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eBay Changes Look and Feel
Oct 15th 2012, 18:02
eBay is beginning to roll out some pretty dramatic changes to its site and says even more updates are on their way.
In addition to the cleaner logo that was put into action last week, eBay is changing the homepage to reflect member-specific shopping preferences.
This new “feed” as eBay is calling it, can be customized with the shoppers’ favorite categories, and images of a variety of items will be displayed for the buyer in a way that many are comparing to Pinterest. When a buyer hovers their mouse over an image, the listing title and current price details will pop up and the buyer can click to jump to the live listing.
Once buyers get to the specific item page, they will notice even more changes. A larger profile image has been added, the condition of the item is now listed at the top right, and the item specifics section has been moved above the fold.
But what do all these changes mean for our Auctiva sellers?
I sat down and spoke to our Auctiva.com Product Manager, Rebecca Miller, to hear how these new changes will affect the listings made by our Auctiva sellers.
Me: Hey, Rebecca. So what’s your initial reaction to all these new eBay site changes?
Rebecca: My hope is that these new changes will bring in new buyers and that the new logo will grow on me. But I’m not thrilled about the new sponsored ads within listings. I think it’s a distraction to the buyers and benefits only the person who purchased the ad, which may not be a possibility for everyday sellers.
Me: eBay mentioned a Facebook tie-in within their Oct. 10 Community Announcement. Will a seller be able to do that with Auctiva?
Rebecca: This social connection can be done within the My eBay account settings, regardless if you are an Auctiva user or not. If you want eBay to post your listings to Facebook or Twitter, you simply connect your accounts within the ‘Share your eBay items with friends’ section.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to smother my friends and family with all my eBay listings, but if you had a business page for Facebook, this may work better.
Me: eBay clearly believes in the power of good images and how important they are for selling your items. What’s next for Auctiva regarding images?
Rebecca: We have always believed that good images help sell more items, and we are planning on releasing an optional super-duper-sized (the real name is still in the works) image size before the holiday shopping rush. This new image size will be available to everyone at no extra charge and will be 20% larger than eBay’s new super-sized images.
Me: Any other new things that Auctiva is working on?
Rebecca: eBay plans on rolling out more listing changes before the holidays and we are busy incorporating the necessary fields into our one-page lister that will release soon after that. We are also working on revising a few holiday templates that will help dress up your holiday listings and help your listings stand out among the crowd.
We’ll be blogging more about the new super-sized image upgrade as the release date gets closer. Stay tuned!