A Deeper Look at The 2021 eBay Fall Seller Update

eBay released the 2021 Fall seller update and it includes some items that are mostly housekeeping, others that had been already announced, and a few new items that are mostly minor tweaks.

Listing & Promoting

Under the banner of “housekeeping,” eBay is making more category changes with most of them going into effect starting October 12.

eBay said listings in affected categories will automatically move listings to the most relevant category. Depending on the category this could result in fee changes (increases and decreases). The best advice here is to do the category changes now to avoid issues going into the holiday season.

eBay is adding new item specifics in the following categories:

• Collectibles & Art
• Jewelry
• Musical Instruments
• Parts & Accessories
• Sporting Goods

The good news is that the requirement will not start until early 2022, but sellers will be able to see and use the new item specifics starting October 2021.

Item specifics are becoming more important for items to surface in searches and it is really best to update these now.

eBay is updating coded coupons to allow sellers to send coupons to select buyer groups. Starting this October, sellers will be able to send a coded coupon to previous buyers to encourage repeat business.

In a few months, eBay will enable sellers to target coded coupons to followers and eligible buyers who have expressed an interest in the type of items a seller has listed.

The fourth item in this category is Promoted Listings Advanced. This is a feature that was already announced in August and will enable sellers to target market buyers using CPC advertising.

The current product known as Promoted Listings will be rebranded to Promoted Listings Standard.

Running Your Business

Under this heading, eBay is introducing a new Stores experience for sellers and buyers. eBay said over the past year, Stores already received a new, simplified design to help keep buyers engaged, regardless of the type of device they are using.

In this fall seller update, eBay is tweaking the new design to allow sellers to tell their story better, including updates to visual design.

eBay will also increase the visibility of some stores in the Stores Hub and it is updating the newsletter experience to help sellers to stay in touch with buyers.

There are a number of other Stores improvements eBay plans to release over the next few weeks all designed to help keep buyers engaged with seller Stores which the company claims has already improved the sales for many sellers that opted in to the new design feature early.

eBay is also making updates to research and report areas for sellers. These include updates to its Listing and Sales Quality Reports, and offering new Terapeak Sourcing Insights and the Terapeak Product Research has a new look and feel.

Additional updates in this category include small changes to multi-user account access and 2-step verification, providing more flexibility and security.

User Agreement Update

The final update in the 2021 eBay Fall seller update includes some changes to the user agreement that will go into effect October 8, 2021.

These include a new cancellation policy reference and new required seller information when eBay manages payments.

eBay Fall Seller Update Conclusion

Overall, there are no big surprises in this seller update. Promoted Listings Advanced is probably the most notable new feature that will give sellers another way to market their products, yet that was already announced last month.

The other updates are minor and mostly housekeeping which is good because going into the busy holiday season, sellers shouldn’t have to deal with any major updates that would require a lot of work and adjustments for them.

This brings back the question if these “major” seller updates are really necessary anymore.

eBay has been updating the platform with so many new features, is there really a reason to release these updates when some of the changes were already announced and others are minor that could just be handled through announcements?

Certainly, the Spring 2021 Update was a big one, but it could also easily be handled over a few months worth of announcements. For now, it seems eBay will continue to tradition of seller updates when eBay could just bite-size the information and in some ways it could be argued that makes it a lot easier to digest too.

Here is the link to eBay 2021 Fall Seller Update with more details on all the changes announced.

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