Open Discussion with Rajan Mehra, Country Manager, eBay.in, 18 July 4-5 PM

[sapana@ebay.com]

On behalf of Rajan Mehra:


Hi everyone, this is Rajan Mehra, Country Manager for eBay India. I’d like to invite you to my next Open House discussion on Wednesday, 18th July 2007 from 4-5 PM IST.

At the outset I’d like to offer a big thank you to our sellers for your enthusiasm and commitment in helping us improve the buyer experience on eBay. The fee change we implemented in April’07 has significantly helped us improve the quality of supply on our site, resulting in a better finding experience for buyers and more business for our sellers. As a result of this and other marketing initiatives, we have seen a rapid sales growth and for this I’d like to thank you.

Our community of sellers work tirelessly day-in and day-out to make eBay a great place to shop. Based on your feedback, we have introduced some product changes including requiring Immediate Payments to complete checkout and other changes that will improve your experience on eBay.

Business at eBay is growing and I believe the healthy growth trend shown by the e-commerce industry is a cause for optimism for all of us. ASSOCHAM, an industry body, has forecasted that the e-commerce market size will grow to Rs. 5500 crores in 2007 – 08 from its current Rs. 2200 crores.

I am also pleased to share with you some of the recent accolades received by eBay India. JuxtConsult, a third party research firm, has recognised eBay as the most popular shopping site for the third year in a row and also the most user friendly website. PC World Web Awards have recognised eBay India as the best auction website. I want to thank you for your support in helping us make this happen.

I’d like to take this opportunity to revisit the priorities I’d set out for our team in January this year and measure the progress we’ve made so far:

1. A key priority we’d set out was to make our site simpler and more convenient. We recently launched a simplified buying flow for Fixed Price items and introduced a Shopping Cart. The exciting marketing campaigns like ‘Bid for a Buck’, ‘Cricket Mania’, ‘1 Rupee Free Shipping Auction block’ has further helped in a healthy growth rate in buyers, repeat buying and overall buyer satisfaction

The next steps towards making eBay simple, fun and convenient shall be a completely new Home Page and Phone Support for PaisaPay users.

2. Providing a great experience to our buyers also means providing a safe and trustworthy trading platform. The TnS team has done lot of work in the past six months to ensure that bad buyer experiences are reduced. While they are proactively eliminating sellers who could cause bad experience, they are also ensuring that buyers who have a bad experience are reached out to and an appropriate resolution is provided to them under eBay’s Buyer Protection Program. We will continue to introduce measures that keep eBay a safe place to buy and sell.

3. Global trade on the eBay platform has been growing rapidly and India is poised to gain significantly from this phenomenon. Many of you would have participated in the promotions that we run around International Listing Fee. In addition, we plan to improve the existing Export Resource Centre, launch an all new Global Trade Tutorial and re-launch the International Selling Discussion Board.

4. Getting more users aware and experienced about eBay is another of our key priorities. Since 35% of India’s population access the Internet from cyber café’s, we have successfully initiated a program where Internet users at Reliance World centres are educated and encouraged to buy on eBay. Today this channel has become a major contributor to new buyers on site. The current coverage spans 16 major cities and shall be further expanded in coming months. We are exploring ways and means to extend this infrastructure to get and support new sellers on the site.

Having said all of the above, I also know that there are lot of things we still need to do to deliver on a seamless experience for our buyers and sellers. I’ll be happy to discuss the same with you in the Open House discussion. You can post your question in advance on this thread, or join me on July 18th at 4 PM for a live discussion.

See you on the 18th!

Thank You,
Rajan Mehra,
Country Manager – eBay India

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Dear dealjit,

Thanks for using eBay India.

I understand your concern regarding new buyers and the pain that a seller has due to non paying buyers. It has always been a challenge for us to balance good experience for genuine new buyers while reducing the rate of items not paid for. We have evaluated various options like compulsory verification; however, we found that the bad experience it will create for genuine buyers will actually hurt the business of our sellers. Our research showed us that oftentimes buyers are not aware that they have contracted to make a purchase before they make a payment. We have worked on simplifying our buying flows to make the checkout process very easy and intuitive to use and introduced immediate payment functionality that prompts for payment at the time a buyer commits to buy. We are confident that this will significantly reduce the incidence of items not paid for.

I hope you will continue to sell on eBay India, and will soon share a different experience with us in our next Open House session.
Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Dear sareewholesale,

As you may be aware that as per our policy we do not remove the feedback comments. However, on mutual withdrawal we remove the feedback score for the transaction. Also we permit users to respond to the feedback they have received. I think, whenever you get a rating (positive, neutral or negative) that can be misinterpreted by another member, it is advisable to post a response to the rating. This will ensure that a new buyer gets to read your side of story as well and thereby the complete picture.

Thanks for all the great work you're doing and hope your seeing good business on the site.
Best Regards
Rajan

[sareewholesale]

sir ... thanks for clarification
the removed feedback doesn't show whether the original was a neutral or negative
Thats The concern

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Dear Aktayal,

Thanks for your post - it's encouraging to read that community members such as yourself value some of he new features & programs that we've been rolling-out.

As you've seen for yourself, the Feedback system has a number of positives - it allows for an environment where new buyers get enough information to get comfortable to purachse from good sellers. The system is, of course, sometimes misused by Buyers and this is very unfortunate. We are working on improvements to the feedback system (some of which you may have seen eg Detailed seller Ratings) and these features will be continue to be rolled out onto the site. We do everything we can to ensure equity in the system but I'm sure you'll agree that on balance the system must provide for a transparent manner in which the millions of visitor who visit our site as Buyers feel comfortable

I hope you continue to have success in your sales and I look forward to your 1000th rating soon :)
Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Folks,

Thanks for actively participating in today's conversation - I thoroughly enjoyed myself and look forward to more such conversations in the near future. There are a few posts which still remain to be answered and I'll do my best to address your queries soon. Thanks once again for all your time.
Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi verash,



Thanks for your suggestion. We normally create new categories when we see some levels of activity and listings that indicate sustained interest of a critical mass of both buyers and sellers. Given the current levels of activity for business and industrial type products, we have not prioritized creating this as a separate category. That said, I think your suggestion is definitely worth exploring and I will ask the Category team to once again evaluate the interest levels and need for the B&I category.
Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi sareewholesale,



I believe our existing stores functionality can help you achieve the outcome you’re trying to achieve viz tailoring product pages and the look and feel to cater to different customers or geographies. To help a seller accomplish the same, the Shop functionality allows a seller to create custom pages. You can use the custom pages like a different shop in your existing shop. A good example of the same is the shop from the following seller: http://stores.ebay.com/Grapevinehill_Mens-Accessories_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQftidZ2QQtZkm.The seller has men’s footwear; women’s footwear and accessories in different custom pages, which are easily visible to any interested buyer. You can create up to 5 custom pages in a basic shop, 10 & 15 in a featured and premium shops respectively.



I hope this answers your query. Do write in if you have more thoughts on the same or wish to know more about this feature.
Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi runalaila,

Thank for your kind words. I know that recognition by community members of the work done is something that is valued by all eBay India employees and so I know your post will be appreciated by all (just like some of your blog postings :)). As regards your question on providing extra benefits to Power Sellers, we have been evaluating a number of programs, including some to reward top users of the site. However, it would be premature for me to announce anything at this time. Suffice it to say that Power Sellers are amongst our most passionate users and we value what they bring to the site and would want to make sure that we benefit them in a number of ways.
Best Regards
Rajan

[rajanmehra@ebay.com]

Hi sitare_jewels,

I understand your concern and agree that it can sometimes be annoying to have buyers who do not pay. With the new changes in the ‘Buy it Now’ flow, we are expecting the problem of non paying buyer to reduce considerably. Also, the team is working on many enhancements to the feedback system, to take care of issues similar to one that you have raised. We shall keep you and other members informed of those changes as and when we come closer to a roll out.
Best Regards
Rajan

[snrama]

Hi Rajan Mehra,

Thanks for replying to my post. ---------------
With Regards,
Navaneeth (snrama) 😉