eBay Features I'd like to see

[Fan4Fan]

With all of the tumultous topics going on in this forum, I figured I'd start one that will be a welcome, soothing alternative...

 

What would enhancements to eBay would you like to see?

 

 

I'll start...

 

1) Provide a way to kill-file certain sellers that you'd never buy anything from so that their [!@#%^&^] doesn't keep showing up in your searches;

2) Provide option to limit the results of Viewing the Seller's Other Items so that it only shows you items from the current category (i.e. I don't want to see baseball cards or beanie babies if I'm looking for comics);

3) Enact penalties for keyword spamming;

4) Provide deeper archival information for those of us who like to track prices.

 

Yours?

 

Thanks,

Fan4Fan

[valiantman]

1) Provide a way to kill-file certain sellers that you'd never buy anything from so that their [!@#%^&^] doesn't keep showing up in your searches;

http://pages.ebay.com/search/items/search_seller.html

(Bottom of the page, option to: "Find items excluding these sellers.")

 

Not exactly a once-for-all solution, but possible...

[Fan4Fan]

Yeah, I'd seen that. I just want it permanent 'cuz I don't usually do adhoc searches unless I have time to kill.

 

Thanks,

Fan4Fan

[joe_collector]

Those are good ones, especially a Profile option to keep sellers off your search results.

 

1) Multiple S&H Spaces for Canada and International

 

2) More sorting options (other than Price) from within a seller's auction list.

 

3) Ability to search/filter Paypal auctions that accept CC's.

 

4) Actual penalties for keyword spamming and improper use of "CGC", "variant", etc.

[thecomicsheet]

1) Penalties for keyword spamming

2) Penalties for keyword spamming

3) Penalties for keyword spamming

 

But seriously now:

1) Option to extend an auction by 5 minutes each time there is a bid. Even if they charged a nickel or a dime for it I'd do it on a lot of auctions.

2) Penalties for keyword spamming.

[Aces]

1) Option to extend an auction by 5 minutes each time there is a bid. Even if they charged a nickel or a dime for it I'd do it on a lot of auctions.

 

Great for sellers!

Not so great for snipers.

 

[joe_collector]

1) Option to extend an auction by 5 minutes each time there is a bid. Even if they charged a nickel or a dime for it I'd do it on a lot of auctions.

 

And 6 months later, EBay is out of business.

 

I'm serious, sniping and the traffic it builds is a CORE part of their business, and other auction sites have had their investors screaming for them to allow sniping and set auction end times.

 

P.S. Market research states that sniping increases over all prices, and if you took it away, you'd lose a large chunk of the EBay addicts. It's either EBay snipe city or Yahoo! Auctions, and you can't have your cake and eat it too.

[lighthouse]

2) More sorting options (other than Price) from within a seller's auction list.

 

There's actually about twelve ways you can sort the list, they just don't give you buttons for all of them. If you go up to the long URL and change the number after "Sort=" to something else you'll see it will sort a bunch of ways.

 

When I was doing 400+ auctions at a time, I used to provide three different links from within my items description, so that people could see my seller list in alphabetical order, or by closing time, or by price...

[joe_collector]

There's actually about twelve ways you can sort the list, they just don't give you buttons for all of them. If you go up to the long URL and change the number after "Sort=" to something else you'll see it will sort a bunch of ways.

 

Sure, but does EBay make it easy? I'm Mr Mouse when I'm on EBay and don't touch the keyboard unless I have to.

[thecomicsheet]

1) Option to extend an auction by 5 minutes each time there is a bid. Even if they charged a nickel or a dime for it I'd do it on a lot of auctions.

 

And 6 months later, EBay is out of business.

 

I'm serious, sniping and the traffic it builds is a CORE part of their business, and other auction sites have had their investors screaming for them to allow sniping and set auction end times.

 

P.S. Market research states that sniping increases over all prices, and if you took it away, you'd lose a large chunk of the EBay addicts. It's either EBay snipe city or Yahoo! Auctions, and you can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

Interesting. Do you have any links to some information about this?

 

[joe_collector]

Interesting. Do you have any links to some information about this?

 

The EBay Forums had a post to a news story about Japanese investors (either Yahoo! or Amazon auctions) pushing the service to adopt an EBay-like format to grow the business, against the wishes of the executives. I don't have the link, but I do remember the key points, which were back up with research/marketing numbers:

 

1) Sniping leads to higher bid prices and increased traffic. This had some raw numbers (from other sites that experimented) and consumer polls, and it was pretty clear that EBay's traffic is largely driven by the sniping phenomenon.

 

2) Another important ingredient is not the sniping, but the fact that both buyers and sellers can count on a rock-solid ending date. With Paypal and other online payment services, this is incredibly important, as people are far less patient than ever before (duh!) and despise the "never-ending auction" where shills or thrill-bidders extend it (by incredibly small increments) for days on end. 99.9% of auctions end with 1 (or no) bids, but the prospect of having to wait days for something to end keeps buyers away.

 

3) Sellers gravitate to the largest online auction site available. If sniping and guaranteed end dates attract buyers, then that's where the sellers will gather as well. One feeds the other, and without all the necessary ingredients for heavy buyer traffic, the sellers will not come in any real numbers.

 

There were also comments from the executives (I think it was Yahoo! now that I think of it) stating the usual fantasies of "what's the difference", "our sellers like this format", and "this is more fair" without understanding the buyer mentality that drives business or respecting the Japanese side's overwhelming evidence, and the fact that EBay is trouncing Yahoo! and Amazon in auction listings, sales, profits and traffic.

 

There was even a sidebar with EBay essentially laughing at their "outdated" competitors and stating they have the formula that drives sales. EBay knows the deal, and realizes that sellers who ask for "time extensions" don't understand the repurcussions to their business model, and just how much it would hurt buyer traffic. You take away sniping and hard end dates, and sellers might be in for a rude Yahoo!-like awakening.