eBay In Demand will be available to PowerSellers with minimum 30 day DSRs of 4.8 and above. Over 700 products will be displayed on the site at the time of launch.

The eBay In Demand program is a result of an analysis of inventory on the site that falls into the following product categories:
1. Home & Garden
2. Sporting Goods
3. Clothing, Shoes & Accessories
4. Media
5. Toys
6. Consumer Electronics / Tech

Scot Wingo got a sneak peak of the product and posted his first impressions over on eBay Strategies.

Cheers,
RBH

Related Reads
eBay Strategies: eBay to release new weapon in the selection battle – In Demand
TameBay: eBay In Demand – Hot Products in Short Supply

I received a number of questions regarding cross-border trade practices in the first few days of the blog and, over the weekend, Scot Wingo proposed in eBay Strategies that “Confusion abounds over eBay’s new International Visibility Offering” so I decided to go off on my first recon mission. One of the initial questions raised on Ink about this was by Davey regarding setting up an internal cross-border trade team. You will be interested to know that there already is a team in place devoted to evolving and enhancing Cross-Border Trade (CBT) practices on eBay. The team was expanded and has been in place and focusing on CBT since early last Fall, and it seems the fruits of their efforts are now starting to see the light of day. I was lucky enough to sit down with a couple of members of the team over the past two days to see if I could sort some of these questions and concerns out.

Firstly, I wanted to find out more about the International Visibility Feature discussed by Scot and the questions he raised around non-US buyers rating US sellers at .2-.5 lower stars. It is the CBT team’s contention that although a ding of any kind is not optimal, they’ve seen no evidence of this going beyond a .1 rating. In fact, I got the impression that some sellers have even higher International scores than domestic.

Further, it was agreed that the current DSR set-up is not the best for international transactions and they are currently focused on addressing an improved rating system.

Thirdly, I wanted to get their opinion on the current “work-around” strategy of listing across two different seller IDs and although it was agreed that this was a solution of sorts, it could be argued that the seller is simply creating more work for themselves by having two IDs to manage and, by directing buyers to another ID could only add to the confusion.

Which leads to a theme that I’ve seen come up with regard to current CBT practices. Quite frankly, it seems that not enough education regarding CBT is out there. For one thing, buyer’s expectations need to be set with regard to shipping cost and time. Essentially, this is what the team has been brought together to do: educate and enhance the international experience. As it stands now, the buyer is confused with the current set up (yes, I agree with Scot’s assessment) and in order to counter that confusion, we need to have better messaging and education that can set the expectations on both sides of the transaction.

I took a look at the current Best Practices on international selling. It definitely has served its purpose up until this point, but its time has passed. In meeting with the CBT team today I was given a sneak peak at the soon-to-be-launched Global Trading Page that will house detailed support, information and new best practices for both buyers and sellers (I was told weeks – not months). Unfortunately, I don’t have much more info on this right now but they were nice enough to provide me with an extremely teasing screen shot of the page (see above). As soon as I get a URL for this, I’ll be sure to share with the group.

I realize there are a lot more questions regarding CBT but I’m pleased to report that there is a team devoted to answering those questions and enhancing that experience. I’ll be interested to get folks’ feedback on the landing page once it goes live.

Cheers,
RBH

Last month an interview ran on FORTUNE Small Business online that captured a discussion I had with beat reporter Brandi Stewart regarding the launch of the new eBay corporate blog you are now reading. In it, I emphasized my goal to be as honest and open as possible – and to be upfront about my experience (or the lack thereof depending on the topic). Obviously, sometimes this honesty will generate cries of “What the…?” on both sides of the office windows. So no matter what your opinion of me – or eBay overall for that matter - it’s going to be a wild ride from here on out.

But lets put things in perspective before I open the floodgates of discussion. First off – this is nothing new to many of the company’s key business units. eBay has been involved in social media/blogging as an organization for a number of years now. Starting with the eBay Developer blog back in 2004 and through today, you’ll find multiple, existing official blogs in our blog roll at the bottom right of eBay Ink’s homepage covering key aspects of our business, community and technologies. We’ve also created a section to the left of the blog roll called “we say…” that captures the most recent posts made on all of those blogs to keep you abreast of what other official eBay bloggers are talking about, as they post in real-time.

There are a number of external discussions going on in the blogosphere that I want to highlight here too. From eBay Strategies and AuctionBytes.com to OnlyeBay and TameBay we’ve created a “you say…” section at the bottom left of the eBay Ink homepage that captures some of the great discussions going on there. These modules, combined with posts from me and the guest authors of eBay Ink, create a one-stop repository of online conversation and dialogue for everyone; by everyone.

Comments are turned on so please tune in. If you have a topic you’d like me to tackle, an eBay employee you’d like me to interview, tell me what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong, please shoot me an email. I am 100% committed to this blog and therefore will do my best to respond to every email in a timely manner.

So, welcome to yet another corporate blog. A blog where comments are encouraged, feedback welcome, opinions wished for, external blogs highlighted and where yours truly will be found wearing a flak jacket as he types.

Game on.