Lorrie Norrington in the US, and the UK team have been quick off the mark with announcements from topics spoken about in the keynotes addresses.

In fact the first message from eBay UK (expounding on keynote speech topics) appeared only 8 minutes after the keynote presentations began. At least Lorrie Norrington’s appeared a respectable 47 minutes after they’d finished, but given it’s length, I suspect it was typed before the speeches. Spontaneous - not!

So what’s been announced? Generally speaking, it’s a few mouldy carrots and a couple of extra sticks for sellers, here’s the list -

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As I write this, the keynotes speeches are due to start in 15 minutes time, so it’ll be a rushed post, and if there are any typos I’ll tidy them later.

Jamie Iannone, Vice President of Global Search, on the day that the UK had the new Best Match search dumped on them (yesterday), revealed more details of the system to AuctionBytes.  It seems the criteria for “being found” will vary from category to category, and the DSR criteria for sellers will also vary from category to category. 

One of the key tidbits he dropped is that keywords don’t even need to be in a listing for it to be pulled to the fore.  The example used was looking for a “birthstone for January” which returned matches for garnets in listings that had neither birthstone nor january in the listing or title.  I thought that strange when I read it, as with a July birthday, I’d always been told garnets were my birthstone - perhaps it’s not just UK & US English that differs? 

If that’s the case, then we’re all going to have to become far more Americanised (Americanized?) in order to reach buyers, as this technology and search criteria is set to go global.

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eBay Live 2008 kicks off today - that’s the main buyer & seller event as opposed to the developers conference which was held earlier in the week.

As the attendees begin assembling and attending eve of event parties, I thought it would be useful to look at some of the announcements from last year’s event and see how many promises were fulfilled or broken.  The list is not definitive, but contains food for thought.

Unfortunately, the most important source - the streaming videos of the keynote and Q&A sessions are no longer available on the web.  This is a real blow as there were half-remembered announcements in them that have never been commited to print, and I particularly wanted to review those.  Even the links to them have been removed from the dot com announcement board.

In particular I remember hearing both Bill Cobb and Rajiv Dutta promise multi-currency invoicing on eBay & PayPal within the year, but that might have been announced in Washington this January, rather than Boston last summer.

So first a quick bullet list of the announcements and promises for long-lasting site changes (ignoring ones known to finish and disappear before year end, then I’ll look at a few of them in more detail -

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eBay have released the page links for their online broadcasts of the eBay Live Key Note Speeches and the ensuing Town Hall conference.

Being able to access these important management to member interactions without attending the event is becoming more crucial for eBay sellers with each passing year. The dates & timings are as follows -

Friday morning, June 20 - Keynote webcast
eBay leaders will deliver their keynote address from 7-8 a.m. Pacific / 9-10 a.m. Central.
That’s 2pm-3pm UK time / Midnight to 1am (Sat 21st) Aussie East Coast time.
Click here and bookmark this URL to watch the streaming webcast event LIVE.
(This link will not work until the event.)

The full archive will be shared shortly after the event - once it’s been announced, I’ll add a blog post pointing you to it.

Saturday morning, June 21 - Town Hall broadcast via wsRadio
Hosted by Jim “Griff” Griffith, eBay’s panel of executives will be taking questions from eBay Live! attendees during this month’s Town Hall broadcast from 9-10 a.m. Pacific / 11-12 noon Central (4pm-5pm UK and 3am-4am Aussie East Coast). This event will be broadcast LIVE. Click here to tune in.

Ed

It’s about that time again.  For the last five years, eBay US has announced the competition for Best of Stores during the first 10 days of March.

I’ve not seen an announcement yet this year, but thought I could use the calendar coincidence to remind everyone, that with the arrival of Spring (and the switch of Daylight Saving Time in the US & Canada, plus the impending arrival of the switch from GMT to BST in the UK), now would be a good time to do some sprucing up and content refreshing of your eBay shop static pages.

Not only will this brighten them up, it’ll give UK sellers a chance to revisit their terms of sale and shipping with the imminent arrival of compulsory business registration for PowerSellers wanting the new FVF discounts. 

Changing the page layouts and their content will also trigger search engine spiders and bots to crawl your shop and bump you in the search results due to having fresher data than rivals (a vital factor in current search engine algorithms), and it might help you decide on clearing some deadwood stock via a promotion using Markdown Manager.

If you made heavy use of the weekend’s Free Listings on eBay UK, and yesterday plus today’s Free Listings on eBay Belgium, then running a Markdown Manager sale in conjuction with those listings will yield benefits, as I’ve found out many’s a time.

Don’t be lazy now - remember the compulsory business seller registration deadline approaches fast, and once all those free listings sell and need packing and posting, you might not have time to remember the spring cleaning and account admin.

Ed

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It came and went as it does every year, but how many of you remembered to do the traditional ritual on the correct day?

I’m talking about the 12th Day of Christmas and the taking down of the Christmas tree and decorations  gotcha with that one didn’t I? 

As usual in our household, the tree being behind me when I sit at the computer, it’s still there 2 days after it should have come down, and maybe I’ll get a chance to do something about it this evening.   It’s one of those little quirks of human nature that while many of us are gagging to get the decorations up in early December, we become very ambivalent about the task of taking them down.  It’s not neccesarily because we enjoy seeing them there (long after they were due to disappear) but more because we get distracted by other priorities.

Right now, I’m deep in the throe’s of implementing the Q1 marketing strategy for 2008, and I simply have “too much to do and too little time to do it” to quote a certain white rabbit (not helped by screaming children in the background ….. back in a mo’).

For me, one of the problems with early January is the heavy temptation of “work avoidance”.  Having got used to the relaxation, fun, and celebratory mood of the festive season, it’s hard to shake the desire to leave things until tomorrow.  Perhaps that’s why the tree is still up, and I’m not clearing other tasks as fast as I should do?

Ed