New Shipping Templates

Arthur, Yes I could try that, putting the Rural option at the top. It will show first in choices then but I'm not sure it would do any good in the shopping cart when they do multiple buys as that even lets them get through with no postge option selected at all. I do wish trade me left us with a bit more control on how we display shipping options.

Thanks Cam, I'm still hoping that having the Rural moved to the second box will be an option. Seeing that Nationwide wording first seems to hook some people, they don't read any further except the prices. Nationwide means Nationwide there is no BUT for Town or Rural.

I have not seen any difference in my listings ranking over the last week, so yep I would like to know exactly what difference this new template is supposed to make. Cheers

Hi Robyn. As a comparison, here is what old and new templates look like on listings in a search.

First one has new template. 2nd and 3rd don't.

The first line shows as Nationwide shipping and a cost vs the other listings that just say Shipping from $ with no mention of urban, rural, combining etc so it can reduce the buyers need to click in to listings to check out their shipping options, although, some might think ooh, shipping from $1.00 as in the 3rd one and click in, to then find out it's an extra charge the seller puts on when combining auctions, and it's actually not a shipping option as such that can be chosen by itself and rural shipping in that one was $12.00.

The shipping shown is meant to change depending on where the buyer is, but only will if the seller has set different locations with shipping rates. I haven't been able to find any examples of this as yet.

The 2nd one in the list says shipping from $5.00 but no mention of where etc. In fact that particular one is $5.00 only if you are in Christchurch which you can only find out by going in to the listing. 

The 2nd line in the first one gives an estimated delivery timeframe, where the others make no mention, nor do they in their full options when clicking in.

Gary-NZStocked

I was wondering earlier,

if they put the rural first, if like on the listings you showed above, if it would still pull up & show the cheapest on the search page?,"from",

or cheapest Nationwide Shipping,

The system has finely allowed me to recreate my old style templates

I just made a test template and it pulls the cheapest option through to show in the search results even if the rural rate is first in the template. You don't get the "From" on the new templates IF the buyer is inside shown delivery areas.

Also, you don't get the line with the expected delivery timeframe if the buyer is outside the delivery area eg I created a test template that only had South Island delivery urban and rural. As I am in the North Island there was no delivery timeframe shown in the search results and it reverted back to shipping From $xx.xx

Previous vs test

The right hand one had rural $12.00 as first option in template

Gary-NZStocked  Thank you Gary for confirming that,

David 

Thanks for sharing David, its a yes, We can use our own templates, that is a bit of relief, things are looking better,

I'd be able to use the new templates if they simply added a product called "Non-Rural" to go with the destination of "Nationwide". They don't need to change anything that's already there, just add this extra product.

It's quite understandable that rural people would assume "Nationwide Standard" is a valid shipping choice for them. It's such a basic and obvious oversight in the development of these templates, it really is incredibly frustrating!

They are aware of the rural/urban issue and have promised a fix. But don't expect it any time soon. Their exact words "Just so you know, they may not be able to start working on updating this right away, but fingers crossed we'll see it soon."

I have been using it since inception. In the beginning I was worried in the first few trades when 50% of my rural buyers selected nationwide instead of rural. But it has settled a bit. At a quick count today I have had 60 sales to Rural buyers in the new shipping template. 46 of them choose the correct category. 14 didn't. So while it's not ideal, it's not disastrous either.

Perhaps people are getting used to it and learning to read down.As more people come on board and shipping looks more standardised over Trade Me it will hopefully get even better.

Anecdotally I have noticed an increase in sales since using the templates. But of course it is impossible to quantify that. So many curious and unexplainable things seem to have an affect on sales. I can have a product unsold for months then sell 17 of them in a week.

Trade Me advised today that they have implemented non-rural/urban only options now.

That should make it less of a problem for many of us.

James, do you have any more details of this update?

I might be missing something, but I can't see anything different on my templates at the moment?

Yes. Just checked and all looks the same here still as well.

But I do get these things can take hours, if not days, to actually filter through to everyone.

Thanks for giving us the hope though James!

Looks like you have to select "Other" as Carrier then you can now choose from Urban and Non-Rural options.  Eh, I don't suppose it matters that it's "Other", not sure that's shown anyway.

Hmm.  And also, it doesn't seem to work.  I can't save them :-/

Ah yes, I can see it now. Thanks for that.

Yes, I think the "Carrier" only determines what drop-down options you see under "Product" - the choice of Carrier doesn't seem to make any difference to what the buyer sees on the listing.

It's not working for me either.

I get a message that says "There was an error, please try again later".

I had to log out then back in before I saw changes. My test changes saved ok using new options, but doesn't seem to be any new choices I would use anyway.

There does seem to be a bug with this. I can use the new non-rural options if I don't have a combined shipping option on the template.

As soon as I add a combined shipping option, it won't save.

I've emailed Trade Me with the details, and hopefully they'll be able to get this working correctly.

They have fixed the problem now.  

Yep, that bug seems to have been fixed now.

The implementation of the shipping templates still seems a bit slapdash, but at least it's good enough to be broadly usable now.

I wish they would use the same product names that NZ Post now uses for courier services (i.e. Courier Economy, Courier and Express) instead of inventing their own names.The destination should really be where they indicate rural or non-rural rather than the product name.

Also, I can't see the purpose of the cut-off time on the template. I anticipated it would change the estimated delivery time depending on the time of day relative to the cut-off time, but as far as I can see, it makes no difference. I've tried a number of different combinations of settings, and the cut-off time seems to make no difference to the delivery estimate. The estimate is often one day longer than I would expect to see based on the template settings.

These new shipping templates are a nonsense. Why fix something that isn't broke?
There is now no option for shipping to customers - located in Australia - to a PO Box - and you can no longer choose which courier option you prefer (we prefer to not use Aramex) - and there is now an assurance provided that we will deliver in 1-2 days!!!!! 

TCWP Justin They are all working well for me after some initial teething problems. Do you sell a lot to Australia? I'm lucky to get 2 or 3 a year. And that's with selling around 100 items per week. I don't specify any Australian shipping just let the buyer contact me if they require it. Seems silly to clog up your shipping options with something that hardly ever gets used.

You can still choose which courier you want, but I don't see the point of it. That info is not shown to the buyer. If you use one courier exclusively you can of course add that to your description or as a footnote if you like.

There is no shipping assurance. TM make it clear that it is a target. And they don't hold you to it.

Overall don't forget that it's all optional. You don't have to use it if you don't want to. You can also use a mix. Some templates some not. I will say that I have perhaps noticed a upswing in sales for my items that use it. It's not a perfect fit for everyone and every auction, but hey, is anything?

In the recent webinar session, Trade Me did say they will be withdrawing the old shipping templates for professional sellers, which presumably means for everyone who is in-trade (although, like almost everything in the webinar, they were rather vague about the detail).

They didn't give any timescale, but it's worth planning for losing access to the old templates if you're a professional seller.

Indeed, and as for the selecting your courier, they did mention that they want to present applicable shipping methods to the buyer, so that could conceivably be used for rural-not-rural or PO Box filtering of shipping methods for example... but as Callum says doesn't appear to make any difference currently.

Here is the Webinar for those who missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUdRLe0Eh0g

Thanks for posting the webinar link James. Disappointed that we did not receive any advice of this event, as we would have had a contribution or two to make. :(

They didn't take any questions, what you see is exactly how it went, wasn't live or anything just a pre-recorded thing.

Looks like a lot of people are having trouble with understanding the new templates.

Came across a brand new no feedback Top seller today with 44,909 listings, all with subtitles (which I guess they didn't pay 15c ea for ie almost $7k) and they use the new templates which says Delivery in 7-10 business days in search results, but when you click in to the listing it says.... please allow 15 days for shipping as its shipped from our Auckland warehouse.

Maybe the 15 days is not working days, but it's a bit of a guessing game. Sellers should not be allowed to use the new shipping templates to get something displayed in search results, but then override that with further details inside the listing. This is not how it's supposed to work.

Wow, that new seller that had 45K listings yesterday has 77,100 listings today.