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Worried about holiday sales? As I reported in the last issue, eBay CFO Bob Swan warned the marketplace was taking a cautious outlook on holiday sales, but it's not all bad news. Many merchants breathed easier upon hearing Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak's third-quarter report last week. He talked about a "nice, steady acceleration of growth since Q4 last year" and said that focusing on retail basics, along with improving seller performance, was driving Amazon's North American revenue growth.

What's disappointing to online sellers, no doubt, is that eBay had long been considered recession proof in the days when auctions, used goods and collectibles were more common as opposed to eBay's emphasis these days on the sale of new commodity goods in fixed-price format.

While the economy plays an enormous role in online sales, technology is also a major factor for online marketplaces. An email campaign eBay sent to sellers on Wednesday warning sellers to fix their listings called into question whether its technology and search algorithms were correctly identifying the attributes of seller listings, such as item specifics and photo specifications.

If eBay misidentifies a listing as missing certain item specifics, for example, does that mean that listing will show up lower in search results? eBay spokesperson Ryan Moore said the recommendations were strictly to provide guidance only, and said, "with this particular instance, the misidentification lies solely within the communication itself," and he said a small proportion of emails had misidentified information.

Oddly enough given that holiday sales are ramping up, eBay made changes to the all-important feedback page and reduced transparency by making it impossible to research buyers based on their past behavior. eBay removed the ability for sellers to see what items buyers had previously purchased, and it also removed the ability for sellers to view buyers' identity on seller feedback pages. You can read the results of a survey conducted by EcommerceBytes asking sellers about their views on these changes.

On top of the changes to the feedback page, eBay conducted a survey last weekend asking sellers for their thoughts on several changes to the feedback system that eBay was considering making. Any of these changes could have enormous implications for sellers and buyers. Some of the ideas eBay floated included:

• Making a change such that Feedback and Detailed Seller Ratings left by the buyer would play a smaller role in sellers' performance rating;
  
  
• Changing the Seller Standards rating system to create a Seller Performance Score in which objective metrics would play a larger role;
  
  
• Removing the Shipping Charges Detailed Seller Rating (or leave it but protect sellers from receiving a low score if their shipping cost was reasonable, or leave it but stop using it in Seller Performance);
  
  
• Delaying the display of neutral or negative Feedback for a seller to give that seller a chance to resolve the issue;
  
  
• Displaying an overall Seller Performance Score on listings instead of the "% Positive Feedback";
  
  
• Eliminating public feedback for buyers - instead, buyers would automatically receive a 1 point increment to their existing buying Feedback score after they make payment for an item. (It would still be possible for the seller to send anonymous Feedback about the buyer to eBay via the Report a Buyer system.)

Sellers have been weighing in about the eBay survey on the EcommerceBytes Blog, which includes links to comprehensive Newsflash coverage of the proposed feedback changes.

In today's issue, we present the 2013 Sellers Choice Awards for Inventory & Listing Management Tools. Congratulations to the services that made it into the top ten! The results are timely as sellers look for tools to help them be more efficient during the holidays and as news came that eBay was retiring its Blackthorne listing tool.

Also in today's issue, Julia Wilkinson chats with an artist who sells in select galleries, on Etsy and on Zatista. Not familiar with the latter marketplace? Julia profiled Zatista for those looking to buy or sell original artwork. Greg Holden profiles an ecommerce site that does things a little differently - you won't find items for sale on this online marketplace. Michele Alice explains how several classic toys have become sought after by collectors, and we round up the issue with Letters to the Editor.

Like most in the U.S., we've rolled back the clocks for the end of Daylight Savings Time and will enjoy squandering that extra hour.

Thanks for reading!

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About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.

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