Keep Your Finger on the “eBay Pulse”

DaveyOn September 12, 2008 at 1:15 pm Said:

This place still has a pulse?

Maybe it is just sales that are dead.

Still looking for a blog post on eBay’s customer service commitments going forward and its stance on customer relations. How does eBay think it is doing internally in this regard?

implogOn September 12, 2008 at 2:25 pm Said:

Please just fix what’s broken on the site.

We sellers are more interested in making money then we are in all the bright, shiny, whirly, twirly “new looks” and “new feels” that might be discussed on the eBay SF shuttle.

This is a business for us, not a gamers conference.

HenriettaOn September 12, 2008 at 2:57 pm Said:

LOL at Davey

JenOn September 12, 2008 at 3:56 pm Said:

The “new and improved” pulse doesn’t show us the individual categories anymore. I could care less about iPods and Gucci. That’s not what I sell. I need to see my categories and what is hot.

Geez eBay! You go and change the pulse to something that sellers can’t even use anymore, how about giving us back our option to leave buyers negatives?

Oh wait, eBay only wants best for buyers, not sellers!

EstebanOn September 12, 2008 at 4:12 pm Said:

I’m mostly a buyer these days, and even I can’t see the value in this ‘new’ Pulse. I was a regular user of the ‘old’ Pulse and had all of my favorite categories bookmarked on my browser. Now I get nothing but search terms… Am I missing something here? Where I used to see actual items I would consider buying or bidding on, I now see a few extremely general items being featured that have nothing to do with anything I’m looking for. What’s the point?

AndrewOn September 12, 2008 at 6:04 pm Said:

Cool! You ruined Ebay Pulse by taking out individual categories! Sweet!

Patricia1On September 12, 2008 at 9:20 pm Said:

What, if anything, was wrong with the old pulse?

Dennis GOn September 12, 2008 at 9:28 pm Said:

Hi All,

Richard has asked me to respond on your feedback directly here on the Ink blog.

As Richard has outlined in his post, the new pulse has some changes versus the old Pulse. I understand from your comments that you have been using the Pulse page in the past to find keywords in the deeper categories.

The background of this project is complex. The Pulse page might not be the most important page on the site if it comes to buying and selling, it does give our community great insight of what is in high demand in certain categories. Where the majority of the product resources are focused on bringing the new Search to the eBay platform, the Pulse page was actually in danger to get closed down.

Because I see the value of the Pulse for our users and for the Search engine optimization efforts, I decided to take the Pulse page off platform and work with an external developer to come up with an alternative. This has caused a couple of trade offs which have an impact on the way we are able to display the keywords in every category.

As the Pulse page now is off platform, and maintained by non-eBay engineers and me, we are not equipped to make monthly changes with the normal category changes. This is why we are only able to show the keywords within the current Meta categories.

In return we have looked for more information to be displayed in these categories. This comes in the form of the Internet Pulse, where we look at what experts in these categories are writing about, and more popular searches within a category in the form of the new keywords and movers & shakers. I hope you will see the value in the expertise of the external sources we look at.

This new Pulse is a start for the new life of Pulse. We will try new modules on the page, and I thank you for your feedback on the fact that you now miss out on the most popular searches in the deeper categories. I will take this feedback into any of the ideas we are looking at for further development.

Furthermore, I would like to ask you a question. The module of the most watched items is gamed by smart sellers who are getting more exposure to certain types of items. What would you prefer?
- a list of most watched items in any category
- a list of most popular products in any category
- or a list of the items with the most bids in any category

What else would you like on the Pulse page?

Now that I got your attention, I would like to take the opportunity to point you to a couple of SEO tips for eBay sellers that can help you to get higher ranking in the search engines and hence more buyers.
- http://reviews.ebay.com/1-GUIDE-ON-HOW-TO-SEO-YOUR-EBAY-AUCTIONS_W0QQugidZ10000000004060267
- http://pages.ebay.com/education/SEO-introduction/index.html

I hope this will help you to drive more traffic to your listings.

Kind regards,

Dennis Goedegebuure

DaveyOn September 12, 2008 at 9:37 pm Said:

It had not been disrupted nor innovated for awhile…

JoeOn September 12, 2008 at 9:40 pm Said:

The old pulse was very important to me and my business. the “improved” pulse is useless to me.

I need my individual category. As a seller I am insulted that Ebay would blindly make such a harmful change.

joeOn September 12, 2008 at 9:50 pm Said:

I am assuming that the pulse was getting shut down because of the new 30dayFP format. It would make FP always be the top ten listings.

The pulse is extremely important to me as a seller.

Now what is important to us and soon.

I need to see the top 10 watched auctions (no fixed price) in my individual category (i.e. womens vintage shoes). The Keywords are useless to me. They generally just come up as a list of numbers which do me no good.

Yes the main pulse was gamed but most individual nitch categories were not.

DaveyOn September 12, 2008 at 11:12 pm Said:

@Dennis,

I’m impressed by your candor. Thanks. This straight talk is a bit of fresh air. Being asked for user input is so unusual, rather than being told how things should be and why. I’m sure the pressure on Pulse (to shut it down or whatever) came from outside your immediate organization. Realize that if users were in control, we’d probably roll back this crazy Finding thing immediately, and give your resources back.

Richard, can I beg to get the same candor and dialog about the Customer Service and T&S organizations, coming up?

Beth CherkowskyOn September 13, 2008 at 6:33 am Said:

- a list of most watched items in any category
- a list of most popular products in any category
- or a list of the items with the most bids in any category

What else would you like on the Pulse page?

We want what we had - the ability to drill down thru categories and see what was most popular that was actually SELLING on ebay.

Keyword research ?? [Sentence edited: see comment policy] I don’t need it to do keyword research I was doing PRODUCT research.

Of course the ideal thing would have been, (UNHEARD OF IN EBAY HISTORY) to ask us FIRST before you ruined it.

Put it back. Al the other “so-called tools”??? Not so much useful.

implogOn September 13, 2008 at 6:33 am Said:

“Furthermore, I would like to ask you a question. The module of the most watched items is gamed by smart sellers who are getting more exposure to certain types of items. What would you prefer?

- a list of most watched items in any category
- a list of most popular products in any category
- or a list of the items with the most bids in any category”

Dennis G:

Seems like all these could be gamed in the same way that the “most watched” category was gamed.

For those unfamiliar with the “gaming” to which Dennis G is referring just Goo gle the words ebay pulse scam

The original pulse scammers gaming the system were caught by sentient ebay users who realized that it made no sense that an e-book listed numerous times would have tens of thousands of “watchers” for each identical e-book auction. Even with users reporting the scam, those gaming Pulse were able to own the Pulse page for well over a year.

Well over a year, eBay, well over a year.

Scott Pooler, wrote a great piece about it on April 28, 2008 on his blog Trading Assistant Journal. He, as did others, suggested that the gaming by the Pulse page scammers may have been behind eBay’s decision to end all e-book and digital auctions.

It seemed at the the time that ending all e-book and digital delivery auctions because of a few bad guys gaming the Pulse page was irrational and too heavy handed an action for even eBay.

Now with eBay suspending good sellers because of encounters with bad buyers or because the buyer gave the seller a “4″ DSR which eBay says is good but suspends sellers with a “4.3″ category rating in a 30 day period, eBay’s irrational behavior and heavy hand seems boundless. Add ebay and Paypal’s support of bad buyers when they use PayPal to scam sellers and Scott’s theory begins to look like a slam dunk.

JJHOn September 13, 2008 at 2:24 pm Said:

“What, if anything, was wrong with the old pulse?”

@Pat, probably nothing. But this is eBay, where “fix it even if it’s working fine” is the rule. DISRUPT, but do it innovatively.

“The old pulse was very important to me and my business. the “improved” pulse is useless to me.”

@Joe, you’ve been “disrupted.” Now, go innovate!

JoeOn September 13, 2008 at 10:35 pm Said:

I am innovating. I am innovating myself to the competition. I do not ant to and it is not in Ebay’s best interest to push sellers to the quickly growing competition.

When Ebay raised store fees 2 years ago in a misguided attempt to force people to buy at auction they forced sellers to innovate. The sellers innovated straight to Az’s new 3p setup. If Ebay would have innovated instead of trying to make their customers innovate they would likely slowed down Az’s growth.

Ebay is the service provider we are the customers. If you stop providing adequate service eventually you will alienate your whole customer base. The only thing that Ebay has going for it is Critical mass but through continuous blunders they are losing ground.

unknownOn September 14, 2008 at 4:03 am Said:

A few questions to whomever designed this ‘thing’.

Who are the customers for it? Buyers or sellers? I’ve taken informal polls over the last 4 years and not one buyer was even aware of it but it was used pretty regularly by a bunch of sellers. It’s an ego thing for sellers. I asked the buyers if they’d wanna see it - nope, why would they want to? And that’s how I think myself.

The new incarnation is useless to sellers and a waste for buyers since they don’t care and don’t use it. I’m trying to understand the logic behind this new design. Because it looks prettier? What about the content?

The first thing you see on the page is popular internet searches which says to me that ebay thinks people come to ebay to search for other websites? I know there’s a lotta links ebay puts on pages pushing people offsite to shopping.com and stuff like that but is ebay now trying to become a search engine?

If I click on a link for the ebay pulse, I want the pulse. I don’t want ebay’s version of a certain search engine’s zeitgeist or trends.

There are millions of sellers and millions of items. If we sellers have an item up and we wanna see if it ranks among the most watched items (please, dead serious here - someone explain to me why a buyer would wanna find something a lot of other buyers are watching cause I can’t wrap my head around it) why can’t we drill down to the category its in to see how it ‘ranks’ among its direct competition? Do I think I ever had one item that was first or top 10 out of MILLIONS of items? One out of thousands maybe but not millions.

So why would a seller wanna see your new pulse? How is it useful? Who is your customer?

I wish every one of you guys who works at ebay actually used it so you would have to see how bizarre and useless this stuff is.

sandygirlOn September 14, 2008 at 7:31 am Said:

Please, just leave everything status quo for a while!! The search engine was a lot better for buyers and sellers prior to all of the insane changes. Do the techies at eBay get huge bonuses for coming up with the most changes per week??

GailOn September 14, 2008 at 3:27 pm Said:

“…it does give our community great insight of what is in high demand in certain categories.”

“Where the majority of the product resources are focused on bringing the new Search to the eBay platform, the Pulse page was actually in danger to get closed down.”

Dennis ~

My question is, WHY was it in danger of being shut down? Did the “data” tell eBay that it wasn’t being accessed enough to maintain it? Obviously, SOME people were using it.

Since you say it’s been taken offsite, you’re free to do anything you want with it, right? So, who is your target audience? Who will this new Pulse benefit?

I want to see what products are selling in my category, not “what experts in these categories are writing about”.

I understand your wanting to be on the leading edge of innovation, and I congratulate you on talking eBay into giving you one of their ‘toys’.

But, how do the keywords blog, google, ebay, and amazon, much less fashion week, become a “way for buyers to look into getting the ‘hot new thing’ on eBay”? Seven of the ten keywords in your example are generalizations. You can see that yourself. You’d have to exclude all generalized keywords for the information to have any value, and who’s to say what those generalized keywords are?

So, what is this really about, Richard? Your friend Dennis has a new toy and needs guinea pigs to test it? Forgive me if I’m too busy to play.

LindaOn September 16, 2008 at 3:07 pm Said:

Please read the notes on the ebay discussion board. there are many dis gruntled sellers on there and you should have a heads up on this..

KenOn September 21, 2008 at 6:25 am Said:

Without the ability to see watched items in every category (not just top level,) Pulse has lost its usefulness for me (I’m a Silver powerseller and used it daily. I no longer use it at all.) Absolutely mandatory for me is the ability to see “most watched” items in all sub-categories. “Most bids” would be the next most important.

Dennis GOn September 23, 2008 at 4:17 pm Said:

@all

Based on your feedback, we have decided to roll back the old Pulse page for a limited time only. This will allow the team to incorporate the changes needed to bring the functionalities so desperately needed for you all into the new design.

I hope you will enjoy the new Pulse as much as the old one has been loved. We are trying to create a product that will allow you to get more information what to sell, instead of less information.

Like I said in my earlier comment, I do want to get more feedback of what functionalities you would like to see. The more ideas, the better. Keep it coming our way, and we will see how we can act on these.

Kind regards,

Dennis

Dennis GOn September 23, 2008 at 5:12 pm Said:

BTW> For those who loved the new pulse, this is available at: http://new-pulse.ebay.com

Thank you

Dennis

DaveyOn September 23, 2008 at 8:18 pm Said:

Way to go Dennis! I get the hint that you care about your users.

If you’ve caught a good case of the “make my product useful” virus, please go infect Trust and Safety and Finding too while you’re at it!

Patricia1On September 24, 2008 at 11:09 am Said:

@Dennis - you’re a smart person. You saw the complaints and you saw the problem and you weren’t stubborn in thinking you are right and the users are wrong. Ebay needs a LOT more of you and a lot LESS of what they have now! :-)

GailOn September 29, 2008 at 7:59 am Said:

@Dennis - Thank you for hearing us. “eBay Reintroduces ”Classic Pulse” Portal Page” is covered in the 29 September Auctionbytes Newsflash.