While some online merchants are reporting declining sales (summertime is normally a slow season for some categories) it seems the ecommerce marketplaces are trying to provide their own economic stimulus. Earlier this year Japanese giant Rakuten purchased Buy.com for a reported $250M and according to Randy Smythe, Merchant Evangelist at Buy everyone at the company is excited about the deal.

Two days ago eBay announced it had purchased RedLaser.com the bar-code scanning app developer.

The latest announcement just yesterday is the eBay competitor Chinese giant Alibaba has purchased Vendio.com the inventory, sales, research and store management developer that is well integrated into eBay and Amazon.

As summer heats up so does the jockeying of the large ecommerce platforms to best position themselves for the upcoming fall and holiday shopping season. It will be interesting to see how all these moves will affect the marketplace as there seems to be more attention being focused on chipping away at eBay’s seller base.

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An Innovative New Online Auction Site

BooCoo.com

About 2 weeks ago my good friend Walt Kolenda (aka AuctionWally) suggested I check out a new online auction venue called BooCoo.com. Now in full disclosure Walt is doing some consulting work for this site.

I took a look at the site and then received an email from Tony Marsella COO of Rangerdata.com parent company of BooCoo. In speaking with Tony about the June 21 launch of the new site, I came to realize that one of the major hurtles most startups face is getting the word out! Advertising can be costly and many startups just don’t have the funding to get their word out to massive numbers of potential users.

BooCoo has found a unique way to accomplish this by combining the resources of existing print media in over 280 markets to provide full page ads in their daily publications in return for revenue sharing. This is a unique way to provide exposure of this marketplace. Not only will this advertising take place in print but also in the online versions of the publications! Now Tony tells me that these newspapers are daily publications reaching over 7000 zipcodes (about 1/4th) in the US.

As I have said before, there is a certain segment of the population that likes auctions, me included, and I feel that BooCoo.com will meet that desire!

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I know that the internet retail business has skyrocketed as more and more brick and mortar businesses create or expand their internet business so I don’t know why I was so surprised to note the very low numbers of vendors that would appeal or apply to small to medium sized businesses. Many of the vendors that I talked to were only interested in merchants with GAS (gross annual sales) of $1M or more. While talking with several attendees, I find them to be business development managers, IT specialists and business owners seeking CRM solutions.

What appeared to me to be one of the hotest items on the vendor floor was multi-dimensional photography for the apparel industry. I counted at least 10 booths featuring this technology and it is truly amazing. Another large group of vendors were promoting data collection. As one vendor told me their technology knows what the buying customer is interested in before the customer does. All based on the customer’s previous internet travels and purchases. This allows this specific company to suggest your items that fit the buyers previous internet buying history in nanoseconds! This all comes at a cost, of course, generally well beyond the means of the small to medium sized marketer.

A few of the vendors that I did see that might have applications or product that would fit with my target audience were Stamps.com(a sponsor of my podcasts), Shipwire.com, Yahoo.com, Channeladvisor.com, PayPal.com, and DOBA.com. I should say that notably missing was eBay.

Simply from what I saw, this event while probably great for the RETAIL marketplace, it may not fit the bill for the small to medium sized ecommerce businesses.

I will be editing the recorded interviews I conducted over the next few days and posting them on my podcast.

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During an interview with Walt Mossberg, Donahoe rated eBay’s webiste at a 4 out of 10. He also stated he felt this was up from a 2 out 10 rating 18 months ago. While this shows improvement, it makes me wonder why eBay seems to be placing blame of declining sales on “bad sellers” rather than it’s own website and it’s flaws. Don’t get me wrong, I admit there are some bad sellers on the eBay platform, just as there are some bad apples in a barrel. eBay needs to work on making the site safe for buyers and has made some good advances in that area.

I do however have an issue with those sellers using the eBay platform (I do not sell on eBay any longer) continuing to pay the high fees associated with a site that it’s own CEO rates at 40% of what it should be! If an eBay seller receives a a 40% rating they are GONE!

Now I totally understand that all business is a constant work in progress, but a 4 out of 10 for a company like eBay and all of it’s resources is simply not acceptable from a customer standpoint. I don’t care whether you are a buyer or a seller, if the CEO rates his own site like this, how do the actual users feel?

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You have made the management decision to come into the 21st century and have your own website. Again, I ask the question,,,,WHY?

Before you run off and start to build a website or have one built, you must know why you want it. What is it that you want your website to do? Do you want an ecommerce site? Why? Is the website to generate income? What are you going to sell? How are you going to sell? Auction or fixed price? Is this product new or used? Are you going to maintain this site by yourself? Do you have the time this requires? Are you going to hire someone to manage it for you? Do you have the funding to hire a webmaster?

Should you use a shopping venue platform such as Amazon, Bonanzle, Yahoo or eBay instead of your own site? This may be a better choice for the startup ecommerce marketer. These sites attract the traffic needed for exposure of your items. They have payment systems integrated to make shopping easier for your customers. Webstore design and templates are often integrated to make it easier for the novice to build a webstore.

Is your intention to provide information only on the site? Then you may be able to do it yourself much easier than a checkout enabled website. Blog sites are often much simpler but do require daily attention to feed the search engine spiders.

Knowing what it is you want the website for is the first step in creating your online presence. Remember that once you establish an online presence it will live somewhere forever! Make sure it is a happy life!

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John Donahoe:

A year ago, we had 14 per cent of global e-commerce, we’re the largest e-commerce provider, and our home page still looks like a flea market,” he says. “The world around us had changed. In particular our buyers’ experience hadn’t kept up. December 18, 2007 – Silicon Valley Insider

While eBay started out selling mainly used items initially, quickly new items, usually overstock, liquidation and returned product began to take foothold. Now, the vast majority of product offered is “New”.

In an effort to improve buyer satisfaction, eBay instituted policy changes that included Detailed Seller Ratings, known as DSR’s in the community.

eBay Buyers Rate Sellers

Buyers are encouarge to evaluate sellers on 4 different aspects of the sale. For those selling used items such as antiques and collectibles, clothing, electronics, auto parts and much more. the SUBJECTIVE evaluation as to condition is a major point of discrepency with their buyers. This situation is not exlcusive to eBay certainly, but is most easily demonstrated with their customer satisfaction rating system.

If buyers think that the sellers description was not accurate, they then can rate them lower on the DSR category for Item As Described. It has been reported that many sellers have seen their DSR averages drop mainly based on the lower Item As Described ratings. As a subjective evaluation, this can differ greatly between buyers and sellers.

As a result, some used item sellers are either changing their product line or moving their used items to other venues such as Craigslist. As this migration continues, maybe eBay has created an atmosphere where sellers would rather take these items to a flea market rather than sell them online. Flea markets are seeing more vendors buying tables, as are antique malls.

Is this ecommerce having a causal effect on tradional marketing in reverse?

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It’s On The Internet

Is your news source keeping things from you?

So it must be true! Well, ok it may be true, or it may not be, but many times it is being delivered with the author’s slant or opinion. Certainly this author is no exception, but I can not think of one single newsworthy ecommerce event or news report that I have not brought to my readers because I don’t like the source.

Recently, I submitted a press release regarding the combined ECMTA Chicago Chapter/Chicagoland eBay Sellers Meetup dinner meeting coinciding with Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition to Auctionbytes.com free service for Press Releases. The event is open to all internet marketers, and will feature John ColderIce Lawson, CEO of 3Rd Power Outlet, Randy K. Smythe, Merchant Advocate for Buy.com, Richard Brewer-Hay editior of eBayInkBlog.com, and Scot Wingo, CEO of Channeladvisor and editor of ebaystratagies blog as guest panelists in a roundtable townhall discussion format. As an event for ecommerce marketers, I feel this dinner will offer a tremendous amount of information to the attendees. This is of course my personal opinion.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from David Steiner President of Auctionbytes denying my submission. As there was no reason for the denial given I decided to seek an answer. I emailed David requesting a reason for the denial and this is the response I received:

It’s our policy not to accept PESA/ECMTA press releases.

Now I understand that Auctionbytes is a privately owned company. It is certainly within their perogative to accept or deny nearly anything. I also believe that the editors/owners of Auctionbytes seem to have issues with the corporate structure of ECMTA.org, but is that reason not to publish an event such as this that could possibly benefit ecommerce sellers?

Does not reporting on something make it not happen?

If a news source is selectively chosing what they publish and therefore what their readers see is Auctionbytes truly “the independent trade publication for online merchants”? Do you wonder as I do what else they chose not to tell their readers about?

Disclosure: I am a member of ECMTA.org and Chicago Chapter President as well as a member of the Chicagoland eBay Sellers Meetup Group.

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Phaedra Stockstill Interviews Bill Harding on ebay & Beyond: Basics To Business Podcast

On Monday April 28th, 2010, Bill Harding CEO of Bonanzle.com posted on the website’s forum that $1M in funding had been secured. In the post he described what the immediate future will bring for the rapidly growing ecommerce marketplace. With just under one quarter of a million registered users in just 20 months since their launch, Bonanzle has attracted not only sellers who have moved away from industry leaders Amazon and eBay, but an increasing number of small to medium sized sellers who are expanding to multi-channel marketing. The friendly members of Bonanzle’s community seem to help each other and newbies alike.

I had a chance to talk with Harding at the recent eCommerce Summit 2010 in Las Vegas hosted by ECMTA/PeSA. Harding spoke about the strides that had been made to improve and enhance Bonanzle in the past 6 months and what he hoped to see implemented in the near future. He was passionate about the site and was highly sought out by many attendees of the Summit.

Exploding Forward

From left Phaedra Stockstill Bill Harding Judy Oglesby

Shortly after the eCommerce Summit, Phaedra Stockstill of Bonanzleboardroom.com contacted me with some exciting news for Bonanzle.com members. Phaedra told me that she and her Bonanzleboardroom podcast co-host Judy Oglesby had been working on a meetup for Bonanzle members and that news would be released soon. Well, as usual she did not disappoint me.

Yesterday I received the press release from Phaedra announcing the Exploding Forward Bonanzle Up 2010. Scheduled for August 7, 2010 in Kansas City MO, at the Fair Points Sheraton hotel. Early bird registration is $25. Watching the forums on Bonanzle it is clear that the vast majority of members embrace the centralized location chosen for the event. I will be reporting live from the event and look forward to meeting the diverisfied group of users to determine why they chose Bonanzle, how they found the site, what they like and what they wish could be changed.

Disclosure: Both Bonanzle and Bonanzleboardroom have purchased advertising on my weekly podcast.

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One of the most interesting startups I met at the eCommerce Summit 2010 sponsored by PESA/ECMTA is Addoway. A completely free site that incorporates a marketing platform with social media marketing. I sat down with Fredrick Nijmn Co-Founder of Addoway during one of my interviews to discuss the explosion of social networking in ecommerce.

Listen to the Addoway Interview

The concept is to link your followers, people that trust you, to the items you have for sale using Addoway’s platform. Here is what the About Us page says about the site:

Here at Addoway, we believe we are at the forefront of the next big trend in online shopping – referred to by many as “Social Commerce”. To put it simply, Social Commerce is the intersection of Social Media and eCommerce, where buyers connect with sellers they know and trust – rather than shopping from strangers with nothing more than a user ID or feedback score to back up their reputation.

With the explosion of Facebook, Twitter and social media in general, millions of people have now become comfortable with the idea of sharing their identity and details about who they are online. Successfully managing an online persona is becoming a critical way to build trust with those who interact with you. Yet while the social media revolution has continued to spur on the concept of openness and transparency online, the world of eCommerce has not fully embraced this growing trend.

Addoway aims to fill this gap. Our patent-pending process helps you discover new, trustworthy people to buy, sell, bargain and trade with – bringing you a deeper look at the person you are dealing with.

With the ability to import eBay listings to your free Addoway store, and then promote those items through social commerce, Addoway seems to be a front runner in the latest effort to combine social media and ecommerce.

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I had an opportunity to sit down with Marc Gorlin from startup Kabbage.com at the eCommerce Summit 2010 in Las Vegas this past week. While I am sometimes hesitant to endorse startups simply due to their inherent failure rate, I believe this dot com is going to be BIG!

The entire Kabbage.com team was in attendance at eCommerce Summit 2010 in Las Vegas and I got to meet them all. When I talked with Marc, it was apparent that this is a well thought out operation.

What is Kabbage.com

Kabbage.com quite simply is a lending site for small to medium sized ecommerce businesses that need short term cash for whatever the reason. Purchasing inventory, equipment or whatever to allow businesses to take the next step to growth. Typically these small to medium sized ecommerce businesses find it difficult to obtain funding from conventional lending institutions, and Kabbage intends to fill this void.

Initially, the service will be available only to eBay sellers, but Marc explained that Kabbage does intend to expand to allow sellers on other venues in the future. Still a few weeks away from actual operation, Kabbage will look at the more than just credit scores of the applicants. Gorlin explained that along with credit scores, Kabbage will also look at the sellers experience, feedback ratings, and PayPal volume history to determine eligibility for loans. The loans that Kabbage offers typically range from 1 to 6 months in duration.

Gorlin explained that the application process is all done online, and normally a decision is made, and funds available in the applicant’s PayPal account within 10 minutes! This totally blew me away!

While certainly not for everybody, I believe Kabbage has hit upon a niche that potentially can help those that need short term loans to expand their businesses take that next step.

Disclosure: Kabbage.com was a partial sponsor of our podcasts at eCommerce Summit 2010.

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