Expanding efforts to reduce unpaid items with automatic payment collection
When: Later this year
Where: All sites
In the 2022 Winter Seller Update, you learned about the continued work to reduce unpaid items by automatically collecting payment from buyers when their Best Offer is accepted.
The eBay team is excited to keep the momentum going by expanding these efforts to other Best Offer scenarios, including Offers to Buyers and counter offers. Later this year, buyers will also be able to request bundled offers on multiple items when they make a Best Offer.
eBay hopes these changes will help you reduce operational costs and spend less time dealing with unpaid items, so that you have more time to focus on growing your business.
What’s changing?
Later this year, eBay will start asking buyers to pay when they accept a seller's Offer to Buyer or a counter offer.
eBay will also introduce a new feature that will let buyers request a bundled offer on multiple items. These multi-item offers can be completed in one transaction, saving you time and making it easier for buyers to purchase more of your items.
Next steps
You don’t have to take any action. You’ll see more updates later this year as eBay rolls out the bundled offer feature.
eBay is updating to a more accurate way of counting listing page views
When: April 2022
Where: all sites
Having the right data at your fingertips is key to getting your listings to perform at their best. To give you clearer insight into your listings’ performance, eBay is changing to a more accurate way of counting page views, and updating how traffic data on your listings is displayed.
- eBay is updating how listing page views are counted to more accurately capture views by potential buyers.
- To give you cleaner performance data, eBay will now show a 30-day rolling count of listing views instead of a lifetime count.
- You’ll still be able to access data for the past 2 years in a new listing traffic history report.
More accurate listing view counts
eBay wants you to have listing traffic data that shows as accurately as possible how many buyers have seen your listings. That’s why, in late April 2022, eBay will be updating how listing page views are counted and reported.
The current page view numbers on your listings count various types of traffic, including a significant amount of non-human traffic—one example is programs called “bots” that scan websites and now account for approximately 40% of internet traffic.* Learn more about non-human traffic and bots.
Although this non-human traffic is currently counted as a page view, it doesn’t represent real shoppers or lead to sales, and recent analysis has shown how much it inflates your page view numbers.
As part of continual efforts to bring you better data to run your business, eBay is updating to a new way of counting page views that will better filter out non-human traffic and more accurately show views by potential buyers.
While the amount of non-human traffic on the internet is considerable, it also varies across categories and products. As a result, while most sellers will see a significant drop in page view numbers, the impact of filtering out more non-human traffic may vary. Importantly, the actual traffic from potential buyers to listings isn’t changing. eBay is just updating what types of traffic are counted as page views to more accurately show views by potential buyers.
Page view counts based on this approach have been available in the Seller Hub Traffic Report and Promoted Listings reports for some time. The changes outlined above will increase the consistency of how page views are counted and displayed across eBay.
*Statista, Global share of human and bot web traffic 2019-2020.Lifetime views are switching to a 30-day rolling view count
Your listings currently display lifetime views, which leaves out important information about recent performance trends. Starting soon, eBay will be adjusting your page views to show a rolling 30-day count. eBay is also adding a new listing traffic history report, where you can access page view data for the previous 2 years.
This updated 30-day view count makes it easier to see trends as they’re happening and adjust your listings to perform at their best.
A new listing traffic history report
30-day rolling data makes it easier to spot trends and optimize listings. However, some sellers prefer to have data that spans a longer period, so a new listing traffic history report will show the past 2 years of view counts for each listing.
The new report will show a breakdown of views, including trends over time, for each individual listing. You’ll be able to filter for page views over various timeframes, from the past 24 hours up to the past 2 years. You can see an example of the new listing traffic history report in the screenshot below.
Starting soon, you’ll be able to access this new report by clicking the page view numbers on your Active Listings page.
Next steps
You don’t need to take any action. In late April, eBay will start rolling out the new way of counting page views. When your listings are ready to be updated to the new page view counts, you’ll see notifications on your Active and Unsold listings pages.
Listing Page Views FAQs
Why is eBay making this change?
The eBay team believes that this change will arm you with the best data possible to evaluate and optimize your listings’ performance. With more non-human traffic filtered out of your listing view counts, you’ll be left with a clearer picture of views from real people that have the potential to convert to sales.
What is non-human traffic and bot traffic?
Non-human traffic refers to any traffic that doesn’t come from real people viewing your listing pages, including traffic from “bots.”
Bot traffic exists across the internet, and occurs when a page is viewed by a machine instead of a real person. Because bot traffic doesn’t benefit sellers or lead to sales, eBay aims to filter out as much of it as possible from your listing page views.
Did buyer traffic on eBay change?
There’s no change to the number of buyers on eBay, or the number of buyers visiting your listings. The change you’ll see in your page view numbers is a result of a new way of counting views that filters out more non-human traffic.
Does this mean I’ve been overcharged for Promoted Listings or selling fees?
No. Listings’ view counts are never used in the calculation of any fees, including Promoted Listings fees and ad rates.
Try out the new eBay app messaging experience beta
When: April 2022
Where: all sites
In the Winter 2022 Seller Update, eBay announced the upcoming launch of a new messaging experience to make communication between sellers and buyers easier. The beta version is in the process of being made available for everyone to test on the eBay mobile app.
To try out the new messaging experience, first make sure the latest version of the eBay app is installed on your device. You’ll see “We've updated messaging. Try it now” at the top of your inbox. Tap on Try it now. If you don't see this message, don’t worry—eBay is rolling out the beta test to more sellers over the coming weeks.
During the testing phase, you’ll be able to switch between the classic view and the new beta version. Give it a try, and use the Feedback button in your app inbox to let us know what you think!