Open House Chat with Ambareesh Murty - Head - Categories & Seller Marketing

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Users,

We are pleased to announce the next session of our Open House Program, where users get an opportunity to chat with the eBay India Team.

Join Ambareesh Murty, Head of Categories and Seller Marketing, for an online discussion on buying and selling on eBay India.

Ambareesh will be available on this thread on Wednesday, the 26th of April, 2006, from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM IST, for an interactive discussion with our community members.

You can submit your questions before or during the event by making a post on this thread. For help on using the discussion boards, please click here - http://forums.ebay.in/thread.jspa?threadID=300000542.

See you on the 26th at 4:00 PM!

Thanks and Regards,
Sapana,
Community Development Team

[touch_and_shine]

I can see my co -
sellers are also suffering a lot with gallery feature being charged -- Same just
like me -- bunty_1979, mysaleoffer and ankushinfotech are one of them. Well I
know Ambareesh is going to give a single answer to us regarding this matter and
the answer is going to be really disappointing -- b'coz it can never make us
happy -- b'coz Ebay is not a seller on this site.

"ankushinfotech" ---
Ebay can avoid giving reply to ur queries -- But hey we are also here who are
reading this post and believe me I totally agree with all your points. You made
me remember my old bazee days too.

Note to Ebay : Be
generous --- Don't be a giant. Let small sellers grow too. It will be profitable
for you as well.

http://search.ebay.in/_W0QQsassZtouchQ5fandQ5fshine

[cosycom]

Dear Mr. Ambreesh , I request you to add some more categories e.g. Display Signs , Electronic Display Boards , Shop accessories , Decor , Signage etc. as available on your other international sites.

We sell LED signs and display boards and it is very difficult to find a proper category for the same.We are forced to list them in other items categories .

As a result despite I have along list of International buyers there is not a single customer from India since the products can not be found easily on ebay.in site .

I also requested this to Mr. Gautam and Mr. Lahiri in previous discussion boards without any results so far.

You are also requested to look into any possibilties of export promotions from India by waiving off the listing fee on every successful International sale , as you certainly get handsome share on sale of the items also . I am sure this will generate more business to ebay and attract more sellers to go for international listing of their products.

I hope you will favourably consider our problem this time.

regards , cosycom

[sabinaagrawal]

Hi
Does anybody sell food on ebay, if they do (for example, a friend takes orders for brownies/cakes) where do you classify it? didnt see any "food" category on ebay.

[indianexpo]

MISALIGNED CATEGORIES with eBay.com for international listings
Dear Ambareesh,

I am yet to find a single category which is properly aligned with .com.

This makes us suffer as our international listings go in OTHERS category under main category on .com site.

I tried listing from India in Gems/jewelry & Clothing ...NO SUCCESS.. main reason is that people on .com take 2 steps to search a product :-
1) They enter a keyword e.g. AMETHYST ( loose gemstone)
2) Seeing 1000's of results they switch to "Product Finder" on Left hand Panel...Now they would short list by shape i.e. round oval etc etc.

Listings from India go in OTHERS and not in shapes and are IGNORED.

Similarly a buyer on .com would search for Women's TOP and then short list by size ...they on .com have MISSES PLUS PETITE etc with sizes xs to 4x in most to enable a buyer to short list and we have ONLY XS M L XL XXL ...and they go in others category....

Sir, we need same category mapping as on eBay.com , or listing on Indian eBay is of NO USE !

[rohit@ebay.com]

Good afternoon,

Welcome to our Open House Session. Today, we have with us, Ambareesh Murty, Head - Categories and Seller Marketing with eBay India. Ambareesh will be present on the boards for the next hour, answering our user queries on using eBay.
Thanks and Regards,
Rohit,
Community Development Team

[indianexpo]

Hi,

With reference to prev mail , will we have to wait for simmilar alligned categories on eBay.com...., or its better to forget and concentrate on eBay.com rather try & sell internationally from India?:|

:-)

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Good afternoon, and welcome to this session! My name is Ambareesh Murty, and I head the Categories, Cross Border Trade and Seller Marketing function.
My role seeks to develop the eBay marketplace by ensuring efficient space utilization, make available a wide range of quality products for the buyer, help more sellers list their merchandise and in the most optimum ways possible as well as grow cross border trade. I look forward to interacting with you, our Community, over the course of the next hour.

I shall begin by responding to the queries posted in advance of the event, and then move on to taking live questions. Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Dear indconcepts
Thank you for being such a regular participant on the Discussion Boards, and taking the time and effort to educate our new users. As I had mentioned briefly in the introduction, seller marketing takes care of the seller side of the business and specifically takes care of the following…

• Acquisition of new sellers through mass attract seminars, trade show participation and on-ramp programs to help new sellers list their merchandise
• Scaling current sellers business by Seller Account Management (especially for top sellers), the power seller programs
• Increasing adoption of useful features such as eBay Shops, features, Seller Tools so as to help scale the sellers business

Regarding your question on planned new Categories, we track performance (function of listings, quality of inventory, buyer searches etc) across categories on a regular basis and the moment we feel that there is significant potential for a new category, we introduce the same. We are currently in the midst of evaluating the current category structure and should be able to share and involve the community in the process over the next 1 month. Collectibles is one of the categories under consideration. Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hello touch_and_shine, bunty_1979, mysalesoffer
We have received feedback from our sellers, feedback regarding the Gallery Fee charge. Gallery Fees has been introduced for sellers to distinguish their listings from other sellers. It’s like any other feature fees which increase your chances of sales on a listing. We believe and know that a listing with gallery has 2 times chances of sales then a non gallery listing. This over the longer term should help us improve the quality of merchandise and therefore overall buyer experience on site. Regards...Ambareesh

[ambareesh@ebay.com]

Hello snrama and emailswarup,
Firstly, thank you for your regular contributions on the Discussion Boards. We need more Community champions like you!

I shall forward your suggestions on Category structure changes to Biren Sampat. Who is responsible for what we call 'Categories & Infrastructure (C&I)'. C&I is about providing our buyers a fast and convenient method to find the products they are looking for easily.
Category structure thus forms a very important role and apart from it, attributes or product finders is another very important element.
Users can also visit the Categories Discussion Board, where you can regularly post feedback on current category structure as well as propose any changes that you feel are appropriate. As I had indicated in an earlier post, we periodically review and revise the category structure, and shall consider all your inputs while making the next change.

Regarding the Homepage feature with Gallery, our product team is already working on its feasability and we should be able to confirm this sometime in Jun-Jul ’06, we will be in a position to give a specific date only by June. Regards...Ambareesh