March 29, 2021
Be ready for eBay’s Spring Seller Update
Make sure you are ready for eBay’s Spring Seller Update!
In 2021 eBay’s Spring Seller Update contains “new opportunities to help you grow and enchance your Ebay businesses”. Here the question arises as to what exactly the changes will be? In the following guide, we highlight the major changes announced in the UK and US update.
1) Unified listings
Unified Listings combines the best features for mobile, tablet, or desktop. It gives you a clean design and interface that’s consistent across all of your devices. This also eliminates the need for sellers to learn multiple listing tools. To help you create great listings more efficiently the update will include:
- Background Removal on desktop (previously only available on mobile devices);
- Saved preferences; and
- New Features to help you list efficiently like new keyboard shortcuts and optimised photo management tools.
2) Automated Campaigns
Does your inventory changes frequently? Do you find yourself constantly creating new Promoted Listing campaigns manually? Then this new feature will help you a lot. Automated campaigns simplify the process of adding new listings to each campaign. Besides this, it adjusts ad rates according to the rules that you set. How do you take advantage? “If your advertising strategy is to promote all eligible listings, leave the filters blank, choose your ad rate strategy, and launch your campaign. Now all of your listings will automatically be promoted as they are created.” This makes it easier to optimise your time when managing your Promoted Listings campaigns.
3) Ability to Offer Coded Coupons
The new coded coupons tool will let you create discount codes that your customers can apply at checkout. Starting in spring 2021, coded coupons will be available to eBay Store subscribers on the Seller Hub Marketing tab, and will replace the codeless coupons previously offered. On eBay’s website you can see examples like you could show the code “REPEAT10” on your listings, cart, and checkout pages, and offer £10 off to potential buyers. Coded coupons work hand in hand with its suite of promotional tools, and offer you more flexibility and control over your marketing budget. Ebay explained different functions of the coupons:
- Set a maximum budget for a promotional campaign — when you reach your budget is reached, your promotion will no longer be seen by your customers
- Choose to offer an amount off, a percentage off, or a quantity discount such as “buy one, get one free”
- Set specific start and end dates for the discount
- Set conditions such as minimum spend or a usage limit per customer
- Choose whether to offer public coupons, visible to all buyers, or private coupons that you can share with your customers in other marketing channels
- Choose what items are eligible for the promotion
- Send a printed coupon code in your orders to encourage repeat purchases
Ebay said coded coupons are free to use for sellers.
4) Changes to Category and Item Specifics
“Starting in May 2021, if you listed an item in an affected category and your listing is impacted by the changes, eBay will automatically move your listing to the most relevant category. As a result of the changes to the category structure, if your listing is moved to a different category, you may experience a change in the fees (either an increase or decrease).”
In early May 2021, new item specifics will come out in some categories like Clothing-Shoes & Accessories, Collectibles, Media, Musical Instruments, Parts & Accessories and Sporting goods.
“The new item specifics are not required now, but will be available in your listing flows as Required Soon item specifics starting in early May.”
5) Expanded International Visibility
eBay’s Spring Seller update will include expanding support for international selling. Ebay said “If you offer to ship internationally, your listings will appear in buyer searches on supported international eBay sites. You may create listings on select eBay sites outside of the United Kingdom, such as the United States (ebay.com), Germany (ebay.de), and Canada (ebay.ca). Your earnings for these sales will be disbursed to you in GBP. We will continue to expand international selling to more countries in the coming months.”
For more details visit: https://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/news/2021-march
US only
1) Fee Increase
Ebay announced the fact that it is upping certain fees as part of the Spring Seller Update. “As we move away from upfront insertion fees, starting April 1, 2021 we’ll increase final value fees 0.2% in select selling categories,” it wrote. That translates to a 2-cent increase in fees for a transaction totaling $10. Likewise, a 20-cent increase in fees for a transaction totaling $100, in the categories where fees are increasing. Maybe it doesn’t sound too complicated. However, if you check the details it becomes more difficult for sellers to determine the impact, as it depends on several factors. For example: Do you have an eBay Store? Did you enrol in eBay Managed Payments? In what categories do you sell? Here is the page with the new fees that go into effect on April 1, 2021: https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2021-spring/fees-update.html
Also pay attention to fees for International Addresses. Additional fees may apply if either the buyer’s registered address or the delivery address for the item is located outside of the United States, but you will no longer pay third-party processing fees for international transactions.” eBay will charge US sellers an International fee if the buyer’s registered address is outside the US – regardless of the delivery address for the item. “This fee is calculated as 1.65% of the total amount of the sale and is automatically deducted from your sales,” eBay states.
2) More Listings and Features for Ebay Stores
Ebay is increasing the number of free fixed-price listings it gives sellers each month. They said from April 1, 2021 they will reduce “upfront insertion fees by giving sellers even more zero insertion fee listings when eBay manages your payments”. It will reduce the upfront listing cost and help sellers bring all their inventory to eBay. Ebay is offering more zero insertion fees based on eBay Store subscription levels. So, upgrading your Store subscription can be beneficial for you.
3) Retirement of Promoted Listings credit for select store sellers and eBay Top Rated sellers
Starting April 1,2021 eBay will retire their “existing Promoted Listings promotional credits. To date, we’ve offered a quarterly $25 Promoted Listings credit for Anchor and Enterprise Sellers and a quarterly $30 Promoted Listings credit for eBay Top Rated Sellers.” We should pay attention this change because it can hurt sellers who rely on $25 and $30 credits to use towards Promoted Listing Ads to drive traffic to their listings.