eBay PartnerNetwork Blog

New EPN features live on March 30th – Updated

March 26th, 2010

Updated with info about domain deletion functionality

Hello Partners,

As part of our continuing investments in the eBay Partner Network platform, we will be rolling out new features to the eBay Partner Network (ePN) interface on March 30th. This release incorporates several improvements requested by a number of you, including updates to the dashboard, the addition of a new landing page report, a new way to handle archived campaigns, and an overhaul to the Creatives Generator to make it easier to use.

There are a lot of new features to tell you about, but if you don’t have time to read the full note, make sure you read at least the “Dashboard Updates” and “Deactivating campaigns” sections as there will be a few updates to the dashboard you see when you log in and the way we handle your archived campaigns.

Our engineers have been hard at work and we hope you like the new functionality!

Dashboard Updates

You’ll notice some updates to the Dashboard as you login to ePN: a new report, easier access to the blog, and additional date range and program filters. The objective of the re-design is to allow you to access more information directly from the dashboard.

We will continue to provide a snapshot of your latest Impressions, Clicks, EPC and Earnings along with a graph that plots your daily trends. With the new release, you will see all of the same metrics defaulted to Month to Date, but you will now have the ability to change the date range to Last Month, Last 3 Months or Year to Date and change the program filter. Once you’ve selected them, these settings will remain for your next visit to the Dashboard.

New Reports on the Dashboard (New functionality)

One of our goals for 2010 is to develop reports and tools to assist you in further optimizing your traffic. Our first is a new Landing Page Report. The Landing Page Report will provide a snapshot of your traffic by landing page type. The report highlights the following types of landing pages:
• Home Page
• Search Results
• Seller/Store Results
• Item Page
• Other

Any landing pages that do not fit into one of the specified types will be placed in the ‘Other’ page type. The report will show data for Last Week (Sunday through Saturday) or Last Month. If you find it useful we will consider expanding and enhancing this report over time. We have posted a blog article with some thoughts and tips on the best landing pages to which you should direct your traffic.

The Category Report will also be available on the Dashboard. The Category Report provides you with a view of the eBay categories where your conversions are taking place. Data will also be displayed for Last Week or Last Month. Similar to the existing Category Report, the Dashboard view will only report your metrics for a single program using the category structure that is specific to that program. To learn more about how to get the most out of this report, please read this blog post.

New Layout (User Interface enhancement)

The Dashboard will continue to provide access to the ePN blog along with links to the most recent posts. These links will now be visible at the top of the page as you login, providing easier access to more detailed information from ePN. Links to the discussion boards, developers program, and your saved/scheduled reports will also remain on the Dashboard. Finally, the ‘Unread Messages’ section in the Dashboard will no longer be available. However, you can still access all of your messages by clicking on the ‘Messages’ link on the upper right side of any ePN page when logged-in to your account.

Deactivating Campaigns (new functionality)

As you know up until now, when you archived a campaign it disappeared from your list of active campaigns, but clicks coming in from those campaigns were still counted in your metrics. A number of you asked for functionality to completely deactivate a campaign, so traffic would not be counted or considered for payout and Quality Click Pricing calculations. With this update you will now have the ability to do so. You should only deactivate a campaign if you no longer want the traffic or earnings from that campaign to be counted towards your account. It is important to know that once you have deactivated a campaign you will no longer accrue earnings for that campaign and the action is not reversible.

To deactivate a campaign, you will need to:
• Log-in to your ePN account
• Click the ‘Campaigns’ tab
• Select the check boxes for the campaigns you want to deactivate
• Click ‘Deactivate’
• Confirm whether or not you want to continue with the action by clicking either ‘OK’ or ‘Cancel’

This feature will replace the ability to archive campaigns. All of your previously archived campaigns will return to an active status on March 30th. At that time, you can either permanently deactivate these campaigns, or choose to keep them active.

Creatives Generator (User interface overhaul and improvement)

A number of you have told us it’s hard to find good creatives and banner ads to use on your sites. To simplify the process of finding specific creatives, we’ve added additional search functionality in the Creatives Generator under the ‘Tools’ tab. In addition to searching for creatives byTool ID, you will now have the ability to search by Title or Description, and by following Categories: Featured Creatives, Seasonal, Popular Products, Daily Deals, Clothing, Shoes & Accessories, Motors and World of Good.

Domain Deletion – updated

Along with deleting campaigns, you can also delete domains. To do this, go to the Accounts tab, select ‘Domains’ and then check the domain you wish to delete. This functionality only exists if you have more than one domain listed – you cannot delete all.

We continue to listen to your suggestions and strive to offer advanced tools to better assist your marketing needs. Thank you for your continued partnership.

The eBay Partner Network Team