Google Base: “condition” now compulsory
June 30, 2009
If your website sends a feed to Google Base, you need to be aware that as of today, the “condition” attribute will be required for all listings. Acceptable values are new, used, or refurbished.
PayPal survey: why shoppers abandon their shopping
June 24, 2009
PayPal have published the results of their second annual Checkout Abandonment Survey, looking at why website buyers don’t complete purchases. Just like last year’s survey, an excessive shipping fee was the number one reason for shoppers walking away. It’s clear that if sellers are able to offer shipping-inclusive prices, this is something that buyers like, however counter-intuitive that might be for those of us who typically sell more than one item at a time. And even if your site charges separate shipping, making that cost transparent at the beginning of the checkout flow – or earlier – is essential.
There’s some suggestion, though, that buyers are getting more savvy with their online shopping: the second most popular reason for abandonment was that buyers wanted to comparison shop, and 25% cited leaving the site to look for a coupon or discount voucher. Sellers should be using this behaviour to their advantage: if you’re not currently listing website coupons on voucher sites, you’re probably missing out on some valuable free advertising, and a fair number of sales.
But there’s some reassurance: a third of shoppers who abandoned their carts later returned to the same site to purchase. Sellers should consider:
- making it easy for shoppers to bookmark their site and specific items they’re interested in,
- using social bookmarking tools as well as traditional browser bookmarks/favourites
- extending the life of shopping cart cookies so that buyers who return later can find the items they’d already added to their cart,
- and offering a wish-list facility for longer-term use.
PayPal are running a video presentation later today to discuss their findings further.
Who needs bubble wrap…
May 23, 2009
It’s a tempation familiar to many eBay sellers: your buyer just doesn’t want to pay postage and packing, and for a fleeting moment, you want to slap a stamp on the item itself, and stick it in the post box. Now one Swedish artist (who, as far as I know, doesn’t sell on eBay) has tried just that. Eric Ericson has been testing the limits of European postal services by sending a variety of objects just as they are, with no packaging, to an address in Berlin.
He told Wired magazine that he “wanted to see what was possible to send, and what would arrive”. The most difficult item was a mannequin, sent in separate parts, while “food is easy; you just put it in a mailbox.” Eric has published a book, To Mr Cheng, showing the items he sent.
Why can’t eBay be more like Amazon?
April 27, 2009
This week saw both eBay and Amazon release their Q1 figures, with what’s becoming a sad norm: eBay underperforming, Amazon bucking ecommerce’s downward trend. Mark T. posted the obvious question in our comments: why?
“Let me get what I want”
So to answer Mark, here’s what I think: shopping on eBay is too damn difficult.
eBay is the only site on the internet where you can be told off for changing your mind. If I’m buying from Amazon, I can
- put an item in my shopping basket and take it out again
- get halfway through checkout and decide I don’t want it
- go to pay, and decide I’m not going to
- pay, and then decide I prefer something else, and cancel in the click of a button so long as my item hasn’t been dispatched yet.
I can’t do *any* of that on eBay. eBay should join the 21st century, and get a shopping cart and a buyer-initiated “cancellation before dispatch” process, before all buyers quit in frustration and go somewhere else where it’s easier to shop.
Every time I suggest eBay needs a shopping cart (and yes, I say it a lot 
), a seller tells me that it wouldn’t work because buyers would leave things in their carts, and those items would be stuck in limbo. Funnily, Amazon Marketplace has made this work just fine: the item isn’t yours until you’ve paid for it and someone else can still buy it from under your nose. So in fact, you’ve got *more* incentive to buy now, *more* incentive to get on and check out – rather than doing the eBay thing of popping that BIN item on your watch list and forgetting about it. If we made it easier for people to shop, they would shop *more*.
Of course, a shopping cart would require one other change to the eBay system: the much-needed addition of instant payment required for multiple items. It’s utterly ridiculous that this hasn’t be implemented, meaning that those of us who commonly sell multiples have to sit on unpaid eBay orders for sometimes weeks at a time. If eBay needs an incentive to make these essential changes, think about the extra PayPal-funded sales that multi-item IPR would bring in.
“But you will change your mind”
The easier shopping = more shopping rule also applies to order cancellation. Buyers – whether we like it or not – have a legal right to change their minds. The current system of UIDs undermines that right. It’s too complicated, it’s too easy for either party to get wrong, it relies on clear and accurate communication when tempers may be getting frayed. And it should be gotten rid of. Lets replace it with:
- a buyer-initiated “cancellation before dispatch” process: until the seller has marked the item dispatched, the buyer can cancel their purchase. The PayPal payment will be refunded, the eBay fees (all of them, including featured) will be refunded, and the item will be automatically put back “into stock” – either added back into a live multi-item listing, or if on a single listing, made available for relisting to the seller.
- a seller-initiated “cancellation before payment” process: if the buyer hasn’t paid after a stated amount of time (3, 5, 7 days…? could be seller-selectable) the seller can just cancel the sale and get their fees back. Without arguments, without negative feedbacks, without “disputes”.
And for both of these, I would envisage saying that as no transaction has taken place, no feedback can be left by either party.
eBay will doubtless worry that some sellers would abuse such a system to avoid fees. IMHO eBay are so obsessed with the idea of fee-avoidance that they’re ruining the site because of it. They can see which sellers are potentially abusing the system easily enough, and they can take action against them. And the rest of us can quit feeling like we’re in some Kafkaesque nursery school where childish bureaucracy rules, and get on with buying and selling.
“You’ve got everything, now.”
In last week’s earnings call, John Donahoe said that eBay is outperforming ecommerce in general in every selling format it has, apart from auctions. Fixed price revenue is up 12%. Classifieds revenue is up a massive 23%. Auctions, on the other hand, are down 20%.
So what is eBay doing? Encouraging sellers to list auctions. On .com, auctions’ insertion fees are 15c; BINs’ are 35c. On eBay UK, private sellers’ auctions starting at 99p or less have no insertion fees; BINs are 40p each if you don’t have a shop. On eBay.fr, auctions are 15c and the headline price for BINs is 50c. eBay Germany’s vastly complicated fee structure largely favours auctions. Sellers across all eBay sites are being pushed to list auctions. But (except perhaps in a very few specialist areas) the novelty of online auctions has worn off: buyers don’t want to sit around for a week to see if they’ve “won” – they just want to get on with their shopping: eBay’s own figures show that.
“What eBay does best” is a phrase that’s used often to back up arguments, and I’m going to use it again here. Meg Whitman said that auctions were what eBay does best. John Donahoe seems to think that “secondary market” retailer clearance is what eBay does best. I disagree. What eBay does best and always has done is to provide a marketplace, for everyone, for everything. Amazon, Ebid, Bonanzle, dozens of start-up wannabees: nothing comes even close to eBay’s breadth of inventory, nothing comes close to the huge variety of sellers from the mother selling her kids unwanted toys to the biggest high-street names, nothing, in fact, comes close to eBay.
eBay should stop being an auction site, and reposition itself as a shopping site. Sellers should be encouraged (financially) to list in the formats that work: the fixed price ones. eBay should teach buyers to think of eBay as the site where you can buy everything, right now (not a site where you can “win” that thing you want next week, if you haven’t bought it on Amazon in the meantime).
“I’ve already waited too long”
Given the figures that JD announced last week, I don’t think it would take much to turn eBay around. Not much except, perhaps, some rather radical thinking: to get out of the auction mindset into the shopping mindset. eBay seems to be moving in the right direction – easier returns and multi-variant listings being two such recent moves – but they’re doing it too slowly. We’re due another announcement of site changes in September; rather than the fiddling for the sake of something to do while Rome burns we had this month, let’s next time see some really radical change that will make eBay a great place to shop again.
TameBay Morsels 01/04/09
April 1, 2009
Skype is released for the iPhone and is coming to Blackberries in May this year. I wonder just how much penetration they need before someone comes up with a tempting offer to part them from eBay?
eBay are to offer Japanese – English translation services for auctions and ASQs. I hope the translations are better than Babelfish sometimes is, or there could be some very amusing misunderstandings!
If you’re gonna sell stolen tickets it’s probably a good idea to make sure they’ve not been reported as missing and cancelled!
The computer virus conflicker worm although widely reported as due to strike today hasn’t wreaked havoc as of yet.
Four feel good stories about eBay sellers done good – nice to know it’s not all bad news out there.
TameBay Morsels 29/03/09
March 29, 2009
Meg Whitman in BusinessWeek. It’s a rather lightweight discussion but it’s interesting enough esp re IP/VeRO and eBay’s internal biz culture.
Quite interesting BBC piece on Google from Matt Frei.
Detailed proposal for the Post Office to offer proper banking services to business.
And a selection of Sunday paper froth:
Heathrow boss sold lost luggage on eBay.
Minder’s Motor on eBay in the Mirror. There’s an Arthur Daley gag here somewhere…
Birmingham man buys a bus on eBay cos he’s homesick.
DSR Dashboard launches on eBay.co.uk
March 27, 2009
As you will doubtless have already noticed, the detailed DSR Dashboard has finally launched on eBay.co.uk.
Please share your impressions, views, ideas and questions here.
TameBay Morsels 27/03/09
March 27, 2009
eBay may come under pressure to flog PayPal, says Bloomberg.
Teenager jailed for eBay fraud. Silly boy.
35 new PayPal jobs in Dublin. Highly skilled too, apparently.
PayPal puff piece in the Daily Mirror.
TameBay Morsels 25/03/09
March 25, 2009
Scot Wingo looking at some of the more interesting insights sellers are getting from the DSR dashboard.
Skype is going great guns, according to reports here and here.
Comment and information on how eBay handles counterfeits.
eBay bidders to decide new shrimp’s name… yes really.
And finally, for once eBay isn’t implicated…
eBay business sellers positive about 2009
March 23, 2009
An eBay survey reveals that vast majority of online traders are confident that 2009 will see growing, or at least steady, sales and nearly two-thirds are planning to expand their business this year. The Online Business Index, released in association with Business Link, is compiled from sales data from eBay UK’s top 1,000 business sellers and survey responses from 410 of the top 2,000 business sellers, with a combined turnover of £785 million in 2008.
Key findings include:
- 64% of online businesses feel confident about the immediate business outlook, according to survey findings, with only 15% expressing pessimism.
- More than half of those surveyed – 54% – expect rising sales, with a further 30% expecting sales to remain stable.
- Exports by online businesses are surging, with eBay data demonstrating a 128% increase in the last year alone.
Most interestingly, the survey looks at sellers who are typically not trading exclusively on eBay. The online businesses covered by the survey obtain 56% of their revenue through eBay, 22% through other sites and 23% through bricks-and-mortar outlets. 78% plan to expand or diversify their businesses according to the survey. Good news for PayPal, bad news for the eBay marketplace.
The full press release is here. And there’s further coverage from the Telegraph and New Media Age.
TameBay Morsels 23/03/09
March 23, 2009
Those Prince Charles ‘love letters’ net £20k.
Josh Russell writes about his negative experiences selling on eBay and offers some pointers to eBay.
A PayPal perspective from a venture capitalist.
Listen to ‘eBay & Beyond: Basics To Business‘. Or the Powerselling Mom.
Skype to generate billions for eBay, apparently.
TameBay Morsels 20/03/09
March 20, 2009
Brilliant piece from Business Week. Google: Beware the eBay curse.
eBay CEO John Donahoe elected to the Intel board.
Discount codes and vouchers are all the rage online, it seems. Here are some links, here and here.
Interesting Mystery Shopping service for small businesses online.
Thought provoking piece from Forbes on cost-cutting but not pruning the innovation.
Free conference, Internet World, may be of interest to people around London
TameBay Morsels 19/03/09
March 19, 2009
This sentence stood out: “The percentage of eBay’s visitors who shopped at Amazon jumped from 41% in February 2008 to 53% last month.”
A perspective on Amazon from eConsultancy.
eBay Starter guide from the Torygraph.
Forbes report on the taxman coming to eBay stateside.
This is just funny. And a bit weird.
eBay US sellers get UK visibility for Less
March 19, 2009
eBay.com have announced a pricing promotion for sellers based in the US discounting the fee paid for international visibility. The announcement says, “the International Site Visibility listing upgrade gives your items greater exposure on the UK site for a small fee. It’s a terrific opportunity to grow your potential buyer base by as much as one-third!” Usually priced up to 40c, the announcement states that the fees will be reduced to 1c between 17th and 27th of March.
Whilst the American dollar has lost some of its value recently, it is trading more strongly against sterling than it has been for some time. This, combined with the relative cheapness of US goods in any case, may well prove to be attractive to buyers. That said, higher postage costs, combined with possible import duties, are likely to offset many savings.
Also, as an eBay UK based seller pointed out to me: US sellers may well appear at the top of Best Match search results because of good DSRs when they don’t have a track record of shipping to the UK.
American sellers are getting a slice of the UK market. Last week, a PR campaign aimed at attracting UK consumer sellers to eBay coincided with eBay’s removal of low end fees for auctions started by consumer sellers.
In the hardest economic climate for many years, can we expect an ‘incentive’ for British eBay business sellers, I wonder?
Guest Post: eBay and Tickets.
March 17, 2009
Jane aka DBL aka The eAuction Anorak has written this guest post for TameBay in response to a link regarding tickets that I posted last week:
Concert tickets, eBay and the media hype is one thing that makes my blood boil on a regular basis. Every time a big band/artist or ticket vendor release tickets, they appear on eBay. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles and if there are people who want to pay that sort of stupid money then the demand will be supplied.
The way I see it (and I’ve blogged on the subject previously) is if you own a ’spare ticket’ or two, then good on you, sell it on eBay. Why not? You paid for it, it’s yours. In this economic climate ‘every little helps’ as they say and eBay is ‘only a selling venue’ for anyone who wants to make spare cash, isn’t it? The touts who buy hundreds and ‘deprive the real fans’ of tickets and even join fan clubs for the purpose of obtaining better and earlier tickets are just cashing in, as we all would and do, when we get the chance of bagging a lucrative ‘bound to sell well on eBay’ deal. It’s up to the vendors to prevent this via restrictions on purchase numbers but the touts will find a way around that too, I suppose.
Banning the sale of tickets on eBay is NOT the answer: the big ticket vendors should be selling on eBay too rather than auctions on their own sites and clauses on the back of some tickets to prevent resale. How many times do I hear companies and manufacturers say they’ve been ’stung’ by eBay sellers selling more and making more than they can? If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen or at least fix the darn air con!
Being a very regular concert attendee, I could have sold any of my AC/DC tickets at LG Arena or especially Wembley Stadium for 4 times the face value on eBay immediately as they sold out in minutes, but as a ‘real’ fan I’m keeping them close to my rockin’ heart. I sit at my PC, laptop and phone on the day of release and get my tickets before they sell out.
As for the artists’/fans’ fury… the media grind and artist ego boosting machine kicks in: any publicity is good publicity. (Try telling that to Frank Bough – Ed.) One fan on the TV last week had camped out all night to get her ticket. I wouldn’t camp out all night for Mr Jackson but she was a true fan and did what she had to do to get her seat.
So, as for ‘Michael Jackson tickets, bloody touts, damn you eBay! Blah blah blah’ yes Dan you’re right. It’s old and boring, get a life, stop moaning and get a ticket! Anorak zipped with tickets safe inside, rant over what/who would you camp out for and what’s your view on tickets on eBay?
TameBay Morsels 17/03/09
March 17, 2009
Meg Whitman. California governor hopeful. Funny picture of her with a horse. Why the long face?
The Economist reports on the increasing use of bartering.
LaunchLab reports the latest e-retailing numbers for February. Still growing.
Some neat tips and tweaks from Etsy Hacks.
SmallBizPod reports that loads of small businesses are flocking to Twitter.
ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Latest
March 17, 2009
ChannelAdvisor have announced new sessions and speakers for their Catalyst event in London at the end of the March. Find out more on the Catalyst site.
eBay, Google, Amazon and a host of others will be exhibiting and presenting and it looks like it’s going to be an interesting event. I attended last year and found, in particular, that ChannelAdvisor’s own sessions taking a broad look at ecommerce were very informative.
Obviously, TameBay will be there but to get a flavour of the event, and catch some familiar faces, check out this short video:
Tamebay Morsels 16/03/09
March 16, 2009
If you’re quick there’s still time for this Quickbooks discount.
Observer piece on eBay fraud. Predictably predictable. Change the record.
Auctionbytes on mooted PayPal loyalty scheme.
More about the ‘1st eBay millionaire‘. Good luck to the chap. But if he’s the first, I’m the Queen of Sheba.
God, that Dan Wilson doesn’t ‘alf go on. Guest blogging at BT Tradespace.
Guest Post: Life after eBay
March 15, 2009
Many eBay sellers are diversifying to other marketplaces and also selling from their own websites. Here Gill James from Foilplay (who also blogs here) offers her perspectives on going it alone and establishing an independent ecommerce website:
This month I’m feeling mostly relief, tinged with a bit of sadness. After trading on eBay pretty much continuously over the last five years, it’s time now to move on and concentrate on the website side of my business. I don’t want to burn any bridges, there may well be a place for eBay in my sales channel portfolio at some point in the future, but right now I need a break from the constant change – of which, much more to come, as we heard from eBay Analyst Day last week.
One of the great things about eBay is the ease and speed with which it is possible to establish and build up a new business. Websites can take much longer to establish, a much more ‘slow burn’ process, but hang on in there, and it can be well worth your while in the end.
Building a website can be dispiriting in the early stages, a lot of work may have to go in before you see any return, and it can be tempting to give up at that stage. Don’t do it! The great thing about a website is that you lay a foundation and then build on it incrementally. The initial work may be harder, but ongoing maintenance is much easier – for example, you don’t have keep relisting everything every 30 days. Sometimes it’s difficult to appreciate actual progress made day by day or week by week – but when you start to look back year on year, you can really see how far you’ve come.
There are many ways to improve the profile of your website and drive traffic to it: flyers with orders; permissible links from other sales channels; mailing list; social networking; SEO; ad words; other forms of advertising and more. Some of these are very simple and straightforward, others take more work. I’m not an expert on any of this, there is still plenty of room for improvement on my own website and plenty on this list that I need to get stuck into. Again my message is, just get started!
Of course there is no reason why you can’t run a successful website alongside eBay, Amazon and/or any other sales channels of your choice. Personally, I’m happy as a sole trader and given the finite number of hours in a day, the decision to take a break from eBay and concentrate on the website right now is the right one for me.
I know too (before you tell me so, North!) that websites may not suit all market sectors and business models. I operate in a sector with a lot of repeat business, which has been a big help in growing my site.
If you’re at the stage where you are thinking about setting up your own website, I hope this has encouraged you to just take that first step. If you have the patience to see it through in the long run, your efforts may be well rewarded.
TameBay Morsels 15/03/09
March 15, 2009
eBay wants to sell Skype to Google. I’d say they’ll flog it to anyone if the price is right.
The Motley Fool pulls no punches on eBay’s analysts day.
Madoff memorabilia pulled from eBay.
PayPal is getting serious about mobile.
Google Checkout puts prices up.
TameBay Morsels 13/03/09
March 13, 2009
They can’t spell John Donahoe’s name but the analyst comment is interesting enough.
Alibaba seeks deal with eBay (and Google). Jack Ma is a force to be reckoned with and no mistake.
Sellers make £5 a day on eBay.
Speeding driver was dashing home to bid on eBay.
Michael Jackson tickets, bloody touts, damn you eBay! Blah blah blah.
eBay Analyst Day 2009: Round-up
March 12, 2009
Yesterday, eBay held an Analyst Day for financial journalists and investment analysts. The purpose of an event like this is to impress the pundits, inspire confidence and encourage institutions and investors to buy eBay stock.
What did I learn? Not a great deal, if I’m frank. PayPal is going to be central to growing eBay Inc’s revenues and is set to be a bigger earner than eBay’s marketplaces. The marketplace is set to see sluggish growth for the next few years until a predicted boost in 2011. Skype doesn’t have any really synergy with eBay and PayPal but it’s a good standalone business.
Comments regarding a ‘secondary market’ stand out. eBay is seeking to be the place where businesses go to liquidate stock. But aside from that, this wasn’t a forum where we were going to get much in the way of specifics. It was essentially a chance for eBay to say: “we’re still in this game”. You can find the full presentation, with its curiously comic graphics, courtesy of Pravda.
So, if you’re sitting comfortably, here’s some reading and other perspectives:
Scot Wingo of Channel Advisor has written up the best and most comprehensive digest of the day on his blog:
Part 1: Opening remarks from John Donohoe.
Part 2: PayPal.
Part 3: eBay Marketplaces.
Part 4: Q&A session.
(Scot provides his own media round-up here.)
In other media:
CNBC Intro video to eBay Analysts Day
CNBC video including an interview with eBay CEO John ‘I like to win’ Donohoe. (The real giggle comes at 1min 48, I suggest)
Auctionbytes: eBay Strategy Revealed: Overstock Inventory from Diamond Liquidators
Reuters zeros in on the importance of PayPal
CNN Money looks at eBay’s ’secondary market’ ambitions.
Financial Times provides a brief overview
TameBay Morsels 11/03/09
March 11, 2009
Get your hands on Kerry Katona’s breast implant.
eCommerce is greener than the high street.
eBay ask the board to approve a plan that restores value in staff stock options.
Some perspectives on Google advertising changes.
And a little something from me on my blog…
Are you getting your share of eBay Exports?
March 9, 2009
eBay claim that export sales on eBay.co.uk increased in January and February 2009 (over December 2008) and are encouraging eBay sellers to get their share of the export market. eBay is also promoting eBay UK to overseas buyers as a great place to bag a bargain, on account of the relative weakness of Pound Sterling.
Apparently, 244,000 UK-based eBay sellers exported 2.4 million items worth £57million in January representing a year-on-year increase of 49%. In January, overseas buyers importing most from eBay UK were from the US (£9.5m), Germany (£6m), France (£5.4m) and Ireland (£5.3m). Italy, Holland, Spain, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland were also major importers. The most popular products were mobile phones, watches, clothing, laptops and digital cameras.
With 9 of the top 10 export destinations being in Europe (hardly surprisingly), British sellers not shipping to Europe or stating a European postage tariff would seem to be harming their sales.
TameBay Morsels 09/03/09
March 9, 2009
Quite an interesting piece from Seeking Alpha. Financial analysts are obsessed with slicing and dicing eBay Inc up.
All eyes on PayPal this week as eBay go to the analysts. Articles in Business Week and Ecommerce Journal.
Swoopo is being compared to eBay, again. I don’t see it myself.
Of general interest, here’s what a trillion dollars looks like. Scary.
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