An American road tests the Skypephone

April 23, 2008

This post was written in April 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Billy Purser of ChannelAdvisor was absolutely amazed at my 3 Skypephone when I showed it to him at the Catalyst US conference. It appears that there is nothing like it in the US, and in fact my distinct impression is that Skype usage is not nearly as prevalent on the other side of the Atlantic as it is in Europe.

Knowing he was due to visit London, I promised to buy him a Skypephone to use at Catalyst UK this week. Billy loved the idea of being able to keep in touch with his family, and more importantly for his kids to be able to phone him whenever they liked.

He explained that Christian (aged 9) and Sully (aged 6) had really missed their mom when she visited the EU. While she was in London and Italy there was no way for them to easily keep in touch. For this trip Billy explained to Christian and Sully, before he left, that they’d be able to call him on Skype whenever they liked.

His kids have been really excited and have called Billy two or three times every day, as they’ve been off school. Having them gathered around the home PC on speaker phone has enabled the whole family to chat at the same time. The best part of all, is that calls to Billy didn’t have to be pre-arranged and of course were free.

With calls for eBay to sell Skype, investors would do well to look at Skype outside the US. 209 million users can’t all be wrong, Skype is making good money, and the applications and potential for growth is immense. Tools like the Skypephone whilst great for keeping in touch with family are even more powerful when used for business, such as for buyers to contact sellers instantly from eBay listings or websites.

Skype is continually innovating and generating new tools and interfaces to communicate, the Skypephone is just one of them. eBay would be mad to dispose of the fastest growing communications company in the world, it’s an asset they could never replace.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Featured | 1 Comment 

eBay fees to go DOWN, free gallery

January 23, 2008

This post was written in January 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Yes that’s right, eBay fees are to go down, although we don’t have the detail yet. However on slide 10 of the Q4 2007 Financial Highlights sets out the results of eBay’s tests over the last year.

Specifically eBay say their conclusion is to “introduce a New 2008 Price Restructure with an announcement upcoming to Sellers next week”. This is on the basis that sellers are more interested in reducing upfront fee risk… back-end success fee reductions are secondary. “Buyers like pervasive photos across all listings” so expect to see free gallery introduced on all listings, plus tests have shown better conversion rates in Free Gallery tests.

So that’s what we can expect - lower insertion fees, slight increase to final value fees and free gallery for sure. Expect to see announcements over the next week on Feedback, Pricing, Support and protection. 2008 is shaping up to be a great year for trading on eBay.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 32 Comments