eBay seller update: Continue to focus on vertical fields and continuously optimize payment management

At an event attended by more than 900 people , Jordan Sweetnam, senior vice president and general manager of eBay North America, reviewed eBay's vertical strategy in three categories, including luxury watches, trading cards and sneakers, and said that the categories where eBay will take a vertical strategy next include comics, coins, stamps and vinyl records.

In the slides shown by Sweetnam, eBay showed its focus and confidence in vertical fields: activating vertical markets in a high-profile manner, and as long as eBay has the courage to take this step, it will have won.

Andrea Stairs, eBay’s chief marketing officer for North America and vice president of seller community, said during a Zoom call that eBay is working with influencers in three areas where it has been focusing on developing new verticals.

eBay is also working to attract traffic in new places including TikTok and Reddit , with Twitch being a new platform eBay is testing and experimenting with. Stairs said eBay is strengthening its storytelling capabilities in an effort to attract younger users.

In addition to verticals, Keala Gaines, vice president of payment services, also provided the latest information on managed payments at the meeting, saying that eBay will work to speed up payments to sellers . Before the promotion of managed payment services, sellers could receive payments immediately in their PayPal accounts, while the payment time for managed payments to sellers was maintained in a period of 2-4 days. Keala Gaines said that the speed at which banks transfer funds through the ACH network is beyond eBay's full control , but eBay is working hard to optimize matters such as the cut-off time when sending batches to banks.

Gaines said the managed payments rollout will be largely complete by the end of 2021 , but eBay will continue to release new features and enhance the payments platform based on customer demand in 2022 and beyond.

Hazel Mitchell, senior director of global customer service, made a bold promise to sellers: In the coming weeks, wait times for customer service will be reduced. She also announced that eBay is about to launch an innovative customer service model - it allows eBay's best-selling sellers to earn extra dollars by helping other eBay sellers succeed . "We will connect professional sellers with new sellers," she said.

Harry Temkin , vice president of seller experience , talked about the new unified listing tool, saying that the tool is still in beta testing and eBay is collecting seller feedback. He reminded sellers of the importance of stating "item details" (product attributes) in listings to ensure maximum search visibility. Temkin also said that with the new unified listing tool, eBay's image cleanup tool will be available for desktop users (currently only available in mobile devices).

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