What EBay's New Seller Hub Means for You
What does eBay's recently-announced Seller Hub mean for you as a buyer, or as a seller?
Today we take a look at the new Seller Hub and see how it might tweak interactions between buyers and sellers, and help either or both.
One thing the Seller Hub does is lay out all on one screen all the tasks a seller needs to complete. This means, if you have asked a question about an item, it will show up right there in the upper left of the screen under "Answer Product Questions." Hopefully this means you have a better chance of having your question answered than you would have normally, though sellers should of course answer questions as soon as possible.
Beneath that, there's a prompt to respond to any open offers from buyers. Once again, this is another reminder for a seller that you may have an offer in, as sellers sometimes get distracted and don't always notice an offer in their email stack.
Then, of course, there is a field reminding sellers how many orders they need to process and ship.
Under Orders, they can also see all orders needing fulfillment, as well as any open returns or replacements. For example, I have an open return I am awaiting to come back to me right now, so it is good to see this reminder so I may contact the buyer and see if they need any help with the return.
Feedback: one thing I particularly like about the Seller Hub is the reminder under Orders of items that have been shipped and are awaiting to give feedback. As a busy seller, I don't always take the time to give feedback to buyers, although of course as a seller I welcome feedback.
So as a buyer, the hub gives you more chances to see feedback from sellers, if that's something you do not see for every item transaction now.
Most of the other features are seller-related with a chart of sales in the past 90 days, and an area that shows all kinds of information about Listings, including how many are active, and again how many have questions or open offers from buyers,
It also shows how many listings are ending today, and unsold ended listings.
In general, I think the new Seller Hub can only be a good thing in prompting more communication between buyers and sellers, and encouraging sellers to list more, which means more choice for buyers.
What do you think about the new seller hub, and what might you change about it if you could?