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This just made on the Announcement Board. Worth reading.
Link
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Thanks for the link...
This part of it makes no sense...
More Exposure for Store Inventory Items - Also starting next week, we will be increasing the exposure that Store Inventory format listings get in eBay’s main Search. Currently, when a buyer searches on eBay and finds fewer than 10 Auction-style or Fixed Priced listings available, they see up to 20 additional Store Inventory listings that match that search. Beginning next week, we will start displaying 30 additional Store Inventory listings when there are 20 or less listings found in Auction-style or Fixed Price formats
While they do some good, they tend to speak like Stores have the plague or something...
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Originally Posted by Empires
This part of it makes no sense...
More Exposure for Store Inventory Items - Also starting next week, we will be increasing the exposure that Store Inventory format listings get in eBay’s main Search. Currently, when a buyer searches on eBay and finds fewer than 10 Auction-style or Fixed Priced listings available, they see up to 20 additional Store Inventory listings that match that search. Beginning next week, we will start displaying 30 additional Store Inventory listings when there are 20 or less listings found in Auction-style or Fixed Price formats
Picture yourself in the shoes of one of your prospective customers.
Search for one of the products you have listed.
What keywords would you use?
Would you search within a certain category (or subcat) or search across the whole site?
Even if it's site-wide, under the status quo a fairly specific search (like a book title, or author's Fname+Lname) often yields some store listings returned on the search page.
The gist of the announcement is that more matching store listings will be displayed on the search results page, and will be displayed more often ~~ displayed for comparatively less-specific search queries.
Before and after the change, the "benefit" to you as a seller depends on how search-saavy your prospects are, how saturated your listing categories are, and how well you've been able to guess what keywords will be most effective in your listing titles.
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I think this will work well for my items. I show up a lot in search as it is.
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actually I bought something from a search like this in a store last month, it works when it is an oddball item.
it actually helps some of the sellers, and that is a good thing.
of course if took the programmers like five minutes and costs ebay nothing to implement, so it ain't impressive, but it is a good thing.
they can't get much that will appease ALL sellers, so if it helps some, that is good.
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Originally Posted by gabs-a-lot
they can't get much that will appease ALL sellers, so if it helps some, that is good.
The other store-owner appeasements mostly seem like 'fluff' to me, but I'm really impressed with the added "presence" eBay has granted to store listings. I was surprised to discover the link to the StoresDirectory (stores.ebay.com) is second from the top in the site's navigation links on eBay's home page. I don't know when they made that change & don't recall them announcing it. The only other 'presence' I've hoped for is an added 'Stores' tab atop category browse pages ~~ in addition to [All Items][Auctions][BuyItNow]
Following that train of thought:
Have you noticed that the /All Items\ /Auctions\ /BuyItNow\ tabs have shrunk in width?
I've wondered about this unannounced change... maybe eBay is hoping to attract some anchor sellers, and plan to give branded players (VeRo mdse) like Bose, Nike, Victoria'sSecret etc. their own "tab"?
Hmm, plenty of room, the tab could be labeled generously (conspicuously, wide)
/Outlet Stores: eBay-only specials on the Brands you love\
Wow, wouldn't that be a hoot!
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Have you noticed that the /All Items\ /Auctions\ /BuyItNow\ tabs have shrunk in width?
I'm thinking that's because of the recent change in size (bigger) for gallery pix.
***Updated: Coming Soon - Enhancements to Picture Display***
Date: 02/04/05 Time: 05:46:09 PM PST
As previously announced, over the next few days we will be introducing a few changes to the way pictures in listings are processed and displayed on eBay. These changes are designed to improve the size and appearance of pictures and will not affect the way that sellers submit their pictures to be displayed on their listings. They apply to Gallery pictures in new listings and to newly uploaded eBay Picture Services and Picture Manager pictures. Your active listings will continue to display the pictures that were originally used when those listings were created. Similarly, pictures in ended listings used for Relist or Sell Similar in the future will continue to use the pictures uploaded when those listings were created.
The key changes include:
increasing the height (up to 33%) of pictures displayed in areas such as My eBay, search and listings pages, and Stores Custom pages;
increasing the height of vertically-oriented (portrait) pictures to make their height comparable to the width of horizontally-oriented (landscape) pictures;
supporting square pictures as well as rectangular pictures of any proportions;
improving clarity for pictures when they are displayed in smaller sizes, such as in search and listings pages and in My eBay;
eliminating the white padding added to pictures which forced them to fixed heights and widths.
Please note: If you are a seller who uses eBay Enhanced Picture Services (available only when using Internet Explorer on Microsoft Windows), then the next time you upload pictures you will be prompted to first download and install a required update of the free eBay Picture Services ActiveX control.
It will take a few days for the changes to be implemented across the entire eBay site. In the meantime, you may see newly uploaded pictures displaying in either the old or the new format until the rollout is complete.
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From here: ***New eBay Stores Benefits – Message from Chris Tsakalakis***
Free Selling Manager with all Basic Store Subscriptions
From here: Selling Manager
Bulk Relist: Relist multiple sold and unsold listings at once.
But here: Feature Comparison Table
Bulk Relist your sold and unsold items:
Not Supported in Selling Manager
Hmmm...
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that selling manager is so bad, they gotta give it away...
I tried it three different times and hated it every time.
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To be honest, the only part of it that interested me was the bulk relist feature, and it looks like it doesn't even do that...