Seller Hub is eBay’s relatively new interface to help improve the seller experience. Advertised as a simplified way to access all the functionality offered by other selling tools, this dashboard also offers new insights into seller performance and growth. The biggest development for professional eBay sellers in recent years, here’s the lowdown on Seller Hub.
Seller Hub: The details
The beta version of Seller Hub was launched in September 2015 for select testers. The full version went live for all US eBay sellers in August 2016. It was released internationally over the following months, again in beta mode. Seller Hub remains under continual improvement as more functions are added.
Seller Hub is a free opt-in service for eBay sellers. Signing in is simple, with no work from sellers required other than a couple of clicks to agree to the change. It is possible to opt-out again easily.
Consolidation of selling tools
Put simply, Seller Hub is a dashboard for eBay sellers. It brings together many aspects of eBay selling in one place, with some new features intended to help sellers perform better. Better performance means more money for sellers and thus more profit for eBay too.
At its core, Seller Hub is a centralised place for listing and order activities. Feedback, returns, shipping tracking and the Resolution Centre are all here, complete with a more streamlined listing process. So far, so familiar to any sellers used to working with eBay’s Selling Manager.
One especially helpful feature of Seller Hub that will probably be quickly noticed by sellers is how outstanding tasks are brought to the forefront of the dashboard. Questions from buyers, orders that need fulfilment and transactions awaiting Feedback are displayed clearly on the overview page. This provides sellers with an excellent launching point to complete all urgent tasks.
Seller performance
There are a couple of new areas of resource for eBay sellers on offer from Seller Hub. One of these is the Performance tab. This provides a detailed view of profit, traffic and sales conversions. eBay has taken notes from Google Analytics and now offers a comprehensive breakdown of how many people have clicked on a listing (click through rate), how many of these people actually buy the item (conversion) and how listing traffic is trending over time.
Previously this kind of data was only available through third-party software.
Collecting data on selling and traffic performance does not only benefit the seller in terms of knowledge of individual performance and targets, but it also helps Seller Hub to provide recommendations for sales growth. Not limited to just comparing listing prices to the competition, Seller Hub also suggests which promotions may work best for specific items.
Service metrics
New for August 2018, the Performance tab also displays personalized service metrics. Within service metrics, Seller Hub shows statistics on:
- the percentage of sales that become ‘item not as described’ and ‘item not received’ cases
- comparison of the above percentage to similar sellers (peer benchmark)
- insight and tips into why buyers may be making these requests
Peer benchmark ratings range from low (seller is performing better than peers) to very high (seller is not performing well compared to peers). Starting October 1st 2018, sellers who are rated ‘very high’ in an item category on eBay.com may find themselves penalized. This new development has undoubtedly increased the importance and usefulness of eBay’s Seller Hub interface.
New features to make selling easier
eBay continues to improve and expand Seller Hub. In 2019, new features for eBay.com users include:
- “Offer to buyers” option to allow sellers to send interested buyers a special price on eligible items
- Ability to edit active listings directly from Seller Hub. Price, quantity and custom labels can all be edited from the Active Listings page.
- Best Offer can quickly be added to multiple listings via Seller Hub on the Active Listings page
- Downloadable Orders Report can be accessed from the Manage Orders page. This CSV report can help sellers maintain accurate sales reports
Is Seller Hub worth the time?
Seller Hub is a consolidation of listing and order tools combined with sales data collection and analysis. It features many of the same benefits as the classic Selling Manager tool. For sellers opting in, a little patience is needed to get used to the layout and placement of tasks and sections.
A slightly tricky transition period aside (especially for long-term sellers used to Selling Manager), eBay’s Seller Hub streamlines selling tools for the better. Sellers will find all outstanding tasks in one portal, plus performance, growth and marketing sections to help their business achieve more potential. eBay is committed to improving the service over time, which will hopefully mean more simplification or automation of basic tasks as well as new features.
What do you think about eBay’s Seller Hub? Leave a comment to share your experience.
