December 2008 - Posts

• Are eBay Buyers Angry?

  As most of you know, I have a fairly automated system setup to manage my sales, orders, and shipping.  Today, I was reviewing customer notes real quick and this one really jumped out at me. "Hello! I pay for my items very quickly. In turn, I would appreciate getting the item "exactly" as advertised, also good safe packing, and fast shipping. Thanks in advance for a Great transaction! Good honest people need "not" read any further. z-dave -------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are "DISHONEST", you are tangling with the wrong person! ( Thats a promise:)" WOW!  Life is too short to deal with buyers like this.  Somehow eBay has brainwashed buyers that their job of being a good buyer is done after they pay.  I wish there was a feature to block buyers like this BEFORE they bid/buy your items.  I will keep you posted if this one ends with any excitement.   Brandon Posted Dec 29 2008, 11:55 AM by Brandon_D with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Brandon's Take, ebay, ebay selling, eCommerce Merchants, eBay Seller

• Is eBay Still Shallow?

  I’m referring to sales volume for a SKU.  Scot Wingo posted a great blog post on Seeking Alpha about one of his customers getting great volume on one SKU from the deal of the day on eBay.  It is a good post and receiving a lot of comments.  (Go here to check it out: http://seekingalpha.com/article/110639-is-ebay-s-strategy-working?) I’ve been doing a test on the same topic and decided now is a good time to share my results. For this test, I took a very hot toy item and listed this item on both Amazon and eBay at the same time.  I looked at the competitive pricing and costs of the marketplace to determine selling price.  Because Amazon charges a higher fee than eBay for this category, I need to charge higher on Amazon to keep the margin close.  On eBay the item lists at $46.74 and Amazon averages at $49.04.  Yes, a person wishing to buy this item could buy the exact same item from the exact same company on eBay for $2.30 less but in many cases chooses not to do so.   I ran some reports in my Infopia Transact dashboard and over the last few weeks this item has sold on eBay a total of 9 times for $420.65 in revenue and on Amazon a total of 190 times for $9,317.79 in revenue. From my test, yes, eBay is still a mile wide and an inch deep.  The #1 reason for this is marketplace friction for both buyers and sellers.  Let’s take a look at some of the points of friction on eBay. Search is broken on eBay.  You can tell the search process on Amazon is designed by merchants who have focused on the buyer experience, while also committed to the end goal of generating a sale.  On eBay, the objective is impossible to identify.  Especially with the off-site banner advertising at the top in prime real-estate for a search results page. Finding is broken on eBay.  Ok, even after you start to search, you also need to find.  On Amazon, it is very easy to compare one item to another using their shopping list tool but on eBay finding items to compare and then buy will take more time and energy from the buyer = more friction. Coupons and Promotions.  On eBay, they are running a huge MSN promotion with up to 30% savings.  However, eBay fumbled seriously with execution on this one when the promo only worked with eBay checkout.  Most large established sellers on eBay do not like or use eBay’s checkout due to many limitations and so a large share of the market was not setup to benefit from the promo.  Huge friction for both sellers and buyers. Checkout.  What address does the seller use, the eBay address, the paypal address, the address the buyer typed into the checkout?  While 3rd party checkout may take 1-3 more screens of entering an address for a buyer, it offers sellers more accurate information on shipping address, additional information and how to complete the transaction for the buyer.  On Amazon, don’t they have something called 1-click buy. Communication.  Do you send the person an email in eBay’s my-messages or email to their email address?  1 out of 3 buyers using eBay's system don’t include their email address and therefore won’t likely get a response from a large volume seller. Tracking.  Most large sellers have highly automated systems in place to include a tracking number, email it to the buyer, and track the order online as well.  These are great for the buyer, but most of these automated systems cannot or are not connected to eBay to let the buyer know in the eBay system their order has shipped and tracking information. Marketplace friction for both buyers and sellers are at an all-time high on the eBay marketplace while at an all-time low for Amazon transactions.  In 2008 we have seen eBay add more tools of friction and we have seen Amazon focused on reducing this friction.  We have a clear case of a marketplace built by merchants for merchants on Amazon while having very intelligent but non-merchants designing the eBay experience for everyone and in many cases becoming very painful for their customers the merchants. I hope 2009 can be a year of less friction for eBay and merchants selling on eBay. Brandon     Posted Dec 16 2008, 02:23 PM by Brandon_D with no comments Filed under: Brandon's Take, ebay, ebay selling, eCommerce Merchants, PESA Member, eBay Seller

• eBay's $1.00 Door Prize Promo = Free Marketing for eBay?

  Think about this for a minute. How many people do you think were sitting at their computer yesterday logged into eBay.com, the day before, the day before, the day before, and the day before hitting refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh,.......... trying to win a $1.00 door prize? I confess, I tried winning a $46k Corvette (Check it out) yesterday during lunch. We all know how that ended if you read our member forums. Is it 1,000's, 10,000's, 100,000's, even 1,000,000's of people? I don't know really, but someone inside eBay's war room does. Now, what do you see at the top of each and every search page on eBay every time you hit refresh?  That's right, a banner ad that drives traffic off the website.  Now if you have been following my blog posts, forum posts, or even magazine article comments (check it out) in Fortune from 2002, you will know I believe eBay should not have off-site advertising on their site.  Here is a copy of the quote: The anger in the seller community makes sense when you realize that eBay has used e-mail and pop-up boxes to steer buyers to CDs and DVDs on sites like Columbia House and its own Half.com subsidiary. "They're guilty of the same thing they won't let sellers do--taking users to other sites," says Brandon Dupsky, president of Sell2All, a four-year-old Lincoln, Neb., company that manages some 3,000 auctions a week for large and small companies selling surplus inventory on eBay. "My business [a multimillion-dollar enterprise with 20 employees] did not even exist before eBay," he says, reflecting the conflicted feelings of most sellers about the site. "But they're taking my customers and saying, 'Don't buy from eBay, buy from Columbia House.' " (eBay had an advertising relationship with Columbia House.) eBay spokesman Pursglove concedes that some of the pop-ups went a bit too far. "Based upon feedback from the community, we are phasing out advertisements that may pose direct competition." But the Half.com ads will remain. source: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2002/11/01/331973/index.htm   YES, that was from 2002. Let's put 1 + 2 together here.  If you spend let's just say $2,000,000 for $1.00 door busting merchandise at what point does the refresh, refresh, refresh traffic and banner impressions equal > $2,000,000 in advertising revenue?  You have to admit, it's a great plan if you are eBay.   I don't know why, but for some reason, I have this dying urge to go to ToysRus.com to buy my kids some gifts.  Maybe it is because I saw they are having a huge sale from their banner ads on eBay. Brandon     Posted Dec 02 2008, 11:47 AM by Brandon_D with no comments Filed under: ebay, ebay selling, Brandon Dupsky, eBay Seller