Welcome to the eBid July 2020 Newsletter.
- 3,336,603 Live Listings
- 24,413 Categories
- $1,000,374,473 Gross Listing Value
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eBid News
eBid New Website Design Welcome back to the eBid Newsletter. It's been a few months since we last gave everyone an update. During this time the world has seen and is still seeing a lot of sadness and upheaval and many of us have been touched personally by the Coronavirus outbreak. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who has lost someone during these changing times.
Things at eBid have been hectic to say the least. Apart from the obvious extra policing problems we had with a few unscrupulous sellers attempting to profit from the pandemic we've also been working on our new website. Initially the focus was to get to site to launch and then to ensure everything was running smooth and speedily as we had intended. As with any big changes there were a couple of hiccups but they were all ironed out thanks to the eBid team and all the help from our wonderful community of eBidders. Once again, thank you everyone.
The new website launched quite a few weeks ago now and it was not only the look and feel of the site that was updated but also many background changes. Many of you will have already checked it out, if you haven't then why not pay us a visit. eBid is now a very mature website (we first launched in 1999!) and even the slightest change to one function can have knock-on effects to other parts of the site so change has been a little slower that we would have hoped recently. We've made some big improvements to help us into the future by making the codebase a lot more modular so updates to the site can be made much more often from now on. We are also changing our server infrastructure in the next few weeks for the first time in around 15 years which will allow for even faster page load times.
The biggest change we made is in the way the lifetime of an eBid listing is handled. Up until now, when you repost an item from the LISTINGS I RAN section of MY EBID using the checkboxes (mass repost) then the previous item was completely duplicated and a new listing started with exactly the same details BUT with a new listing ID number. The old listing was still shown in your LISTING I RAN section until it was either deleted by yourself or 90 days passed and it was automatically archived. This same methodology was also used with the manual repost system using the listing form (single-item repost).
The updates we have made mean that any repost will now not create a duplicate listing but will re-use the previous instance again. The listing will keep the same listing ID and the original listing will disappear from your LISTINGS I RAN section and re-appear in the LISTING I'M RUNNING section. The use of the REPOST + DELETE checkboxes will therefore also change. Using the same ID will allow our URLs that appear in search engines to remain valid and gain more traction in search results instead of constantly changing. This is the case only on listings where no sales have occurred.
Using eBid on a mobile device is now a much more pleasurable experience, we have spent many many hours improving the smaller screen experience for everyone.
For quite a while now you will have noticed a short 5 second "check screen" when making a keyword search on eBid to stop hungry bots using up all our resources. I'm glad to say we've been able to get rid of that now as it has been replaced by other security measures so searches should be hassle free.
One of the most common support queries we receive is the question of how long it will take for a new listing to appear in the Google Shopping search results. The method we used before now to post to Google Shopping was a batch system that could take up to an hour for us to make the initial posting to Google and then depending on how Google reacted to the upload another 30 minutes for it to start appearing in search results. Our updated method is now instantaneous for the upload of data from eBid to Google and we have seen listings appear in Google Shopping search results within 2 minutes of the listing being made live on eBid. A great improvement we hope you like. Why not take advantage of the SELLER+ Lifetime 50% off offer on this newsletter to upgrade your account today and to start promoting your items on Google Shopping.
Another change we made was to our FRONTPAGE FEATURED listings. These are no longer category specific and are shown at the top of the homepage now for the whole period instead of on a rotating category basis.
Other recent updates :
- UPDATE - New website design launched
- UPDATE - Website responsiveness capabilities (how the website copes with differing screen sizes) for phone screens overhauled
- UPDATE - Website widened for larger monitors
- UPDATE - Reposted listings will now keep the same ID# when possible to help with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
- UPDATE - "View History of this Listing" option link now shown on listing pages to see previous listing lifetime dates
- UPDATE - RIP (Require Immediate Payment) improved to handle listings that close earlier than the current RIP timeout time, this earlier time will be used for all items.
- UPDATE - Added "List a Different Item" button to new listing confirmation page
- UPDATE - Added "No Offers Received" message to MaO overlay when needed
- UPDATE - Frontpage Featured listings are now category independent and will be shown consistently on the frontpage instead of in a rotation
- UPDATE - Frontpage Featured listings moved near to top of homepage
- UPDATE - Added PayPal option for all subscription upgrades, previously was only SELLER+ Lifetime
- UPDATE - Added facility to My Defaults to allow keywords to be added that will not be sent in the listing title to payment providers
- UPDATE - Google Shopping upload speeds improved
- BUGFIX - Top level category pages not showing 3rd subcategories below the 2nd level category titles
- BUGFIX - Fixed some eBid Store URL issues when using https://yourstore.ebid.net links
- BUGFIX - Updated some pages that had very feint text on them
- BUGFIX - "Extra Category" error when returning directly to listing form after saving a listing to My Defaults
- BUGFIX - eBid Store option missing when returning directly to listing form after saving a listing to My Defaults
- BUGFIX - Listing Variation Wizard button to add new variation was not working for a few categories
- BUGFIX - Guest Checkout confirmation message was not showing the CANCEL button
- BUGFIX - Mass repost confirmation page attempted/failed numbers were not correct on some occasions
- BUGFIX - Blackball system was not being incorporated on MaO attempts
- BUGFIX - Link to eBid Store homepage was just reloading current page for keyword searches
- BUGFIX - Edited shipping charges for live listings when an invoice had been sent out were also breaking the invoice if the invoiced shipping method was removed
- BUGFIX - Problem when selecting category and the category is a ghost category, a loop would occur
- BUGFIX - Duplicate entries on Items I've Sold list on rare occasions
- BUGFIX - Listing I'm Running category filter dropdown was not showing all available categories
- BUGFIX - Sales Tax and Shipping data not importing correctly from other marketplaces
- BUGFIX - Imported listings with long listing descriptions were causing a database timeout on rare occasions
- BUGFIX - Listing price was missing on search results when variations used on some categories
- BUGFIX - Sold items with pending PayPal payments were showing as a green "P" icon in ASL instead of half red/half green icon
- BUGFIX - Some emails have been being bounced by Gmail due to misconfigured email headers
- BUGFIX - Listings with variations that had a variation quantity of 1 were being removed after a sale was made on very rare occasions
- BUGFIX - SKU field missing when importing listings
- BUGFIX - Newly uploaded images using the Advanced Image Uploader were not auto-rotating correctly
- BUGFIX - Shipping not being added on some occasions to checkouts for brand new buyers using the guest checkout system on iPhones
- BUGFIX - Lorry icon was showing on search results for listings that were "Collection Only"
- BUGFIX - Imported items that are "New - Other" now showing as UNUSED on eBid instead of NEW
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Originally Posted by Anniemcc2
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