eBay Vice President of Advanced Solutions Chris Tsakalakis sat down with AuctionBytes during the fifth annual eBay Live conference in Las Vegas on Thursday. Chris handles responsibilities for eBay Stores, ProStores and eBay Express, among other things. Chris answered questions about Stores in Search, Yahoo ads on eBay, and rolling out initiatives during the holiday season.
AuctionBytes: You oversee some services that eBay sellers can use to grow beyond the eBay.com auction platform. What should sellers do first to grow their eBay business?
Tsakalakis: We try to create an environment where sellers can maximize sales,... We provide ways for people to increase their selling ability on eBay. Stores is a good way to go beyond the beginning stages. eBay can't tell you specifically what will make you successful, it depends on the individual business.
AuctionBytes: Something that is on every seller's mind right now is exposure through Search. eBay rolled back the Stores in Search initiative in March. Bill Cobb had mentioned that one indicator you looked at was that buyers were not saving things to their Watched lists as much. But wouldn't that mean that the shopper had found what they were looking for and would not need to put it on their Watch list? It sounds like a positive outcome of Stores in Search.
Tsakalakis: The decrease in Watched lists was one indication of buyer behavior changing. We look at the likelihood that a visitor would turn into a buyer; how often do they return - and the watched lists are good indicators. When people are vested in auctions, they will return to eBay.com. We want to preserve auctions - it's the secret sauce of eBay.
AuctionBytes: Many people told me their sales increased with Stores in Search. Who exactly was negatively impacted by it?
Tsakalakis: The overall buying behavior was negatively impacted. We try to look at plan (measure to plan). The additional inventory to search results should be an incremental increase. In some cases, auction and fixed-price listings were put at a disadvantage - they were off from plan. (Editor's note: Chris wouldn't say whether sales were down for auction and fixed-price listings - he said eBay looks at plan - what they expect sales to be - and they were off from plan.)
In addition, exit rates went up - people saw the added number of items and left the site.
AuctionBytes: Can you tell me more about the testing you are doing on Stores in Search?
Tsakalakis: Soon we will start the tests (keep an eye on the eBay Stores Discussion board). 93% of visitors to eBay will see identical search results the way they are today. The other 7 percent will see our 6 tests and one control.
AuctionBytes: What are you testing? Only the number of Store results that show up after auction and fixed-price listings?
Tsakalakis: One of the things we will test is the number at the very top of the page that indicates the total number of results returned, including auction, fixed-price and eBay Stores listings. In some tests, we'll continue to display the number of total results. In other tests, we'll show the number of auction and fixed-price listings only at the top, and then when visitors get to the Stores results in the expansion box, we'll display there the number of Stores results. And in other tests, we'll show the each number broken down at the top.
In addition, we'll vary the number of result of Stores listings shown in results.
We'll also test the prioritization of categories. We will test showing category counts based only on auction and fixed-price listings, instead of including Stores results' categories as we did in March.
AuctionBytes: How long does it take to analyze the results?
Tsakalakis: Several weeks. We may then run more tests after analyzing the results of these tests. We also look at what people do afterwards so we can track return visits.
AuctionBytes: Will you analyze on the fly, or will you wait and analyze all at once?
Tsakalakis: We'll wait until we have all the data.
AuctionBytes: What do you think of the instant feedback you get from eBay users?
Tsakalakis: That's the thing that keeps me at eBay. It's the great thing about eBay, and is part and parcel of being at eBay. I tell job candidates, if you don't like getting customer feedback, you probably shouldn't work there.
I'd feel bad if we didn't get feedback, and of course I like the positive feedback too. eBay is a vibrant and thriving business that matters to people. Our members are entrepreneurs that make their living on eBay.
AuctionBytes: What would you tell users who ask that eBay keep things simple and working, and stop coming out with new features?
I appreciate that sentiment. We have lots of folks that ask us to make changes and ask for things to be improved. We view changes as improvements, though I sympathize with users.
Our users are unbelievably creative and smart - they understand their business. Some changes are logical - things that should be fixed, and some features, like the woman in this morning's Town Hall event who suggested removing a cap on eBay Stores checkout so she doesn't have to send two invoices when people buy 50 bolts of fabric from her Store. We also need to work on educating people about features.
AuctionBytes: There's a lot of sensitivity to changes around the holiday shopping season because of the fear of glitches during a critical sales period. What will October through December look like in terms of new eBay initiatives and features?
Tsakalakis: There are a lot of people working on initiatives and features, I'm not aware of all the initiatives. But our intent at eBay is not to roll out major changes during the shopping season. If we do, we do it early in Q4 (October). When we do roll out initiatives and there are glitches, we think it's very fair and honest for people to ask what happened. We're working really hard to make sure things are QA'ed (Quality Assurance), and we address issues very quickly.
AuctionBytes: What's your number one piece of advice for eBay sellers?
Tsakalakis: Experiment. Look at the things you can do. eBay has a huge toolbox available to you, you don't know til you try it. At the eBay Live barbeque gala in Orlando, I heard an eBay users say, "What's the risk?" Her husband had retrieved some promotional material from a dumpster and listed it on eBay; he grew an eBay business out of that experience.
Established sellers often do things the same way. Take the time to look around - just try it. The market keeps evolving, and what buyers want changes.
AuctionBytes: What would you say is the best piece of advice you got from eBay sellers?
Tsakalakis: Well, it's like what Bill Cobb said. "It's about the demand, stupid." This is people's livelihood. Our number one responsibility is to make sure they are successful sellers online and provide a rich set of features, at a good value, make it easy, communicate. And bring them customers!
AuctionBytes: With the recently announced deal with Yahoo, eBay said it would begin testing putting contextual ads on eBay for complementary, not competing products. Do you know if the ads will appear on eBay Stores?
Tsakalakis: The ads will appear in search results. When you are in someone's Store, there are no plans to have ads. Yahoo contextual ads we will focus on null search results. These are searches that bring up zero results. Sometimes people enter searches for insurance, for example.
AuctionBytes: Thank you, Chris, and congratulations on the fifth anniversary of eBay Stores.
