Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
Lorrie Norrington Keynote at eCommerce Summit
The 2008 Spring eCommerce Summit officially kicked off this morning with an introduction by PeSA Executive Director, Jonathan Garriss, welcoming all attendees to New Orleans.
eBay President of Marketplace Operations, Lorrie Norrington, was the keynote speaker of the day and her presentation focused on giving a Marketplace progress report for the past few months and re-emphasizing the focus of the company moving forward.
Highlights of the presentation included:
1. Back in January, eBay said that the goal was to have 60% of PowerSellers qualify for at least a 5% discount and in Q1, 63% did qualify for at least the 5%.
2. It was estimated that 15% of all PowerSellers would qualify for the higher, 15% discount. In Q1, PowerSellers actually doubled that. 30% of all PowerSellers qualified for the 15% discount.
3. We’ve already talked about this on Ink, but Lorrie confirmed that PowerSellers’ shipping cost DSRs for cross-border trades are only .02 points lower than domestic.
4. Two new buyer requirements were introduced today to further promote seller protection. First, sellers can block buyers who have had more than one Unpaid Item strike in the past 12 months (previously it was restricted to more than one UPI strike in the last 30 days). Second, beginning in May, sellers will be able to block buyers who have been reported by other sellers for policy violations like Feedback extortion or Feedback abuse.
5. Two new changes announced regarding negative or neutral feedback for sellers. The first is that negative and neutral feedback left for sellers will be removed – retroactively – when a buyer is unresponsive to an unpaid item claim or if they respond to the claim without expressing dissatisfaction with the item or your performance (this is aimed at resolving the situation where a buyer responds to the UPI claim but the response is nonsense). Secondly, negative or neutral feedback left by buyers who have been suspended from our marketplace for Feedback Extortion or other policy violations, will also be removed.
There was a Q&A of approximately 20 minutes that proceeded the presentation (that involved contributions from a panel of eBay representatives) and an additional one-hour break-out session with eBay panelists immediately following the keynote. I will be posting the questions and answers from both of those sessions - including the answers I got from Ink reader’s questions - in a follow-up post shortly. For now, I’m going to jump back into the sessions so I can see the eBay Affiliate Program presentation.
In the meantime, Lorrie provided me with the complete transcript of her keynote speech for your reference.
Cheers,
RBH
Tagged: buyers, ebay, ecmta, ecommerce, ecommerce summit, feedback, jonathan+garriss, lorrie+norrington, Marketplace, new orleans, pesa, sellers, trade show
Beni MasselliOn 06.19.2008 at 5:02 pm Said:
I’ve been a member of eBay since the 1900’s. It’s a great tool and a good way for people who want to buy something or sell something. It’s also a great business tool. I’m a Power seller and have done very well over the years with eBay. Now we have to modernize. I understand that, but to catapult all of us into a fray of good and bad decisions is not the way to keep the faithful and get new sellers and buyers.
Let’s look at the neutral feedback. It is usually used to inform the seller that something was not quite right but the item was fine and so was the transaction. There is a positive feedback, neutral feedback and negative feedback. Two of those count as negative to sellers. Not fair! Wouldn’t it be more constructive if you changed the timber and attitude of the neutral feedback and call it a suggestion or an improvement service provided to the seller to help his business get better? The buyer can also include a negative if he doesn’t like what the seller did or a positive to let him know that it went well and will get better with more help from sellers. Let them feel as if we are working in unison and not dueling with each other for merit points, like in high school. I know you are trying to get rid of the shipping scammers and the no-show goods seller. But they only compromise 5 to 7% of us. This feedback change is like selling the store because someone stole a package of chewing gum. I am a Power Seller and pride myself on my reputation. But if can be stripped away so easily by discrimination instead of help. We are doomed. Lowering .05 here and there is not even a band aid. What you need to do is gain more trust from buyers, eliminate the non-buyers that waste our time and give sellers a new and professional look, so buyers will gain more confidence in eBay. Right now, we have to pay for a store, pay to upgrade it, pay monthly fees and more. If eBay would come out with their own interface that looks like a big business and let sellers use it might give that “show business” look needed to attract better buyers and certainly aid more sellers. I’m rambling on, sorry, but I feel very strongly about this and hate to see it disintegrate.
Thank you,
Be
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