Terapeak Announces New Market Research Tool - Value Track

Terapeak, an eBay Certified Provider providing eBay market research, has announced a beta launch for their new tool, Value Track.

Value Track will allow an eBay seller to save or "track" their eBay searches and then generates reports based on -

• track trends in a category over week-by-week
• track product movement
• track product pricing

Value Track automates your eBay research process. Information is updated automatically and displayed in a format similar to a stock ticker.

Terapeak provides robust market research tools through the eBay Market Data program.

The eBay Market Data program offers rich consumer insight data allowing eBay Developers the opportunity to innovate and build research solutions like cross-border research tools, shopper analysis, intelligent cross-merchandising & listing solutions, and more.  Click here to learn more about the eBay Market Data Program.

Click here for more information on Value Track and how to be part of the beta test.

Reminder: Grace Period Ends Jan 15 for Removing Paper Payment Methods from Item Description

As mentioned in Developer Impact: Paperless payments, in late October the Accepted Payments policy was updated to remove paper payment methods like checks and money orders. This was enforced immediately in the structured item data, but a grace period was granted to remove those payment methods from the Item Description. That grace period ends Jan 15.

Soon after Jan 15, Item Descriptions will be automatically reviewed at listing time to make sure no paper payment methods are included. If paper payment methods are present, the listing will fail with an error.

Developers should remind their sellers that the grace period is ending soon, and that sellers should update their Item Descriptions. For convenience, sellers may wish to make these updates to their Item Descriptions at the same time:

• Remove any shipping values that are above the maximum for their category (enforced now)
• Make template updates to ensure they won't get unexpected results with the new View Item page
• Move Return Policy info into the structured data
• Move Handling Time info into the structured data

There are some exclusions to this policy. To review these exclusions, see the Payments FAQ.

Happy Holidays from the eBay Developers Program

From all of us here at the eBay Developers Program, we wish you happy holidays and a healthy and prosperous new year!

Please make sure to check the holiday schedule for our Developer Technical Support team during the holidays from December 24, 2008 - January 5, 2009.

Also, as we wind up our year, we also wanted to take a look back at 2008 and some of the highlights:

• June 2008: Sweet Home, Chicago! Our annual eBay Developers Conference, where eBay announces Project Echo pilot & opening up eBay Selling Manager tool to outside developer applications
• June 2008: Client Alerts API and Merchandising API launch
• July 2008: eBay Desktop surpasses 1 Million downloads
• September 2008: eBay Developers Program descends on The Big Apple to showcase some of our developers at Web 2.0 Expo New York
• November 2008: Large Merchant Services beta launches
• November 2008: eBay API platform turns 8 years old, surpasses 80,000 developers in the eBay Developers Program

Thanks for a great year, developers. Get ready for a great 2009!

- Delyn

Reminder: Retiring Live Auctions Dec 31

As originally announced in April, eBay is retiring the Live Auction format on Dec 31, 2008. This move will allow us to focus on our most important priorities: improving the buying and selling experience.

We have been working since April with our Live Auction partners and sellers to ensure a smooth and seamless termination of this aspect of our business. Those sellers who list with the Live Auction format are encouraged to move to the regular auction format.

After Dec 31, AddLiveAuctionItem and ReviseLiveAuctionItem calls will fail with an error. Other API changes will be made soon to remove support for the Live Auction format. Look for more details soon.

Reminder: USPS Rate Change Jan 18

The US Postal Service has announced rate changes effective Jan 18 on the following services:

• Express Mail
• Priority Mail
• Parcel Select
• Parcel Return Service
• Global Express Guaranteed
• Express Mail International
• Priority Mail International
• M-Bags

You can view the new prices on the US Postal Service website. Note that these rate changes are only for shipping services. Look for another announcement from the US Postal Service in Feb 2009 about May 2009 changes for mailing services.

They are also introducing "a new, smaller Priority Mail flat-rate box...priced the same as the flat-rate envelope".

API support for the new shipping services will follow the Jan 18 rate change. Details are coming soon.

Update (28 Jan, 2009): A shipping service to support the new, small, flat-rate box will be added to the API no later than 16 Mar. Note that dates are subject to change.

eBay is #1 Most Trusted Company for Privacy on the Web

Developers building eBay and PayPal applications using our Web services platforms will be interested to know that privacy and information management research firm Ponemon Institute along with Internet privacy leader TRUSTe, have announced the results of their fifth annual survey of Most Trusted Companies for Privacy. eBay is ranked second overall, behind only American Express (#1 for the fourth year in a row) and ranked first among Internet companies.

Read the press release and the eBay Ink blog for additional detail. Developers who rely on the scalability, stability and monetization opportunity of the eBay platform will be interested to know who are the Web companies that make the list -- and who doesn't.

- Delyn

595 Trading API Documentation Now Available

The 595 version of the API documentation is now available. Please note that updates to applications using new schema versions should always be done in a test environment.

Release Highlights

Announcements

• Retirement of Live Auctions
• Next version: 599 (January)

Documentation Changes and Errata

• Affiliate Commissions with PlaceOffer

Change Requests

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

eBay Trading API Documentation

• Release Notes
• eBay Web Services Guide (HTML) or (PDF)
• Call Reference

Please refer to table at the top of the Release Notes for when each version of the API will be available.

Keep up to date with the latest API documentation at the eBay Developer Documentation Center.

John Darrow
API Tech Docs and Tools

What Does the Future Hold? Find Out by Using the Dev Program API Calendar

You may have noticed that there's a lot of change happening on the eBay site. Stay informed about what is happening and when by checking out the eBay API Release Schedule calendar.

I've color coded the events to give you a sense of the likely impact. Here is what the colors mean:

Red = Must adopt by date. May break listing or other important functionality.
Yellow = Should adopt sometime. May be technically optional, but important to seller strategy.
Green = Nice to adopt. May still want to adopt as a differentiator.
Blue = Developer Program events like DevCon.

Note that the impact may be higher or lower for you depending on your individual application and business model.

Features

In the Month view, you get an overview of everything released or enforced that month.

Click the Agenda tab and you can use it as a checklist for adopting upcoming features.

 

Click the event and a detail balloon pops up. You can also copy that event to your own calendar.

 

And since it's powered by Google Calendar, you can subscribe to it just like any other public calendar. Subscribe just to the High Impact calendar, or subscribe to all of them.

Caveats

Dates are subject to change. But the benefit of the dynamic calendar is that you find out immediately after I do.

Where possible, exact dates are given. Otherwise, a window is given. And yes, sometimes that window is very big. As I get more information, I make the window narrower.

If there's a project you'd like to see on the calendar, email me at developer-webmaster@ebay.com. I won't always be able to find a release date for you, but I will do my best.

Find What You're Looking For: Better Developers Program Search

If you haven't noticed, we recently improved the search experience on the website. We hope that will make it easier to find the information you are looking for.

• Try a search for AddItem.
• Narrow your search down to a section of the site, or search everything.
• In the results, click [Type:] or [From:] to narrow the results further.
• If you want a whole document just on AddItem, try narrowing your search by doing the search on "TITLE," or sorting by " URL."

Tips:

• For blog searches: Search for "LASTMODIFIED" "DESC" to get the latest posts.
• If you want more results, do a search on "TEXT".

Try it out, and let me know what you think in the Comments.

Get Your Items into New Markets: Global Buying Hub

eBay has just launched the revamped Global Buying Hub! The hub makes it easier for buyers to find items that they can purchase and have shipped to them.

Great for Buyers

• The eBay interface is localized in your language. These languages are currently supported, and more are coming soon:
  • English
  • Spanish
  • German
  • French
  • Chinese (Trad)
  • Japanese
  • Hungarian
  • Greek
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Finnish
  • Norwegian
  • Portuguese (Br)
• Find out early if there are any additional taxes or duties that apply to your purchase. You won't get an unexpected surprise.

Great for Sellers

• Get access to markets you previously haven't had access to, for example, Norway and Czech Republic.
• eBay is doing additional advertising and marketing to get your items exposure.
• You may already be showing up here. If you aren't, a quick update to your ship to region will make you show up.
• When buyers leave feedback, they'll be reminded that it was a cross-border transaction. This should help protect your DSRs.

Great for Developers

• No code changes needed. Your sellers just need to specify that they ship to the applicable region.

The Gory Details

• To show up for a given user, you just need to make sure you ship to that region.
• If you specify you ship to "Europe," eBay will show your listing on GBH to all buyers who set a European contry as their default country. This includes countries that have dedicated eBay sites like UK, and also countries without a dedicated site like Greece.
• The eBay interface and purchase flow is localized for the buyer's language, but not the Item Description area.

How GBH is Different from International Site Visibility (ISV)

Cost:

• Exposure on GBH is free.
• There is a fee for ISV—though less than the cost of individual listings on multiple sites.

Exposure:

• Buyers must do the search from the GBH site to see your listing
• ISV listings will show up in the default search for that eBay site

Code:

• For GBH, specify a value for ShippingRegion in AddItem
• For ISV, specify a value in the CrossBorderTrade field in AddItem

Try the Global Buying Hub out yourself at http://global.ebay.com.