On Sharat's behalf:
Hi everyone – this is Sharat Digumarti from the Marketplace Health team. It has been about six months since we began introducing Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs), and I felt it was time to provide a brief update to let you know more about the progress and results we are seeing with DSR data.
DSR adoption rates
We are delighted that buyers are leaving detailed seller ratings over 72% of the time. In some countries, such as Australia, daily adoption rates are above 80%. In addition, the overall rate of Feedback being left remains at 70%. This is a positive result, because it shows that the introduction of DSRs has not had any negative impact on buyers’ willingness to leave Feedback.
A look at marketplace DSR scores
With over six months of data, the DSR scores for eBay.in are showing some healthy early patterns. A median score reflects the score that a seller in the middle would get, if sellers were ranked by their buyers from best to worst. The score for eBay India is 4.5 each for Item As Described and Communication. For shipping time, the score is 4.4 while for shipping & handling charges it is 4.3. To see the detailed table, please refer to the announcement boards.
Using DSRs
Detailed Seller Ratings are a measurement of buyer satisfaction, and they give sellers a tool they can use to evaluate how they are performing. When an individual set of DSRs (visible to sellers by mousing over the stars in their profile) is compared with the chart above, sellers can get a sense of how well they are performing compared to the marketplace as a whole. Sellers with scores lower than the median can take advantage of this data – which is provided by buyers across the marketplace -- to reevaluate and adjust their business practices.
As we look to ensure that buyers have great experiences on eBay, we will be leveraging this DSR data in several ways in 2008: to help us evaluate seller performance, to determine PowerSeller eligibility and the benefits associated with the PowerSeller Program, and to influence priority in search results.
Other Feedback news – Removing Item Title from Buyer Profile page
We have received feedback from our buyers that the inclusion of the item title on the 'Feedback as a Buyer' page seems like an invasion of privacy, even though this information is readily available through advanced search. We surveyed buyers and over a half of them were concerned or extremely concerned with the visibility of this information on the 'Feedback as a Buyer' page. So, effective today, we will be removing the item title from this page.
You will be hearing more about the use of DSRs in the future, so please stay tuned.
Sincerely,
Sharat Digumarti
Marketplace Health Team
