from selling my coins, helps pay my bills, etc.
I cannot help but think that because Ebay has been losing a lot of money since the government has forced them to take taxes out now from sales, they are going after the small sellers to make up for that loss.
I have no complaints from buyers, and it’s their misinterpretation of what happened with a couple of returns I had that is causing them to take this additional 6% from my sales. Essentially, I feel they have been, essential, stealing this money from me, to make up for their own losses. I’ve been selling on and off eBay for 20 years, and only recently did have this kind of problem.

by: RMA49311

"toolman" is right... we all know where eBay really Fd up is when they began HIDING the damn listing description from the buyers. An eBay listing is like a contract between seller and buyer. eBay provides the contractual setup, with the display of the terms of the sale, the buyer provides all details, and when the seller PAYS for that item the buyer is responsible for fulfulling the terms of the contract. The trouble is in the age of amazon and walmart one-click ecommerce eBay thought it best to cater to the buyers and HIDE the Item Description behind an additional click. Thus keeping buyers from ever being shown the most important terms of the contract- the buyers in depth description of the actual thing they were selling.

by: RMA49311

I also want to add that I am glad to see that eBay seems to be making steps in the right direction here. Hopefully the execution is as nice as it sounds. For too long they take our money and treat us like crap. This change should be good for buyers AND sellers.

Kinda boggles the mind that they have left the listing pages so muddled and clunky for so long when competitors have designed much better versions... but hey I am just another brick in this wall what do I know.