Many new developments and features were announced at eBay Open 2023.
Missed eBay open? We’ve got you. Team Vendoo attended live in our virtual booth to chat with the community, plus we caught all of the sessions.
Here are the highlights of eBay Open 2023 with an explanation of what is changing at eBay, new features, and new ways to sell on eBay.
New Seller Tools Announced at eBay Open 2023
eBay open was jam-packed with resources. Below you’ll find summaries of the eBay Open 2023 keynotes and sessions.
eBay Open 2023 Opening Session “Reinventing the Future of Commerce” by eBay CEO Jamie Lannone.
In the opening session, “Reinventing the Future of Commerce,” eBay CEO Jamie Lannone gave a powerful presentation about the culture of eBay commerce and the developments and tools to come.
🔑 Key Points:
- eBay provides an unparalleled buying and selling experience to over 100 million people around the world.
- eBay’s evolved strategy includes three pillars: relevant experiences, scalable solutions, and magical innovations.
- New experiences include a redesign of the website, search bar enhancements, and measures to ensure buyer payments.
- Scalable solutions include new authentication programs, enhanced shipping experiences, and new ways for sellers to get paid.
- Magical innovations include an expedited listing process and visual search.
Lannone starts by acknowledging a common concern amongst sellers: the uncertain economy. He proceeds by explaining the resilience of eBay as a marketplace and the innovations and changes coming soon to improve the experience.
In the current economy and thinking of the future, eBay is releasing many new tools and features to enhance the buying and selling experience.
👀 Fun Fact: Return customers, “eBay enthusiasts,” present the most value to eBay, spending nine times more than the regular customer and shopping an average of nine categories.
eBay is Enhancing the Shopping Experience and Search
eBay announced developments to remove friction in the purchase and sale processes by helping buyers find items more easily.
eBay strives to not just meet the buyers’ expectations but to exceed them. New developments to facilitate relevant buyer experiences include:
- A site refresh and a home page redesign. With a more modern and simple design, buyers will be shown items more relevant to their shopping habits and interests. They also aim to encourage buyers to shop across different categories.
- Improved customer communications, including in-app communications and targeted emails to encourage sales.
- Enhanced searching capabilities. Improvements to the search engine will present relevant listings to the buyers to encourage sales.
👀 Fun Fact: eBay is massive with 190 markets to sell in 40 different currencies.
eBay has heard sellers’ feedback about unpaid items, and they are rolling out improvements to decrease unpaid sales, including:
- Requiring a payment method on file before placing an offer on “best offer” listings. This is being tested on auction items as well.
- Enhancing prohibitive actions for buyers who do not pay for their order, by implementing a “three strikes” policy.
💡 Tip: At the conference, eBay announced the publication of the 2023 eBay Small Business Report.
Improvements to Help Sellers Make More Sales on eBay
The second pillar, “scalable solutions,” focuses on implementations to enhance business growth grounded in trust.
eBay has heard feedback about how buyers are hesitant to purchase expensive items on eBay and sellers are nervous to sell them. As a result, eBay is focusing heavily on enhancing trust for both buyers and sellers across categories.
👀 Fun Fact: The first watch that arrived at eBay for authentication was a Rollex that arrived in a diaper!
eBay seeks to leverage scale and resources to create more seller opportunities by building a robust set of eBay teams and policies dedicated to trust and security. Here is how they’re doing it:
- Advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence). In collaboration with 3PM Shield, eBay has implemented advanced AI to monitor and prohibit the sale of counterfeit items and illegal goods.
- Digital Authentication. eBay has acquired Certilogo to provide digital IDs for the authentication of apparel.
- The Authenticity Guarantee Program has been improved to continue to confirm the value of high-priced goods and provide seller protections such as intermediated returns and (in some cases) final sale items.
- Scaled Payment Solutions like “Buy It Now” are being applied to higher price points globally to enhance the selling experience.
- New Ad Capabilities. New Ad tools will bring the world to your storefront with enhanced targeting to drive relevant and scalable traffic.
- The New eBay International Shipping Program. Global shipping has been replaced with a new and improved International shipping program. This will be a more seamless experience for buyers and sellers, including the handling of customs forms and the coordination of duties.
👀 Fun Fact: eBay has authenticated over 7 million items to date and they are continuing to scale to more brands, categories, and markets.
eBay is improving how sellers get paid by rolling out new payment methods.
In addition to the new ways to be sure buyers complete payments, eBay is improving the way sellers get paid. New methods to get paid faster and easier include:
- Split credit card payments. Buyers can pay across different cards, and sellers can withdraw funds across multiple channels.
- Wire Transfer. Adding wire transfer as a payment method helps to facilitate the purchase and sale of expensive items.
- “On-Demand Payments” will require instant pay and make funds instantly available to sellers
- “Buy Now, Pay Later” credit options are being tested but not yet in the United States.
The New eBay Magical Listing Experience
The new eBay listing experience is one of may “magical innovations” coming to eBay. The magical listing experience uses innovative technology and generative AI to fill in the listing blanks. Essentially, the seller captures a picture of an item, and eBay will fill in most of the listing form, reducing the most time-consuming part of creating a listing.
Visual search will use AI on the eBay app to prepopulate:
- Title
- Category
- Description
- Item Specifics
Encouraging Community Connection with eBay
eBay also spoke about promoting legislation that supports small businesses lobbying for positive changes locally and nationally. Namely, the 1099k threshold that might have a negative effect on eBay sellers.
eBay has numerous other community programs, including:
- eBay for Charity, which just celebrated it’s 20th anniversary, has raised over 1.25 billion to date for non-profit organizations around the world! Through this program, sellers can give a portion of their sales to causes they care about.
- eBay Up and Running Program is a way to award sellers. Each year $500,000 to eBay sellers who demonstrate the best of selling on eBay to springboard to seller growth and empowerment.
👀 Fun Fact: In the CEO’s introduction, he gave a shout-out to Vendoo user and eBay Up and Running eBay award recipient Liz O’Kane @Colaradoreworn.
Transforming eBay: The Category-by-Category Approach.
In the session “Transforming our Marketplace,” SVP Jordan Sweetnam does a deep dive into eBay’s category-by-category approach being implemented.
🔑 Key Points:
- The category-by-category approach is responsible for 25% of sales on eBay, but it is currently only implemented in watches, bags, sneakers, motors, and collectible categories.
- eBay has hired leading category experts to revolutionize the sale and authentication of such goods.
In this session, Sweetnam explains the process of authentication for various categories and how enhancing trust and expertise will increase revenue.
It essentially all comes down to expertise and trust. The following category-specific initiatives are examples of what will be rolling out to more categories:
- Authenticity guarantee. eBay’s promise to buyers that qualifying merchandise is genuine. This involves both digital and hand-inspection by authentication experts.
- Fit Guarantee applies to motors, parts, and accessories in the vehicle category and will ensure that the parts will fit the buyers’ vehicles.
- Collectible Vault involves collectibles authentication and sellers' ability to sell an entire collection directly to eBay.
- A New Listing Flow for Sneakers will make the sale of sneakers seamless and certify authenticity to promote buyer and seller trust.
eBay is focused on transforming the seller experience with a focused category playbook to build a “fundamentally different eBay experience… [involving] trust and a relentless focus on customer satisfaction [to] Protect buyers against fraud and sellers against bad buyer behavior.”
Using Social Media to Leverage Your eBay Store.
Another session we found particularly beneficial was about leveraging social media to drive sales. In the session “Social Media: Why It’s Beneficial to Your Business” Pro Eller Jongo Longhurt shares some social media tips for driving sales to eBay.
He explains that social media provides an opportunity to “go viral,” with or without a high follower count. He explains that people spend so much time on their phones, that social media becomes free marketing.
In addition to promoting your products, social media allows for you to promote yourself as a small business. On social media, you can build “human relationships” with your buyers, which enhances trust and buyer loyalty. This will lead to the establishment of a community and the acceleration of your sales.
👀 Fun Fact: 71% of people who have a positive experience with a brand on social media will also buy from that business.
You can watch all of eBay open on YouTube here. What was your favorite part? Tell us below 👇🏽
