eBay Set to Improve Shoppers Buying and Selling Experience

In the next few months, eBay will implement some great new features set to improve the eBay buyers and sellers experience.

The new features have started to be implemented as of yesterday, and will bring improved features to sellers accounts, including multiple product variants such as size and colour, the automation of opening and closing unpaid orders, and the reduction of members receiving fake emails. All of these features are set to be rolled out from now until early October, and offer even more value to shoppers.

Multi-Variant Listings: From 5 October 2010, eBay sellers can combine multiple product variants like colour, size into one listing. This feature is fantastic news for eBay sellers as it reduces the cost, and ultimately for shoppers it means less clutter when browsing eBay for something. Instead of seeing the same product in different sizes down the search results page, there could be just one listing. This feature has already been available on other international eBay sites.

Unpaid Item Assistance: Due this September is a new "unpaid item assistant" feature that will help sellers manage accounts by opening and closing unpaid item cases automatically. The feature can be set to automatically open a case from 4 to 32 days after an item listing ends.
So if a buyer doesn't pay before a period set up via the assistant, an unpaid case will open and can only be closed once the buyer pays for the order. If you never hear from the buyer again, you will receive a credit to your account and the buyer gets a strike against their record, ouch! The Unpaid Item Assistance service is only available as an opt-in basis, and can only be used with integrated payment methods where eBay can confirm the payment has been made, such as PayPal, Paymate, or an eBay integrated checkout system.

New Email Processes: Starting yesterday, the 17th August 2010, eBay is taking steps to reduce the risk of members receiving fake emails to the account inbox, and to the members personal email accounts. All eBay members' email accounts will be made anonymous, adding increased privacy to everyone. So now, both buyers and sellers email addresses will be hidden before and after a transaction.

All up the changes I've outlined above are going to improve the shopping experience for the buyer, with multiple options to select sizes and colours. To be honest I think it's good to see eBay answer the needs of it's customers for a change, instead of answering the share holders needs. The new Multi-Variant Listing feature will cost them a heap of money in revenue, because the eBay seller will now list the one t-shirt instead of 3 t-shirts with different sizes for example. Other changes like the sellers getting some new management skills with the "unpaid item assistant" will help keep everyone on their toes for paying the bills ;) And both eBay seller and buyer get better protection from spam and fake emails.

You can view the announcement here: August 2010 - Improvements coming to eBay.com.au