Developer

Important Update for Developers in Technology Categories for US and CA

2009-06-24T14:58:24-07:00

eBay will soon enable catalogs for a number of categories in US and CA. We want to make sure that this has minimal impact to your application and your sellers, so we will be running some small tests first.

Test 1 - June 29

The first test will be June 29, when we enable catalogs in the Video Cards category. The changes will be live the morning of June 30.

Video Cards catalog:
Computers & Networking > PC Components > For Desktops > Graphics, Video & TV Cards > Graphics, Video Cards (3762)

Update 30 June, 2009: The Video Cards changes are now live. If you notice any issues with your application in this category, please contact us

Test 2 - July 8

The second test will be July 8, when we enable catalogs in CPUs, Motherboards, Hubs&Switches, and Keyboards.

CPUs Catalog:
Mapped Categories:
Computer & Networking > PC Components > For Desktops > CPUs (3671) > AMD (15918) > 11 leaf categories
Computer & Networking > PC Components > For Desktops > CPUs (3671) > Cyrix (3675)
Computer & Networking > PC Components > For Desktops > CPUs (3671) > Intel (14291) > 16 leaf categories
Computer & Networking > PC Components > For Laptops & Notebooks > CPUs (86711) > AMD (86712)
Computer & Networking > PC Components > For Laptops & Notebooks > CPUs (86711) > Intel (99251)

Motherboards Catalog:
Mapped Categories:
Computer & Networking > PC Components > For Desktops > Motherboards (4613) > For AMD (101195) > 16 leaf categories
Computer & Networking > PC Components > For Desktops > Motherboards (4613) > For Intel (101198) > 23 leaf categories
Computer & Networking > PC Components > For Laptops & Notebooks > Motherboards (60265)

Keyboards Catalog:
Mapped Categories:
Computer & Networking > Keyboards, Mice & Input > Keyboards (33963) > 10 leaf categories

Networking Hubs & Switches Catalog:
Mapped Categories:
Computer & Networking > Networking & Communications > Networking Hubs (11178) > 4 leaf categories
Computer & Networking > Networking & Communications > Network Switches (51268)

Possible Issues

We have thoroughly tested this change, and do not expect any breaking changes to your application. However, we can't anticipate all of the ways in which the API is used, so are giving you advance warning so you can keep an eye out for issues.

If you do notice any issues with your application in these categories, please contact us.

Why Catalogs are Important

Catalogs provide additional technical and descriptive information about your item, without the seller having to enter it manually. That info makes the item easier to find in search, and can answer many buyer questions about the item without the buyer having to contact the seller. Catalogs can even provide a stock photo. We think catalogs are a very good thing.

We appreciate your working with us as we move to bring more catalogs to eBay.

Embracing the Opportunity of "Open"

2009-06-18T14:08:57-07:00

Or "The Slide Deck for John Hagel's Keynote"

Through a series of metaphors including telephone systems in 1908, beer and birds, stevedore knots, and Hoover Dam (as the largest solar collector in the world), Rolf explored the opportunities that open networks offer.

Early on, he pointed out that the terms "free" and "open" can be ambiguous because they both have at least two meanings:

free

as in "free beer"—meaning you can drink as much as you want at the party, without paying
as in "free as a bird"—meaning without restriction

open

as in "public"—like an open house where anyone can come and look at the furniture and the pictures on the walls
as in "open-minded"—like a club house where members can contribute furniture and pictures on the walls

He talked about Metcalfe's Revenge (see Metcalfe's law), and how a small group of competitors in an open network can unite and take over an incumbent. (For a simple mathematical view of this, check out his presentation.)

more == more

Ever wonder where exponential growth comes from?

Open marketplaces like eBay are large, closed-loop ecosystems: eBay attracts sellers, who post items, which get bought by buyers, who come back to the marketplace to buy (or to sell).

This kind of ecosystem also supports side loops that create self-reinforcing behaviors: The more items you sell, the more money you make, and the more you want to sell. Similarly, affiliates drive traffic to eBay, eBay gives them money, and they drive more traffic to eBay.

getting value out of "free" and "open"

Free APIs: Free and robust APIs help you manage complex data more easily. For example, you no longer need to use screen-scraping on sites where the user interface is always changing.

Standardized Inputs: While you might think that standardized input (like "Size" and "Color") aren't "open", this type of structured data can help all participants manage their business (or their search experience) more efficiently.

Free metrics: Your competitors are using free tools to capture metrics and analyze how their sites and businesses are doing. This kind of freely available functionality is something you don't pay for that makes your business better.

collaborative architecture

Not everything that is "open" needs to be open source. There are great opportunities for developers to create more effective collaboration tools to fuel open networks.

Rolf talked about how eBay is now working on a more collaborative architecture. For example, with eBay Selling Manager Applications, we are now able to have you participate in our system. We can take your input and put it into a very specific place.

He closed with a number of thought-provoking questions plus ideas about opportunities for innovation.

We're still in the infancy of the Internet. Service providers offer data tracking and data collection, but people don't really know how to make use of it yet. If you can figure out how to extract and use these capabilities, you could be very successful.

Check out Rolf's deck.

- Lisa

623 Trading, Shopping, Client Alerts, Merchant Data API Docs Now Available

2009-06-26T11:30:07-07:00

Please remember to use a test environment when updating applications to use a new schema version.

To find out when a version of the API will be available, see the table at the top of the Release Notes for that API.

You can find the latest API documentation at the eBay Developer Documentation Center.

Trading

Trading Release Notes

Release Highlights

Fees Returned in ReviseInventoryStatus
Integrated Merchant Credit Card: New Enum for Supported Sites
New Green and Silver Shooting Star Ratings
New Updated Time and Detail Version Fields for GeteBayDetails
ListingDuration Now Returned for ActiveList in GetMyeBaySelling
Find Your Seller Qualifications with GetUser
Retrieve All Features for a Category
Platform Notifications Include EIAS Token
Removal of Remaining RESTToken Fields
Answer Seller with a Longer Message

See the Trading API System Announcements for bug fixes included in this release.

Shopping

Shopping Release Notes

Release Highlights

New Green and Silver Shooting Star Ratings
Handling Time is Returned for GetSingleItem and GetMultipleItems
ShippingCostSummary for GetMultipleItems
New Search Options for FindItemsAdvanced
GetUserProfile Includes Percent of Feedback that is Positive

See the Shopping API System Announcements for bug fixes included in this release.

Client Alerts

Client Alerts Release Notes

See the Client Alerts API System Announcements for bug fixes included in this release.

Merchant Data

Merchant Data Release Notes

See the Large Merchant Services API System Announcements for bug fixes included in this release.

John Darrow
API Tech Docs and Tools

Reminder: Don't Lose your Recent Sales Score

2009-06-25T18:39:32-07:00

It's important to manage your listings to maintain your Recent Sales score. Having strong Recent Sales can give you a promotion in Best Match.

Editing a Live Listing

There has been some confusion about how to avoid resetting a listing's Recent Sales score. These are the only edits that that will reset the Recent Sales score:

Increase price
Change title
Remove item condition
Change category

Updating Item Description, Quantity, and so on will NOT reset your Recent Sales score.

Relisting an Item

The ONLY way to maintain the Recent Sales score for a relisted item is to use RelistItem, and include the ItemID of the original item. Some developers use RelistItem only in cases where they know the seller will get a relist credit. You should use RelistItem in ALL cases, so you get the maximum benefit of recent sales on the item.

In addition, you should relist as soon as the original item ends, to take best advantage of the moving window for Recent Sales calculation.

Also, a multi-quantity listing has more impact on Recent Sales than a single-quantity item, so single-quantity listings should be combined when possible. You'll save on listing fees too!

For listings with multiple variations, RelistFixedPriceItem will help you carry over your Recent Sales score.

Thank you developers for a terrific eBay DevCon!

2009-06-24T12:25:42-07:00

We're currently working on putting together the keynote and session videos for you, but in the meantime here are some useful links you've been asking for:

Thanks again to our great crowd. We hope you walked away with the insight, inspiration and connections that will make it easy to build your business with us. Keep your eye out for the videos coming your way soon!

- Delyn

Next Generation PayPal Platform

2009-06-22T13:05:59-07:00

Hi -- Delyn here. I'm posting a terrific update from one of our eBay platform architects, Farhang Kassaei. He did a great write-up of the PayPal session with Damon Hougland from the PayPal platform team that happened on Wednesday @ eBay DevCon. I think you'll recognize a lot of the platform requests, especially better integration between the eBay and PayPal platform.

Enjoy!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My name is Farhang, and I am a platform architect @ eBay Marketplaces. We just opened up Selling Manager Pro to eBay developers and I wanted to see what our colleagues on the other side of Highway 85 were up to, so when I heard about the "Next Gen PayPal platform" session, I figured I'd check it out.

Now I have to say, I have been in so many "Next Generation ...." presentations that quite frankly I don't expect a lot when I attend one anymore. Human beings are simply not very good at predicting the future. This one however turned out much better than I expected.

For starter, Damon didn't have a presentation. Instead he opened with a story:

"... This blacksmith wanted to be the greatest archer in the world! Finally he decided to act on his dream and started looking for the greatest archer in the world to mentor and train him. He looked long and hard, and in one of this trips came across a tree with a target painted on it and a perfect dead-center shot. Right next to it, he saw another tree with a perfect shot. Then, tree after tree with targets painted on them and all with perfect shots in the center. "I have finally found the master," he though. He asked around to find the master archer. "He lives down in the woods some place," he was told. He went there and begged him to become his mentor and to teach him how he makes every shot a perfect shot. The master said, "It is easy son: I shoot arrows randomly and wherever they land I paint a target around them!"

Made perfect sense! He wants to see where the arrows land so that he can paint his target around them for the next year. It was clear this was not going to be another "Next Generation ...." I am happy to be here.

Just one thing, why didn't I think of that?

Damon's whole team was also there with a lot of Post-It Notes and Pens! They distributed Sticky notes among the attendees and ask people to write down what they would like to see.

The easel papers were filling up with sticky notes. Granted some of them were funny, but there were plenty of interesting ideas. Here is sample:

Better integration without redirect to PayPal: I'd love it and we get the same request at eBay, but there are security ramifications that are not simple to solve for now.
Support for Micropayment
Better and wider International presence
Ability to update tracking
More features for donate button
Shopping Cart for Multiple-Vendors
Widgets
No elaboration from the originator, and I don't want to speculate what they meant. However there is a need for generic Payment APIs for the Widget/Gadget universe and PayPal certainly has something to contribute there. Open Source community, including Open Social, is working on such APIs, and PayPal should make sure its voice is heard.
Password-free authentication login
I would love that. Technologies exist but none is compelling to consumers yet.
Better Sandbox
Amen! We get that all the time as well. Sandbox is part of developer product development lifecycle. We have a responsibility to make sure it is up-to-date, available, and robust.
Project Echo for PayPal
Now we are talking! We have asked our PayPal colleagues to write a few apps for Selling Manager Pro too.
PayPal on all gaming platforms including XBox, PS2 and WII.
Payroll processing
Is PayPal really going there? But this is what I love about these sessions: You can figure out what developers are working on, and decide what is the best way to add value to what they do.
Multi-user account with different authorization level
We get the same request all the time, as both eBay and PayPal moving up the market from individual users to business users we both have to have this.
Much more robust affiliate program
A developer shouts, "When I find a bug in your API, fix it and fix it fast! (I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! Google it, if you are not familiar with the movie Casablanca. )
Marketplace for developers to sell tools and code to other developers

Here is an interesting one from Damon himself:

Payment processing on devices like GPS, TV, Game Consoles, Kindle (maybe not!), Washing Machine, Vending Machines, Slot machines, Gas Stations.
Wow, I wonder what is the size of those markets and how PayPal would penetrate all those devices, but isn't what developer community exactly for?

I see this theme all over the web: Platforms are not longer about enabling apps, they are about enabling businesses. It's the central theme for Selling Manager Applications (formerly Echo).

Finally, I got my hat into the ring too:

How about you guys do multi-tier commission payment so people (like eBay) can administer multi-tier affiliations much easier e.g. payout both publisher and widget developers when a publisher embed a widget on their site?
How about if PayPal told me what the risk profile of a transaction would be and what might make it safer BEFORE processing the payment?

Someone suggested using the PayPal email ID as identity and reputation outside PayPal, like when you visit an Open House.
Now that is really interesting: This house is shown only to eBay or PayPal user with minimum of 50 feedback!

Here is a good one: Lower transaction cost for lower merchant risk.

And finally what I was waiting for, Proximity Payments thru mobile phone, PayPal's original business plan.

All in all this was a very eye-opening session for me, a lot of good ideas from developers and a lot of entertainment. Damon deserves credit for conducting the meeting in a professional way and effectively soliciting ideas.

I wonder how many of these ideas they really get to do, but I am sure it helps a lot with coming up with their road map. eBay should probably do something like this next year (or maybe tomorrow in our feedback session).

- Farhang

Data Powered Selling Manager Applications

2009-06-17T18:37:27-07:00

Presented by Anthony Sukow, EVP, Co-Founder, Terapeak.

few important points to remember from this session are:

Terapeak provides tools and services to access the Marketplace Research data for eBay
Historical eBay transactions from 2004-now, most comprehensive and up-to-date ecommerce data e.g Number of Items Sold, Average price, trends, Succecss rate, Keyword distribution
Covers seven Biggest eBay Sites - US, UK, DE, FR, CA, AU, & Austria
Datawarehouse and Data marts created around eBay historical data and a structured and meaningful, easy to use view of that data can be accessed by users.
Terapeak's research tool is now available on eBay Selling Manager Application platform to be available to eBay sellers.
Also various Terapeak Research APIs available to Developers
eBay related Business can benefit from this offering.Sellers can optimize their listings.

This was a great session for Sellers who are interested in researching eBay Data to create Business around it and also to the Developers who are interested in building Research tool and applications using Research APIs.

Link to the presentation: http://pages.ebay.com/devcon/pdf/SukowAndrew_DataPoweredSellingManagerApplications_FINAL.pdf

SEO 101: Tips and Tricks for Search Engine Optimization

2009-06-17T18:43:26-07:00

Search Engine Optimization Presented by Dennis Goedegebuure, SEO Manager, eBay, dennis.goedegebuure@ebay.com.

Dennis Goedegebuure, head of the Natural search Engine team at eBay gave us a great presentation on SEO, its trends and Best practices . A few important points to remember from this presentation are:

What is SEO -
One of the way to get free traffic, more visitors, downloads, transaction and be successful.
How do search engines work -
Do best so that Search Crawlers sees you. Good extractable link structure and content, text only versions of the pages are the Key to your success!
Ranking factors -
L.U.M.P.S is the SEO mantra which stands for Links, URL, Meta Content, Page content and Site maps in your website. Links to discover to your website, Meaningful URLs, Keywords in the URL, Avoid long URLs, Description and keywords in the meta tag, Contents in HTML, ALT text, Relevant text around the images are some of the key factors.
Free Tools -
Submit Search Engine Web Tools using Google webmaster Tools: www.google.com/webmasters/, Yahoo Site Explorer: siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com, Bing Webmaster Center: www.bing.com/webmaster See how search engines crawl your site by using Web Developer Toolbar and Keyword Research Tools Google Insight for Search, Free keyword tool.

Overall this was a great session! With almost full attendance, Dennis made this session very interesting and interactive. Good questions were asked during the session and it was answered well by Dennis. I saw lot of attendees surrounding Dennis outside the Fireside ABC meeting room and showing interest even after the session ended. I am glad that I attended this session.

Link to the presentation : http://pages.ebay.com/devcon/pdf/GeodegebuureDennis_SearchEngineOptimization_FINAL.pdf

When Creativity Isn't Enough, Try Murder

2009-06-18T15:28:41-07:00

Presented by Nilofer Merchant, CEO / Chief Strategist, Rubicon Consulting, nilofer@rubiconconsulting.com, Twitter: @nilofer.

Nilofer gave us an enlightening presentation on this topic. Making the right choices leads us, and our organizations to thrive. Generating ideas is only part of the challenge of winning. While brainstorming generates lots of ideas, but you still have to discern the right choices to win. The current economic situation means identifying, winnowing and making the tough choices to choose ideas that deliver immediate results. Organizations often avoid tough choices because they want consensus, immediate results, and to avoid political fights.

The opposite of whiteboarding, the MurderBoarding™ decision process ensures teams creatively generate many potential options before "killing off" options one-by-one until there is single best solution for a specific organization and situation. The result is the organization aligns to a common goal and takes on clear, achievable, and measurable goals. This session talked about a framework for nailing the tough choices you need to make to win.

Road Map to make tough choices:

Ask yourself What is right for your situation, your marketplace and your choices should be based on that.
Do you know, What are you naturally good at, what are the core strengths of your company ?
Do you know What is next for the company? Generating lot of options, ideas, Ask enough questions, narrow down the choices, prioritize your options, Keep max 3 choices to choose from.
How do we know if we are going in the right direction? Measure your success at the regular intervals, Set the Milestones, Be clear what you are doing and what you are achieving even at the early stage and at all following stages.

Overall the session was great and I saw audiences showing interests by asking some real time problems from their workplace and Nilofer answered them well. It was a light session, different from lot of technical past two days. Great to have such session in the afternoon on the last day of eBay DevCon.

Link to the presentation: Click here

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 39 seconds with Otto van Buul

2009-06-17T14:29:17-07:00

Otto van Buul from Holland shares his key take-aways from the eBay DevCon 2009 keynotes from CEO John Donahoe and CTO Mark Carges:

- Delyn

Fourteen Questions About Selling Manager Applications

2009-06-18T20:08:37-07:00

This morning about forty developers gathered at eBay for a Q and A session with some of the SMApps creators. Max Mancini, Farhang Kassaei, Tina Mazzei, Madhu Gupta, and Mike Maffeo answered probing questions for an hour. You can read the fourteen most discussed questions below.

Q: What are the billing options?

A: Selected from developer feedback, we're offering the most popular billing options: free, one-time fee, regular subscription fee, and usage-based fees.

Q: What is the vetting process for getting my app into Selling Manager Applications?

A: The vetting process involves two levels of review. The first level is a review of your security, hosting environment, development process, and customer handling. The second level of review, after you have created the application and are ready to go live, is to determine whether your application does what your description says it does, has a reasonable billing plan, doesn't violate security and other requirements, and looks good (conforms to SMApps UI Guidelines). The review is serious, because when you include your application in SMApps, eBay's customers become your customers.

Q: Do I need a big group of developers, or to be a big company, to participate?

A: No.

Q: What's the deal with basing SMApps technology on the Gadgets Specification?

A: Developers are using that technology, and applications created with it are re-usable across the web. We have created an implementation of it that has a few special features, but basically we are compatible with OpenSocial. (About 25% of the developers in the audience raised their hands when asked if they had developed using the Gadgets Specification.)

Q: There are two different kinds of gadgets? What are they, and why should I use one instead of the other?

A: You can expose your existing application as a Selling Manager app by just specifying its URL in your deployment descriptor and implementing a subscription listener. That's a URL-type gadget. Or you can write your gadget completely in the deployment descriptor, and it will be hosted on eBay. That's an HTML-type gadget.

Q: What types of application are good candidates for SMApps?

A: Based on our research, we think email management, customer management, shipping and fulfillment, bulk editing of listings, UPI process management, and inventory management are all pretty good bets. But that doesn't preclude other types. We know that we have not anticipated all the directions developers might go with this opportunity, and we expect to be pleasantly surprised by innovative implementations.

Q: What about multi-channel applications that might compete with eBay?

A: We are very mature and understanding about that. We know you have choices, and we try to be your best option.

Q: Why still require subscriptions to Selling Manager, since it's now free?

A: Historically, My eBay and Selling Manager serve different kinds of sellers. Some eBay sellers report that Selling Manager is more complex than their needs require. Long-term goal: it would be nice if Selling Manager and My eBay could merge. If ever we are able do that, we promise we will limit the interruption for everyone, including users of your Selling Manager application, to a minimum.

Q: What's going to happen with customer reviews and ranking of applications?

A: This is a big part of our plans for SMApps, because it assures sellers and makes them comfortable choosing to subscribe to a well-reviewed and popular application. We are already collecting data, but we are still defining the logic we will use in the ratings. Our intention: to drive sellers to the best possible experience, and to make sure that excellent applications are seen by potential subscribers.

Q: What should I know about authorization and authentication?

A: The subscription process is going to be pretty much what subscribers will expect a subscription process to be. It is simpler than the auth and auth flow for other eBay APIs. We were able to make it that way because we decided to rely on you, the application developer, to verify the subscription requests we send you. Subscription requests that eBay sends to your application are signed and encrypted. We have made instructions and code samples available to help with that necessary step.

Q: If a seller unsubscribes from my application, is his or her token revoked?

A: Yes.

Q: What if one of my existing subscribers wants to use my application as a Selling Manager application?

A: If the seller doesn't recognize the application, on subscription you will have a user ID, EAIS token, and email to check against your current subscribers.

Q: If I don't charge for my application, what happens to the 80/20 split?

A: We get 20% of nothing. We don't mind, if you don't.

Q: What about sellers with multiple eBay IDs?

A: The challenge of managing multiple inventories and businesses under different seller IDs is not solved yet. It is pretty common, though, so we are trying to solve it.

Discover the opportunities that Selling Manager Applications offer!

2009-06-17T14:38:21-07:00

Mike Maffeo of eBay discussed The eBay Selling Manager Application Opportunity with an emphasis on the problem areas he has heard directly from Sellers.

Overview of Selling Manager
Replaces selling links in My eBay, automates tasks, provides reports.
Selling Manager, previously $4.99, free as of June 15th. This remains an opt-in subscription.
Selling Manager Applications will be present in an Application tab that is always present.
What do our sellers need?
These are things Mike hears directly from sellers.
Customer emails to handle an unusual higher number of pre-sale emails.
Unpaid items, ways to manage the communication with buyer; file an UPI process
Bulk Editing of Listings for instance price, shipping cost and so on.
Shipping tools - tools to minimize cost across carriers, perhaps fulfillment, and so on.
Also hear about Catalog information related applications - manage channels and optimize inventory to maximize Selling price.
Opportunity for Developers
Applications Directory is a great tool, SEO optimized content surfaced to Selling Manager subscribers.
Application Canvas allows you to take your investment with a small amount of work.
Subscriptions and Billing is flexible with a 80/20 revenue split.
Opportunity Review
Distribution: 270K subscribers before it was made free. Featured applications is another avenue.
Development: Re-use your application logic using your favorite technology stack.
Integration: Access to extended selling data.
Monetization: You choose how to charge, and we do the work through our managed billing platform.
Q&A
Marketing: email newsletter and phone call reach out.
Billing: Usage based charges with no markup, Simple answer: if we dont have a rev share for some "hard" charges, we can still process the charges, but you will incur a transaction fee.
Are List of applications available? No, not until General Availability of Applications Directory.
What about premium support - let's talk, we do not anticipate different levels of support for SM subscribers at this time.

- Anand

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 35 seconds with Rolf Skyberg

2009-06-19T09:00:00-07:00

eBay's Rolf Skyberg talks about embracing the economy of "open" at eBay DevCon 2009

- Delyn

Developers Program: Business and Product Feedback Forum

2009-06-18T18:38:21-07:00

The feedback forum is a Developers Conference tradition. Adam opened by inviting people to mock his octopus-themed Hawaiian shirt, and then Adam, Madhu, Hema, Catherine and Kristina invited questions from the developer community.

The discussion wandered all over eBay. The following is a list of requests and questions and intentions that surfaced during the hour-long exchange.

There should be more video demos. The one for Selling Manager applications was cool. "Making Your First API Call" would be good.
Back when the Sandbox was less reliable we used to tell people not to bother with it. We think it's better now, and should be used. We don't deny that we said that back then, but we don't say it anymore.
There should be code samples for Ruby on Rails. On the other hand, it's hard to maintain many code samples for many features and keep the samples accurate. And inaccurate code samples waste people's time.
Smarter messaging that highlights really crucial news, such as upcoming changes that might break your code if you don't watch out, from chatty or less pressing news, would be good.
There should be special communications about seller changes, now that they are bundled into two or three releases per year. There are special communications, but it is possible for a developer to miss them.
The Sandbox should completely mirror the Production environment, almost.
There should be debugging in Sandbox beyond just the error messages.
Know that there is love for the Shopping API ("a nice bite-sized chunk, easy to get into"), and for the Token Generation Tool ("oh, my hand's being held here!").
Developers would benefit if knowledgeable members of the Developers Program put together a list of the top ten little-known but very useful features of the eBay APIs.
The Developers Program could issue requests for applications to the developer community, and could pass along user requests for applications.
It should be easier to get associated PayPal data while executing an eBay transaction. It is no trivial thing to switch over to the PayPal APIs in the middle of eBay business.
The Developers Program should know the developers' applications as well as the developers know the APIs, and be able to tell developers about upcoming features that will affect specific applications.
There should be someone at eBay who can discuss big-picture questions and policy questions. This is complicated because if the program formally tells someone that a particular practice is acceptable, legal issues could arise.
There sure are a lot of services now. Is it going to become easier or harder to know where to look for functionality? We are trying to make it easier. Some of the apparent overlap is actually between calls that are asynchronous and calls that are synchronous.
How large do your merchants need to be to qualify for Large Merchant Services? Answer: large enough to feel the pinch on their throughput, or to see timeouts on huge listing calls. Ask us about it.

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 34 seconds with Michelle Waldorf

2009-06-18T18:00:00-07:00

Michelle Waldorf of eSeller Street, INC. tells us her thoughts about Selling Manager Applications:

- Delyn

eBay DevCon roving Flipcam: 52 seconds with Neil Mansilla

2009-06-18T16:15:44-07:00

Neil Mansilla of Mansilla Dev talks about the highlights of this year's eBay DevCon 2009:

- Delyn

Search and Best Match

2009-06-18T13:28:28-07:00

Wow, I really liked the Search and Best Match - What's Coming in 2009 session. Olivier Dumon, Senior Director of Search at eBay, spoke clearly (despite the French accent) and candidly about the goals for search ranking and the contributing factors that influence ranking. Olivier was joined by Dane Glasgow, Vice President of eBay Global Search, and together, they played to a full room.

Olivier started with the top three search objectives, in order of importance:

Elevate the best deals
Improve quality of service on eBay
Balance auction and fixed price listings in search results

Olivier went on to describe how Best Match works and some of the factors that contribute to Best Match search ranking, including:

Recent sales
Title relevancy

There are other factors, such as seller ratings and shipping costs that figure in, but Olivier concentrated on recent sales and title relevancy. Did you know that including popular search words that aren't relevant to your item can lower your listing's search ranking?

Olivier provided insight into why recent sales play such an important role in search rankings, despite a focus on best deals. He noted that with structured listings, that is listings with item specifics/attributes, price does become a dominant ranking factor, but many listings on eBay are not catalog-based and contain relatively unstructured data. In lieu of consistent standard data for some items, eBay relies on the data from actual buyers to help determine comparative search relevancy. Items with increased sales velocity filter to the top.

In this session, as in the Keynote, the importance of building eBay's catalog support was stressed. Again, we heard that the investment on eBay's part was huge, and the priority paramount. Olivier did note, however, that catalog adoption might make his job obsolete. Well, maybe just simpler.

This session had lots of good dialog between the audience and Olivier and Dane. Olivier and Dane fielded questions about the scenarios in which recent sales history does or does not carry over to new listings, how sellers of single item listings (e.g., collectibles) can improve their search ranking, and how do FeaturedFirst and FeaturedPlus fit in with the search objectives.

Nobody wanted to leave.

Oh, yeah. What's coming? eBay is developing a tool that will help sellers with the following questions:

Where is my item in the search ranking?
How can I bring my item to the top?

Can't wait to see this tool. It should be part of SR2.

-Curtis

Multi-Variation Listings

2009-06-18T16:06:55-07:00

In this final session of the day, Keith Wescourt gave us an overview of eBay's new multi-variation listings feature.

What are Variations?

Multi-variation listings are fixed-price listings that include multiple flavors of a primary "parent product" within a single eBay item ID. Examples are a particular shirt that comes in different sizes and colors, or a chain saw that varies by bar length and chain type. (Items with different brands, conditions, or categories don't qualify as variations.)

Although they all share the same item ID:

Each variation can be priced individually.
The prices and quantities can be revised at any time.
When you sell an item (or items) from a variation, each sale still has its own transaction ID (like any other sale).

Variations help sellers increase efficiencies and lower costs. Plus, less popular variations can get more exposure by being combined with more popular ones. Variations offer buyers more efficient ways to discover and compare products from the same seller.

In the API, you use the AddFixedPriceItem family of calls to list and revise variations.

Tips from ChannelAdvisor

Grant King from ChannelAdvisor offered some great tips for developers who are planning to support multi-variation listings. Here are just a few:

Previously, an item on eBay corresponded to one product in a seller's inventory. But now an eBay Item ID no longer identifies a unique item. If your existing data model expects a 1:1 relationship, you may be required to change your fundamental application data structure.
Think about how to identify each variation in your application. You can use traditional SKUs, or create your own identifier and then pass it to eBay as the variation SKU.
Build in a significant amount of time for regression testing. It's a good idea to carefully evaluate and test each component of your app to see how it could be affected when you adopt variations.

He shared a few reminders, too:

Custom Item Specifics sets in some categories may have closed value sets.
You can only delete children (variations) that have no sales. If a variation has sales, you need to set the quantity to 0 instead.
If you relist and some variations no longer apply, you have to explicitly delete them from the listing (like you do with listing enhancements).
If you convert your existing listings to support variations, you could lose your sales history (recency of sales). So, sellers may prefer to only list new inventory as multi-variation listings for now.

ChannelAdvisor has released support for multi-variation listings as a Beta, and they are recommending a slow approach for some of their sellers. For example, if a seller only sells shoes, it may be a good idea to start by only listing some of their products as variations.

See the presentation for more challenges to watch for and pointers on how to address them.

Q &A

Keith and Grant left plenty of time at the end of the session to answer questions. Here are a few highlights:

Variations are available in eBay's Large Merchant Services.
Variations are not currently supported in categories that have eBay catalogs. For example, in Home & Garden, variations won't be enabled in subcategories that have catalogs. In 2010, we plan to make catalogs and variations work together.
AddFixedPriceItem, ReviseFixedPriceItem, and related calls share the same core logic as the AddItem calls. So, you can use these fixed-price calls for listings that don't have variations. (If a listing does have variations, you need to use the fixed-price calls.) eBay created these fixed-price calls so that we can optimize our back end systems for fixed-price listings. (For example, we can skip validations that only apply to auctions.)
Variations is not a new listing format. Variations are supported for basic fixed-price and also Store Inventory listings. (That's type 7 and 9 for you old-timers from the Legacy API days)
Starting this week on the UK site, we have expanded free pictures in CSA (Clothing, Shoes, & Accessories) and H&G (Home & Garden) categories.

Check out the full presentation on the DevCon site!

Keynote: Let's Shape Our Future Together

2009-06-17T13:06:46-07:00

The keynote address always sets the tone for the Developers Conference. The tone for this, the 8th annual eBay Developers Conference, appears to be "let us help you." This year's keynote was delivered by eBay CEO John Donahoe, eBay CTO Mark Carges, and Max Mancini, eBay Sr. Director of Platform and Mobile, and John Hagel, author and special guest.

Max's message was clear. eBay values the developer community and wants to help developers make better applications and ... more money. He offered up a straightforward equation for this:

Transparency + Simplicity + Opportunity = $

eBay is working to make it easier and cheaper to run your business on eBay and providing more opportunity to make money. He provided some great examples to illustrate his point, including:

Multi-SKU (item variations), an eBay project released early to Sandbox to help developers learn and plan for code changes
Paperless payments, a project with significant impact to developer community, was communicated early and enforcement was delayed to allow time for developers to adopt.

Max ended his presentation with a challenge to the community:

Learn about Selling Manager Applications
Tell us how we can further open up the site
Focus on customer experience

John Donahoe spoke briefly and reinforced the message that eBay is committed to platform and community. eBay's developer community is 90,000 strong and an important part of eBay's future. John said eBay is prepared to invest whatever it takes to enable the eBay platform to accelerate and adapt to market and industry changes.

John feels eCommerce is still in it's early days, with technology and competition evolving rapidly. He said, "We need to evolve to meet customer needs tomorrow." The increasing role of technology in the company will help us shape our future. He handed the podium over to Mark Carges, eBay's CTO to complete that story.

Mark Carges, as eBay's CTO, told us about eBay's platform, from the operations infrastructure layer to the eBay application we see on the web. He described how impressed he was with the scale and effectiveness of the eBay platform. He shared a few eBay statistics that were, indeed, impressive:

50 billioin SQL queries and transactions daily
25 million sellers on eBay
13,000 live third-party applications using eBay Web Services
Hundreds of millions of API calls daily
30% of all eBay listings come through the API
400,000 sellers use third-party tools to list items and manage their business on eBay

Mark outlined eBay's top technology priorities:

Search—improved relevance, search as platform (support for custom shopping experiences), better sorting (more and better predictive models), and more data to help sellers optimize tools and listings.
Catalog—bringing structure to unstructured data. Catalogs a big investment and a huge priority.
User Experience—separating the application from the platform enables better opportunities to delight sellers and buyers with improved core experience, custom verticals, and increased channels.
Platform—a platform that is reliable and flexible is key to enabling everything else.

Mark summarized by saying there will be more opportunities for developers to innovate and build their business. eBay's and its developer community's priorities are clear—continue to build and improve the eBay platform and Developers Program so we can better delight our buyers and sellers. Mark says he's committed to dialog and partnership, so if you're here at the conference, try to find him.

John Hagel, author and and co-chairman at Deloitte LLP Center for the Edge, spoke about Shaping Strategies. He started by noting the conventional wisdom that, in uncertain times, the ability to respond more quickly and adapt better than anyone else is the key to success. Beyond this, he noted, there is a key opportunity. In unstable times, there are, he says, "opportunities to shape markets and industries in a profound way." Shapers, he argued, can magnify the perception of reward and reduce perception of risk. Shapers provide positive incentives, which can reshape markets and industries to the shaper's advantage.

The keys to the success of shapers are:

Shaping view that provides a long-term future, with short-term choices for investment and participation
Shaping platform to provide economic leverage, ease of entry, and accelerated rewards
Acts and assets that increase credibility

Shaping is a positive sum game and there are plenty of rewards to go around. Hagel finished with, "You have to understand the rules of the game. Play by the rules of the game in order to succeed."

Max came back to wrap up the keynote with some more information about Selling Manager Applications. eBay is working to drive seller adoption of these applications in the following ways:

Selling Manager is now free
Free trials for all Selling Manager apps
More application selection on the way

What can developers do?

Learn about Selling Manager Applications
Consider adapting your existing applications or creating new ones
Experiment and learn in the Sandbox
Get your applications in the App Catalog
Make money

Sounds like eBay and its developer community are creating a new shaping eco-system. This sounds like a great start for the conference!

-Curtis

My Major Takeaways from the Improving Seller Efficiencies on eBay Session

2009-06-18T15:48:09-07:00

I just left the Improving Seller Efficiencies on eBay session moderated by Kristina Klausen & Mike Maffeo and thought I'd provide some of the highlights and my major takeaways.

First, Kristina provided an overview of what the eBay Seller Efficiency Team was doing to collect feedback from a wide variety of our sellers. I was pleasantly surprised (and impressed) to find out that there is a group of 4-5 eBay employees from different groups within the Seller Team that are not only traveling out and visiting many of our sellers, during their several hour visit with each seller, the group is observing the sellers selling process, video taping the meeting, and bringing back all the feedback back to eBay HQ to see what we can do improve the overall seller experience.

After meeting with a bunch of Sellers, the team consolidated the feedback and initially identified five areas to work on:

Customer Email
- Current Challenges
  - sellers getting more emails from ebay buyers than from any other sales channel
  - many of the questions coming in from prospective buyers are already answered on the listing, but obviously are not visible enough or cannot be found easily
  - can't filter the emails
- What eBay is doing to improve the experience
  - restructuring the data on the view item page to make it easier for buyer to find answers
  - introduction of a new "Smart FAQ" feature (releasing in June) that reads the listing and puts the data together in a "what's your question about" section. in early testing of Smart FAQs, sellers have seen up to a 70% decrease in email volume!
  - option to turn off pre-transaction emails. for sellers with low-margin business, manually answering pre-sales questions that are already answered on the listing can be a loss-leader
- What's the Developer opportunity?
  - create applications that leverage the new Smart FAQs and MyMessages, have advanced MyMessage search of filtering capability, or offer advanced CRM capability
Shipping Tools
- Current Challenges
  - don't know how to get my tracking info back to ebay in bulk
  - problems shipping to certain countries but i don't want to block the whole region
  - items get stuck in customs
- What eBay is doing to improve the experience
  - tracking enhancements (releasing in june) where the tracking is more visible in My eBay
  - offering bulk upload tracking information into ebay
  - granular "ship to" locations management. with this feature sellers can block selected countries that they don't want to ship to
- What's the Developer opportunity?
  - create apps that take advantage of new bulk tracking upload api (releasing in june), make it simple to configure granular ship-to locations (releasing in september), and simplify cross border shipments
  - application suggestions: tax calculators, apps that estimate ship time including customs, calculating customs and duties, calculating item not received rates
  - examples of existing shipping products: shipworks & shiprush
Unpaid Items (UPIs)
- Current Challenges
  - when an unpaid item is received, the inventory associated to that item can get tied up for weeks
- What eBay is doing to improve the experience
  - one short term goal was to reduce UPIs by requiring immediate payment on 3rd Party Checkout fixed-price listings
  - working to shorten and simplify the UPi resolution process so sellers can get their listing fees back sooner
- What's the Developer opportunity?
  - support immediate payment on fixed pricing listing tools
Bulk Editing
- Current Challenges
  - a fixed-price multi-quantity listing cannot be changed after one of the items has been sold
  - when ebay makes a policy change, it takes a really long time to edit all listings for high-volume sellers (to ensure they comply with the new policy)
  - sellers can only perform bulk edits on up to 200 items at one
- What eBay is doing to improve the experience
  - enhancing the system so a seller will have more flexibility to change a multi-quantity fixed price listing after an item has been sold
  - adding a an item description search and replace function
  - opening additional fields within eBay bulk edit tool
- What's the Developer's opportunity?
  - take advantage of the new listing editing capability
  - create additional bulk editing applications such as inkfrog and mercent

There was some light Q&A toward the end of the session and there were a couple that I thought were worth noting:

Many developers and people in the room (roughly 75% of them) said that one feature they thought that was really important was to have the ability to create sub accounts (or sub users) within an a single eBay account and to be able to assign access rights to each user or group. Based on the number of people who were interested in this feature, Kristina agreed to take the idea back to the team for consideration
One of the session participants mentioned that it would be really nice to be able to setup different email addresses for the various email notification alerts that come from eBay so they could route emails to the appropriate people in the Seller's organization. While Kristina did not directly indicate that the Seller team was working on a resolve, she did say "I don't think that will be a topic that will be coming up next year. Stay tuned." (i'm thinking there's a hidden message in there somewhere, what do you think?)

What's in a name?

2009-06-18T15:37:58-07:00

Well, there's a lot in a name, apparently. Debbie Levitt gave another fun presentation on the DOs and DON'Ts of branding and marketing your business. Debbie is CEO of As Was, an eCommerce and Online Marketing firm. In this session, Debbies shares her years of experience and knowledge about how to attract and retain customers.

Her presentation stayed very much in-synch with her excellent slide deck (http://pages.ebay.com/devcon/pdf/LevittDebbie_BrandingMarketingeBayDevelopers_FINAL.pdf), which provides great practical advice and examples, such as, if you're trying to differentiate your eBay-related business, don't use "Auction" in your tool or company name.

Check out her presentation. There are tips and hints from which any business owner can benefit.

Oh, I almost forgot ... NOT! Debbie did bring her skates.

-Curtis

informed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and Lorrie Norrington

2009-06-18T15:33:42-07:00

For the second day of opening keynotes, we kept with the theme of "building your business with us", and welcomed four notable Silicon Valley venture capitalists to share their insights on funding, business trends, and good business practices. After the panel, Lorrie Norrington took the stage and laid out some of the stepping stones to eBay's future, and where we say the business going.

Charlene Li founder of The Altimeter Group invited Mark Gorenberg from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Rob Hayes from First Round Capital, Sergio Mansalve from Norwest Venture Partners, and Ravi Mohan from Shasta Ventures. You can learn more about our keynote speakers on devcon keynote speakers page. For someone who who started work in technology during the dot-com boom of 1998/1999 and had big dreams of "going big" with an IPO, hearing from actual VC's about how and when to get funded was a fascinating talk.

Mostly what I was impressed with, was the idea that getting funded by a VC was more about the people, the team, and the market rather than the technology. A few members of the panel said that they've funded "one guy and his dog", who only had presentation, and no profit or business to show for it. They said they based their decision on the personality of the entrepreneur, and the VC's belief in the team to carry out their plan, pivoting as necessary to track with a changing environment. Another important factor the entire panel stressed was the size of the market. There are lots of good ideas, that simply don't have a large enough market behind them to make them fundable. The final takeaway was that times have changed since '98 and '99. While VC's were willing to fund a company based on their potential to build a big network and get bought out, now they're looking for continued cashflow and sustainability.

Lorrie's portion of the keynote covered a surprising amount of information that we eBay employees hear internally. I know that we've re-doubled our commitment to transparency, and when I see slides at a public conference that I've seen earlier at an all-hands meeting, it makes me proud to see us carrying through on that promise. She covered our stragtegy (seeking to become a platform agnostic of format or origin, available to all), our future (working to become a larger part of the very large secondary market of surplus and over-stock goods), and a firm recognition that developers and the creativity that they bring to the eBay marketplace are critical to our success.

In closing, Lorrie reaffirmed eBay's commitment to a strong platform architecture, and continued involvement with external developers. We are working to build the eBay software to be more service oriented, a type of work that should support our ongoing releases of robust API's into eBay's functionality.

As the closing keynote of our DevCon, I think this set of speakers and talks really gave me a good idea of where eBay was headed as a company, and what it would take from a funding standpoint to bring a startup to the next level. We delivered on our promise with information to help build a business with us.

-Rolf

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 63 seconds with Clark Hale

2009-06-18T14:00:00-07:00

Clark Hale of Monsoon, our 2009 eBay Star Developer Award winner for Most Innovative Application, discusses the importance of a powerful catalog:

- Delyn

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 34 seconds with Grant King

2009-06-18T13:14:57-07:00

Grant King from ChannelAdvisor gives us his thoughts about eBay DevCon this year. Don't miss his session today at 1:30pm!

- Delyn

A Gargantuan and Gorgeous Opportunity

2009-06-18T09:34:06-07:00

Neil Mansilla, whose ahTEXT is a pilot application in the Selling Manager Applications program, gave a talk today whose message was, "Get in fast, and get ready. There are a quarter of a million eyes on this space, and this is your opportunity to put your application in front of them."

Neil demonstrated how his application looks in the Selling Manager canvas view. It's a URL-type application, so he maintains the code off-eBay and just references it in his deployment descriptor. He's worked out the dynamic height resizing, and set up a subscription listener, and is basically ready for subscribers when Selling Manager Applications goes beta for sellers in August.

Most of the today's presentation addressed the "gargantuan" aspect of the Selling Manager opportunity. Developers should be realistic about the scaling, availability, and security requirements that may confront them in August when their applications become available within the trusted eBay site to hundreds of thousands of sellers looking for ways to run their businesses more efficiently. "I doubt you've had this much exposure to small- and medium-sized businesses that are going to be willing to push that Subscribe button," he said.

Neil said that the question his potential subscribers need to have answered is, "Why should I trust you with my credit card, or with my order?" He said that this question of trust is already answered for his potential subscribers, because his Selling Manager application is running on the eBay site, and billing is handled by eBay.

The hurdle for potential developers is to have good answers for the Selling Manager business vetting process. Developers need to demonstrate that they will support their application, and that it will be secure and available. "You'll have to answer a lot of questions, and you'll have to meet the UI guidelines," but once that's done, you're in the middle of a gorgeous opportunity.

You can see Neil's presentation here.

DevCon Beer Bash!

2009-06-18T09:02:00-07:00

After a full day of great sessions, we relaxed in the sunshine and enjoyed a variety of beers and snacks from several countries (including some local brews).

Developers and sellers mingled with each other and with eBay and PayPal product managers, the Developer Technical Support team, QA, engineers, API doc writers, architects, executives, and the eBay Developer's Program staff.

- Lisa

A Day in the Life at DevCon

2009-06-18T09:01:21-07:00

We've been delighted to have so many of you come visit us right here at our campus in California!

Here's one view of how our opening day looked—from a drive in to eBay through the happy hour at the end of the day.

- Lisa

(P.S., That's Hoover Tower at Stanford, US Hwy 101, the eBay main entrance, the entrance to eBay's Town Hall, Delyn Simons, our Day 0 workshops, and happy developers.)

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 37 seconds with Tobe Goldfinger

2009-06-18T06:00:00-07:00

Tobe Goldfinger shares about her findings this year at eBay DevCon 2009:

- Delyn

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 44 seconds with Jake Becker

2009-06-17T23:14:03-07:00

Jake Becker shares with us his thoughts about this morning's keynote with Max Mancini and John Donahoe:

- Delyn

Something New, Something Old, Something ...

2009-06-17T17:47:00-07:00

... that sellers might really find useful?

Ganga Muthyala, Sr. Product Manager for the eBay Platform, presented on three of eBay's API offerings:

Finding API, a new API that will be available at the end of next week
Merchandising API, an existing API that will be updated in the fall
Feedback API, a recently released API

These APIs provide access to data that can be used to create powerful and interesting applications.

Finding API

This is an API to search for items listed on eBay. It replaces FindItems and FindItemsAdvanced in the Shopping API and GetSearchResults in the Trading API. (No official date has been set for the deprecation of these search calls.)

The Finding API uses the same underlying technology as the site search and provides better search relevancy and improved filtering. This API can be used by sellers for research or it can be used to find items for buyers. Because it is lightweight and supports a variety of popular message formats, the Finding API is suitable for use with gadgets. Because its search capabilities are so rich, it can help power a shopping portal.

The Finding API introduces some new concepts: domains and aspects. Domains are buy-side groupings of items (e.g., shoes), as opposed to categories (e.g., Clothing, Shoes & Accessories or Sporting Goods). Aspects are standard characteristics of an item. For example, size, style, and color are all aspects of men's shoes.

The Finding API releases next Friday, 6/26.

Merchandising API

The Merchandising API was released last summer. This API provides data to help create applications with cross-sell and upsell opportunities for buyers. The Merchandising API can be used to keep buyers engaged. It includes calls to retrieve related or replacement items. It also provides data on most-watched items and top-selling products to help buyers browse for ideas.

The next release of the Merchandising API is planned for this fall. This upcoming release provides the following capabilities:

Get deals on eBay
Get related or similar products
Get products associated with a specific artist or author

The interfaces for these new calls have not been finalized, but these seem like great additions to an already interesting API.

Feedback API

The Feedback API has been available since February this year. This API lets an authenticated seller find out more about his DSR scores by providing a variety of ways to aggregate the DSR data. DSR data can be collected for a specific set of transactions, transactions from a time period, transactions associated with a specific category, or for transactions associated with specific shipping details (e.g., domestic shipping only).

DSRs are critical to sellers, so providing a way for sellers to analyze their scores is very valuable. This information can help sellers improve their business.

All three of these APIs are great additions to eBay's family of APIs.

Is the beer bash still going on?

-Curtis

Improving the Profitability of eBay Retailers

2009-06-17T17:16:56-07:00

Today at DevCon we heard some profit-tuning techniques from Marshall Smith, Sr. Software Engineer on ChannelAdvisor, the first software to go live on the eBay APIs, years and years ago. Different cost-cutting and profit-increasing tactics, he said, might be immediately obvious to different people; others are not right for every business or every case. In this economic climate, internet retailers have to look for savings.

Many in the audience were attentively taking notes on Marshall's tips, which were concrete, detailed discussions of specific techniques for shaving listing costs, increasing market share, and tightening margins in an economic climate that demands aggressive attention to detail. Marshall noted the diminishing growth rates in internet retail, showing graphed growth projections from 2003-2009 pitching challengingly downward. Marshall presented some direct and indirect methods for facing the challenge by reducing seller costs.

Direct Reductions of Seller Costs

These are some of the techniques Marshall discussed for reducing fees.

Use the newly launched eBay Variations to list multiple items in a single listing, paying a single listing fee instead of a separate fee per item. Marshall showed the math when possible, and estimated that listing 13 items as a single variation would save $3.85 each time. Another advantage: users see your available stock in more detail. (If you are interested in this, don't miss the presentation tomorrow at 1:30pm by Keith Wescourt and Grant King.)
Catalog Adoption: Some categories have reduced listing fees and are promoted by product-based search.
International Site Visibility: Depending on the price of the items your sellers are listing, it may be worthwhile to pay an additional listing fee to make an item listed in the U.S. visible in Canada and Europe. This option works out best for numerous inexpensive items, and generally is not as effective with fixed-price items. The math: an listing that bid up to $49 saved $1.63 compared with the option of relisting in other regions.
PayPal Micropayments: On listings selling for under $12, using PayPal Micropayments will save, for example, $29 on 200 transactions of $5 each.

Indirect Reductions of Seller Costs

These are some of Marshall's tips for indirectly increasing the effectiveness of your listings.

Sales History Relists: A new listing has zero sales history, which can be a disadvantage in the Best Match algorithm. A previous listing by a high-ranked seller may carry sales data that help boost the listing. Remember that when relisting you can't alter the item's title, condition, price, or category.
Immediate Payment: When appropriate (say, for a concert ticket) specify that a buyer must pay immediately upon purchase. Immediate payment reduces the number of invoices you need to send and the number of UPIs you need to file, and pleases your buyer by cutting down on shipping time.
Improve Seller Metrics: Marshall recommends using the CompleteSale call, which feeds shipping tracking information to eBay and as a clickable link for your buyer. This can increase your ratings on communication, provide defense against potential INRs, and reduce seller questions.
Improve Seller Metrics Some More: Prepare your sellers for upcoming seller policy requirements (return policy, handling time, shipping options).
Improve Seller Metrics Yet More: Hitting your shipping cutoff times, especially on Fridays, will improve your ratings.

You can see Marshall's slides here.

Interesting take on using PayPal integration to increase sales

2009-06-17T17:03:52-07:00

Chuck Hudson reviewed best practice, few tricks and integration gotchas to watch out for, in his well delivered session titled Driving business with PayPal . The interesting twist in the talk was to leverage a PayPal integration to increase sales and improve customer relationships/loyalty.

Use promotion campaigns to increase sales in the front end. Time based promotions, first item free for new customers promotions are some popular examples. Use custom or item code in PayPal to track promotion codes. Watch out for situations where the total cost is zero, which will be rejected by PayPal.

Chuck then covered the details of IPN integration including code samples. He touched on best practice topics such as centralized or multiple IPN listeners, consent to bill on file, authorize an initial transaction of a recurring transaction, and so on.
Use IPN to create tight backend integrations with systems such as Accounting, CRM to reduce operatational cost. And, think about recurring payments as a way to maintain customer touchpoints across time for things such as membership fees and payment plans.

To summarize, use a well designed PayPal integration to feed the funnel, manage customers after the sale and automate process for repeat sales. I hope this provides a broad brush of the session, be sure to go over Chuck's presentation for the finer details.

- Anand

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 35 seconds with Max Mancini

2009-06-17T17:00:00-07:00

Max Mancini, senior director of Platform and Mobile for eBay Marketplaces, discusses what he hopes developers will take away from this week's event:

- Delyn

eBay's Success Strategies

2009-06-17T16:49:22-07:00

Sarah Brubacher from eBay's seller development team spends most of her time talking to sellers about how to create a great experience for buyers.

Today, she talked about eBay's top focus areas: Trust, Selection, and Value. Plus, she pointed out several opportunities for third-party developers.

Trust:

When buyers come to eBay, we want to make sure they can trust that:

The transaction will be completed
The item will be shipped and it will arrive quickly
The seller is clear about when the item will arrive
And, most importantly, the item will be as described

She pointed out that when one seller drives a buyers away, it hurts 10 other sellers.

So, here's an opportunity for developers: Help sellers track their Detailed Seller Ratings. These ratings reflect the most important issues for buyers.

Selection:

Sellers offer a huge inventory of products on eBay at great bargains.

Here's an opportunity for developers: Sellers want to know what inventory is hot or what's missing on the site so they know what else to stock.

Value:

Buyers come to eBay looking for great deals. eBay matches the best product and the best seller to the buyer's needs.

Here are a couple of ideas Sarah gave developers:

Help sellers understand what will sell well in eBay's Daily Deals.
To make most of eBay's Best Match algorithm, help sellers come up with great titles and support Item Specifics (see her presentation for great tips on Best Match).

Other useful tips Sarah shared:

When to list in Auction-style format vs. fixed price
How to make sure sellers don't lose their recent sales score (e.g., Markdown Manager)

Check out Sarah's presentation for all her tips!

- Lisa

eBay DevCon 2009 roving Flipcam: 52 seconds with Christoph Buenger

2009-06-17T15:30:00-07:00

Christoph Buenger tells us about his impressions after the keynote with eBay CTO Mark Carges today:

- Delyn

Delivering Immersive Shopping Experiences to Buyers

2009-06-17T15:25:59-07:00

I just came from a talk on "Delivering Immersive Shopping Experiences to Buyers." Lots of great content on how to evolve advertising to make it more compelling to buyers.

Belmer Negrillo kicked it saying "People don't have advertising. They have bad advertising." Many people try and stand out from the crowd, but tricking and annoying people doesn't mean you're going to be effective. And it's going to hurt your brand in the process.

His solution is to make advertising and merchandising part of content -- not forced on top of it. In the future ads will need to relate with content, be entertaining or fun, or provide you with extra information without needing to leave the page. Ideally, a single ad will be able do all of these.

Right now, people can do this using widgets. Belmer gave a few examples, then handed it off to Brian Williams to explain how developers can go about build good widgets of their own.

Brian began with a dive into technology. When it comes to your technology stack, there are three choices: JavaScript, Flash, and Silverlight. Each has pros and cons. Then, when you look to build on these frameworks, there are five key things to consider: Security, Portability, Scalability, Site Performance, and Tracking.

One good example is the YouTube player: it enabled end users with rich media via Flash; however, be careful when using Flash as the filesize can be large and it can have poor SEO benefits.

When you look to create relevance in your widget, one good model to use is the union of: user x content x task. You need to meet all three at once. If you zero out on any one, you can render yourself irrelevant.

For example: RepairPal. It's a site to help people fix their cars. What if they added a widget to find the best matching items for that particular repair on eBay? Then the advertising would be relevant to the user, have the content them need, and fit the task they are likely to solve.

That's good for everyone: the customer gets what they want, the developer gets paid via eBay Partner Network, and eBay makes our seller happy with a sale and gets a fee for making the sale. That's a Win/win/win/win.

So, how does this tie to eBay? You can use the eBay APIs to find relevant content to solve exactly these types of opportunities. Three good APIs to start with are GetSuggestCategories, FindPopularSearches, and FindPopularItems, but there are many more, too.

I can only hope that this is where online advertising goes in the future, as it's clear to me there are many great ways to leverage APIs to create useful and valuable in-context merchandising instead of flashing popups.

-adam

Large Merchant Services

2009-06-17T15:21:37-07:00

I just got out of the session for eBay's Large Merchant Services product. This was presented by both Mohan Kumaresh, Large Merchant Services Product Manager at eBay, and Joel Mosby, Director of Product Engineering at Mercent Inc.

Mohan started the session by describing Large Merchant Services and its key features and benefits, including management by SKU, scalability for managing a large volume of listings, and passing computing burden (e.g., call retries) off to eBay.

I've seen most of the features and benefits of LMS described on the product page and in the documentation. As compelling as it is, I'd seen it before. Next, Mohan showed us what's on the roadmap, which is quite interesting.

Here's a quick look at what lies ahead:

Auction format support—currently, LMS supports fixed price listings only
Best Match transparency—download information about factors (e.g., price, shipping cost, DSRs, recent sales) sellers can control to improve search ranking of their listings
Bulk picture upload
Enhancements to reporting, such as PayPal fees, so sellers can calculate ROI at item or order level

With asynchronous processing and file uploads, LMS is a different kind of product. The development process, however, is straightforward and similar to other eBay APIs.

Joel Mosby, Director of Product Engineering at Mercent Inc., talked about Mercent's specific experience in implementing LMS. Mercent was an early adopter of LMS. Already, they have large merchants handling thousands of SKUs of inventory on eBay. For example, SmartBargains.com is using LMS to manage over 17,000 SKUs. They pass 154 feeds (data files) daily. Another user, AltrecOutdoors is managing nearly 9,000 SKUs and passing 95 feeds daily. Perhaps the most telling bit of data Joel shared was that Mercent was able to get Smartbargains on the LMS platform in the middle of the holiday period!

Typical usage patterns Mercent see with their users:

Hourly listing updates
Hourly inventory and pricing changes
Sold Report twice hourly
Order Adjustments and Fulfillments (shipment tracking info) twice hourly
Active inventory reports daily

Joel went on to describe some more benefit from Mercent's perspective, such as how simple the transition was for large volume retailers selling in other channels to move inventory onto eBay with LMS. He also noted that eBay is a good marketplace for heavily discounted items. A benefit Joel came back to later in the session and which drew interest in the question and answer period was the ability to manage inventory by SKU. These benefits are a big differentiator for Mercent in attracting new customers.

Joel shared some best practices, as well as some lessons learned. All in all, this was a good practical session on one of eBay's most compelling products. I expected a pitch from Mohan and the truth from Joel. Well, that's what I got. Happily, they were pretty much in alignment.

-Curtis

Selling Manager Applications Jumpstart

2009-06-17T14:05:40-07:00

Here at eBay North campus, it's sunny but we’re inside listening to Madhu Gupta, Mikel Schwarz, Rolf Skyberg and Jon Weygant present an interactive jumpstart presentation about Selling Manager Applications. Most of the team that developed, tested, and documented SMApps is here, and we’re happy to meet the developers who will be creating a new kind of application: selling gadgets that run on the eBay site.

Selling Manager Applications: The Very Idea

As Madhu describes it, Selling Manager Applications grew out of the idea of putting together two things: Selling Manager, which is now becoming a free service at eBay, and the opening of the eBay platform, which has created a small industry that serves the eBay selling community and expands eBay in ways we could not have predicted.

Selling Manager Applications, or SMApps, is the result of asking this question: “What if we mashed together the best parts of our innovative developer community, with the traffic and trusted experience of My eBay?”

So now you can build eBay selling applications that run in My eBay, in the trusted eBay Selling Manager interface. You can launch to sellers in August, if you get started now. The on-boarding cycle is happening now. Applications that submit to the business readiness review by July 3 will be exempt from eBay’s 20% revenue share until 2010.

SMApps is build on the gadgets specification. The gadgets specification lets you build an application that’s re-usable across eBay and across the web.

Madhu took some detailed questions that showed that plenty of developers are already working hard on SMApps.

Billing and Subscription

Mikel, pictured above with Rolf, presented the upcoming billing platform, to be released to developers next week. Once you set it up, eBay handles all invoicing and billing on behalf of your application. Your users will see their invoices and billing histories in an interface within their My eBay pages.

There are several billing options. You can have a free application, or a billable plan. With a billable plan, you can charge a one-time fee, or a regular subscription. We support recurring fees, non-recurring fees, non-recurring setup fees, and usage fees, and we require a 7-day free trial.

Mikel walked us through the subscription flow that users will go through to subscribe to your Selling Manager application. He explained that you submit your terms of service and privacy policy in the deployment descriptor for your application, and eBay displays them to the user in the subscription flow.

Walkthrough of Setting Up an Application in the Sandbox

Madhu, Mikel, Jon and Rolf walked through the entire deployment of a new application to the sandbox, and then subscribed a user to the application and demonstrated views of the application.

The main point of this, for someone just beginning to develop a Selling Manager application, is that it is pretty easy to submit an application to the sandbox and start working with it right away.

You create your deployment descriptor, go to your My Account page, and use the interface to browse and upload your deployment descriptor to the sandbox.

Madhu demonstrated how the application looks, running an IFrame on the Selling Manager page.

Rolf demonstrated the Applications Directory, and the flow for submitting your application to it.

Implementation Details

Jon Weygant presented considerations for implementing gadgets, beginning with a discussion of the differences between URL and HTML type gadgets. He said that the choice came down to different programming styles, and whether you want to use a URL type to reference an already existing application, or create an HTML type eBay-resident application that uses makeRequest and other standard DHTML techniques.

Jon dug in to the implementation details of other features as well. The curious can find details in the linked sections of the Selling Manager Applications User Guide.

eBay Product Road Map Sneak Peak!

2009-06-17T13:44:41-07:00

We had a full house in Anand's eBay Product Road Map session!

First, some updates about the eBay Developer's Program and what eBay has been doing for you:

90,000 developer members
Early Sandbox availability so that you can adopt new features earlier
Features to make eBay easier for buyers and sellers
More product identifiers directly available in AddItem, such as Brand+MPN, UPC, and others in all catalog-enabled categories (not just Books, etc.)

Very near term news:

Our new Finding API is coming a week from Friday, with more powerful search queries!
Check out the upcoming sessions on this and several other recently released features and APIs

Sneak peaks at the Fall 2009 release:
(of course, this is subject to change):

Merchant credit card in eBay Checkout (using IntegratedMerchantCreditCard)
Ability to exclude countries you don't ship to
Revise more data in multi-quantity fixed-price listings even after they have sales
More support for shipment tracking information and specifying shipping carriers
All pre-sale member messages intermediated through eBay for safety

Highlights from the Q&A:

Rich Matsuura from eBay's Shipping team talked about ideas for supporting more flexible shipping rates
Mike Maffeo from eBay's Selling team told us that eBay's Catalog team is working on adding more UPC coverage in more catalogs

For a peek at other features that might be coming in 2010, see:

eBay Product Road Map session

eBay Product Road Map Sneak Peak!

2009-06-17T13:58:54-07:00

We had a full house in Anand's eBay Product Road Map session!

First, some updates about the eBay Developer's Program and what eBay has been doing for you:

90,000 developer members
Early Sandbox availability so that you can adopt new features earlier
Features to make eBay easier for buyers and sellers
More product identifiers directly available in AddItem, such as Brand+MPN, UPC, and others in all catalog-enabled categories (not just Books, etc.)

Very near term news:

Our new Finding API is coming a week from Friday, with more powerful search queries!
Check out the upcoming sessions on this and several other recently released features and APIs

Sneak peaks at the Fall 2009 release:
(of course, this is subject to change):

Merchant credit card in eBay Checkout (using IntegratedMerchantCreditCard)
>Ability to exclude countries you don't ship to
Revise more data in multi-quantity fixed-price listings even after they have sales
More support for shipment tracking information and specifying shipping carriers
All pre-sale member messages intermediated through eBay for safety

Highlights from the Q&A:

Rich Matsuura from eBay's Shipping team talked about ideas for supporting more flexible shipping rates
Mike Maffeo from eBay's Selling team told us that eBay's Catalog team is working on adding more UPC coverage in more catalogs

For a peek at other features that might be coming in 2010, see:

eBay Product Road Map session

Congratulations to the Winners of the 2009 eBay Star Developer Awards

2009-06-17T06:00:00-07:00

Please join us in congratulating the following developers building applications on the eBay API platform for achievements in enabling sellers to improve customer service, helping sellers keep pace with our dynamic marketplace, providing early product input & technical answers that benefit the entire eBay developer community, and extending eBay in exciting new directions:

2009 eBay Star Developer Award Winners:

DSR Rockstar: Seller Machine CRM by BengalOne
Most Innovative: Dynamic pricing feature by Monsoon
Early Adopter: Mercent Retail for eBay by Mercent
Service to the Developer Community: Jake Becker (helios825) of WatchCount.com
Rapid Evolution: Sales Manager by InkFrog

2009 Runners-up:

DSR Rockstar: Instant mobile alerts for sellers by ahTEXT
Most Innovative: Vendio Research by Vendio
Early Adopter: DSR Report by NullApps
Service to the Developer Community: David Kronenwetter (exdwh) of Experimenter’s Discount Warehouse
Rapid Evolution: ShipRush by Z-Firm

Congratulations to our 2009 winners!!

- Delyn

eBay API Platform Jumpstart

2009-06-17T02:19:37-07:00

Over at the eBay API Platform Jumpstart session, Rekha Patel gave us a great presentation on how to get started using the eBay API. A few important links to remember are:

http://developer.ebay.com the main developer portal

http://developer.ebay.com/support/docs/ the documentation hub

http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/support/knowledgebase/ our knowledge base full of code samples
http://developer.ebay.com/community/forums/ our forum for our developers.

You'll want to check out all of these locations to help get started as quickly as possible. Also, a treasure trove of goodies can be found on the Development Tools page which will help you get productive in sandbox, Trading API and other avenues.

eBay has a whole bunch of APIs available, quite a daunting list in fact, so they're clustered mainly a few groups:

Shopping
Trading
Merchandising
Feedback
Client Alerts
Large Merchant Services

To get started with any of these calls you'll need to jump over to developer.ebay.com and register as a developer and get a set of keys. If you want access to the Trading api, you'll also need to generate an authentication token. Tutorials on all this were presented today, but can also be found in our documentation.

Here are some photos from the event:

Rekha is starting her presentation.

Here some of our developers are trying out some of the samples we brought along.

In the end this event was a great opportunity for me to meet some of our developers and more importantly, it was an opportunity for our developers to get some good hands on practice with the eBay API.

Welcome to eBay Developers Conference 2009!

2009-06-16T12:30:00-07:00

Welcome to eBay DevCon!

We're excited to be hosting our annual eBay Developers Conference at our headquarters in San Jose, California. It's definitely not your garden variety work day here on the eBay campus today. We've been busy preparing to be surrounded by hundreds of developers who've traveled from around the world for three days of learning, networking and inspiration, as well as to be among some of the most respected visionaries and venture capitalists in e-commerce. Not a bad day's work!

We're meeting in a tough economy this year. No news there. This economy also presents new opportunities for developers and entrepreneurs. The eBay API platform team wants you to walk away inspired by what lies ahead. We've planned a series of interactive feedback panels, sessions and workshops to allow you to tap the minds of eBay Inc. technologists and executives, as well as developers who have already built successful applications. We encourage you to challenge them with your questions and learn about their vision for the eBay Developers Program.

We are also looking forward to hearing about – and learning from – your collective thoughts regarding our current Developers Program. What's working and what isn't? Where would you like all of us and this program to be in the future?

Of course in these challenging economic times, not everybody who wanted to be here was able to join us for this event. We encourage you to stay in the action by following @ebaydevcon on Twitter (please tag your tweets with #ebaydevcon) or by checking out the eBay developer blog, which will include updates, photos, and video interviews about what's happening here at DevCon 2009

We never take for granted getting to personally meet so many people working with our eBay API platform, and to hear about the creative ways you're building your business. It is an opportunity and privilege we look forward to all year. We also know many of you have had to make difficult financial trade-offs in order to join us this year. Thank you for joining us.

Since the inception of this annual conference eight years ago, we at eBay have been fortunate to witness the energy and the variety of applications you've developed. Your hard work and great ideas inspire us, and we're hoping that as you meet each other at eBay DevCon this year, you'll get inspired as well.

Enjoy!

Kumar Kandaswamy
Head of the Developers Program

Delyn Simons
Lead of the 2009 Developers Conference

Tips for Arriving at eBay DevCon

2009-06-15T16:47:19-07:00

Here are a few tips we'd like to share with our attendees arriving for eBay Developers Conference 2009 tomorrow!

Follow our directions and go to the Town Hall entrance at 2161 North First Street in San Jose: eBay DevCon is happening at the Town Hall conference center at our eBay North campus. Don't go to the Whitman campus at Bascom & Hamilton. Don't go to the front lobby at eBay North campus.
If you are arriving by car, leave time to park: parking is plentiful (and free) on our campus, but it can involve a 5-minute walk to get over to the Town Hall entrance. Arrive 10 minutes earlier than you were planning and enjoy the fresh air.
If you are staying at the Fairfield Inn, lucky you: The Town Hall entrance at eBay North is a short 10-minute walk. We think you'll like your commute to eBay DevCon for the next few days.
Avoid the registration lines on Wednesday morning, 6/17, and drink free beer with nice people: Join us for our Registration Happy Hour on Tuesday, 6/16 starting at 4pm to mingle with DevCon Staff and attendees. You'll have your badge, so you can head straight to breakfast on Wednesday.
Download the conference schedule onto your mobile device or laptop. If you use Microsoft Outlook 2003, follow these instructions. Sure, we'll have hard copy dailies for you when you check-in, but going paper-free feels good and looks cool.
Follow our eBay DevCon Twitter: we're going to be posting more useful conference updates and alerts like these to our DevCon Twitter, so make sure to follow us @ebaydevcon.

See you tomorrow!

- Delyn

621 Trading, Shopping, Client Alerts, Merchant Data API Docs Now Available

2009-06-15T13:39:24-07:00

Please remember to use a test environment when updating applications to use a new schema version.

To find out when a version of the API will be available, see the table at the top of the Release Notes for that API.

You can find the latest API documentation at the eBay Developer Documentation Center.

Trading

Trading Release Notes

See the Trading API System Announcements for bug fixes included in this release.

Shopping

Shopping Release Notes

See the Shopping API System Announcements for bug fixes included in this release.

Client Alerts

Client Alerts Release Notes

See the Client Alerts API System Announcements for bug fixes included in this release.

Merchant Data

Merchant Data Release Notes

See the Large Merchant Services API System Announcements for bug fixes included in this release.

John Darrow
API Tech Docs and Tools

Application Directory ALPHA now available in sandbox

2009-06-11T17:11:48-07:00

Hello all eBay developers!

At our 2008 Developers conference in Chicago, I had the privilege of being on stage to talk about the upcoming Selling Manager Applications opportunity. Next week I'll make a reprise appearance on stage showing what progress we've made in the past year. Let me tell you, it's been quite the journey.

One of the things I talked about last year on stage was an integrated Applications Directory, accessible to all eBay sellers. With just minutes to spare before our developers conference, I'd like to announce that the ability to create application directory is now available for all Selling Manager Applications developers.

There are still some sharp edges on the flow, but we wanted to make it available before next week so you can take turns showing off. This is an ALPHA release and we'd love your feedback on it.

The full release notes are available in the SM Apps forums: http://dev-forums.ebay.com/thread.jspa?tstart=0&threadID=500008384

We are planning a series of updates to this flow across the next few months, but if you're adventurous and feel comfortable testing an ALPHA release, take it for a spin and show us what you've got.

Thanks!
-Rolf