Ecommerce news: eBay developments and Etsy’s ongoing payment problems

In our news update this week: eBay has released some insights into how the marketplace is going to develop, and Etsy’s payment problems have continued into a third week. Read our roundup of news to find out what’s going on in the world of ecommerce, and how it might affect your online business.

eBay outlines future developments

eBay’s chief technology officer, Steve Fisher, has published an article that outlines upcoming changes and developments to eBay. The article discusses changes to the inventory catalog, personalised shopping, and new tools to help sellers:

• The existing inventory catalogue will improve on the current system of different listings even for identical items and become more structured. The aim is to "drive discoverability, insights into supply and demand, pricing trends, among other things."
• Structured data, as well as machine learning, will be used to create a more personalised experience for buyers. eBay is using user's buying preference data to create "new browsing flows and persistent product pages, allowing users to see relevant and tailored items." This has already started in some categories, and will eventually cover all categories and products. 
• New tools for sellers are going to be introduced so that they can "figure out buyer demand gaps that need to be addressed and help them reconfigure inventory accordingly." This is starting with eBay Seller Hub being rolled out to all of eBay's marketplaces around the world, which offers improved analytics, as well as more streamlined listing, marketing and promotion tools.

Read Steve Fisher’s complete post about eBay changes here. 

Etsy payment problems continue

Over the past two weeks, since 1 July, Etsy has had a number of problem with accepting payments via its Direct Checkout system. Initially, payments were taking a long time to process, up to several days in some cases, and although Etsy has said that this issue is resolved, a few buyers have continued to say they are experiencing delays with payment processing.

Since then, some sellers trying to refund buyers have had problems with their refunds being reversed. And, in the last week, sellers and buyers have been posting in the Etsy bugs forum again because some buyers are being charged twice for purchases they’ve made on Etsy.

Etsy first responded to the double charges saying that it was just a slight delay with authorisation payments for cards dropping, and that buyers are not actually getting charged twice. They have since said that they are investigating the issue, and that anyone affected should send a screen shot of their card statement and order number to www.etsy.com/help/contact.

Find out more about the Etsy payment problems, and how to deal with them here.