As part of his turnaround strategy for Ebay, chief executive John Donahoe has been working to revive the main Ebay shopping site. This has meant improving search results, moving to more fixed-price sales, and making the buying experience more reliable. As we reported in Monday’s paper, the strategy finally seems to be working.
Now Mr Donahoe is aiming to bring even more formality to the once freewheeling marketplace. Starting in October those sellers with the highest customer service rating will receive a Top-Rated Seller badge. The badge is more than just ornamentation. Sellers who receive it will get their fees discounted up to 20 per cent and be elevated in search results. Those are powerful incentives and should encourage sellers to pay more heed to customer service, something Ebay has fretted over as it increasingly competes with the likes of Amazon.com.
But by promoting already-popular sellers, the move could put smaller sellers, and those looking to break into the marketplace, at a disadvantage. Ebay said it has already identified 150,000 sellers who will automatically qualify when the program goes live in October.
The Top-Rated Seller programme fits nicely into Mr Donahoe’s new strategy, and will likely go over well with the site’s growing audience of buyers and sellers focused on bulk and fixed-price sales. But these changes will do little to woo back the casual sellers, once Ebay’s lifeblood, who have recently been abandoning the site in droves.
As Ina Steiner, editor of AuctionBytes.com, said in Monday’s paper, “All the things that are changing show Ebay’s pursuit of the professional seller. They really disadvantage the smaller, casual sellers. There is no old Ebay any more.”
