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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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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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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eBay implemented their announced site modifications yesterday and immediately the world watched. Ok, so maybe not the world but a lot of sellers were watching. PowerSellersUnite.com is one of those watching and their site reported a 55% increase in listings yesterday. Taken on face value, that would be great, but why did the numbers jump?

The answer is simple. The numbers now include all those items in eBayStores! These were not included 2 days ago.

Don’t get too excited until we get the reports on sales from sellers. I hope that it includes good news, but there is no guarantee.

It was also a great move to implement this change the day before the end of Q1. Numbers will look great for the earnings report.

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Back on January 26th 2010 eBay released the latest round of ESR’s (eBay Seller Release) changes due to take effect on March 31st. While many of the changes seem to be geared toward improving the buyer and seller experience (OK, mostly buyer) there were some good things for sellers as well.

Getting Your Business  Ready

While the ESR’s have been announced well in advance, sellers are not waiting to get their eBay Stores ready. Many of these sellers have hundreds if not thousands of items to change to the new Fixed Price format instead of the soon to be defunct Store Inventory Format listing. While doing this, some merchants are making the changes active now. Fromthe information I have received, this has caused these new items in Fixed Price format not to be found in Google search. This has caused what some merchants are calling a significant drop in sales.

While preparing your items for the format change on March 31st, it is recommended that sellers do NOT convert the listings to Fixed Price until the effective date of the change because their items will not appear in core search or be submitted to Google until that date.

If you have had experience with this situation, please comment!

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So Many Choices

There are always so many choices when the confernece season starts.

eBay: eBay On Location: March 19-20, 2010 in Atlanta GA, Dallas TX May 7-8, 2010, Chicago IL July 9-10, 2010 and San Jose September 1-2, 2010

eBay: On Location will kick off in downtown Atlanta at the Omni Hotel on March 19-20, 2010, and continue on to Dallas and Chicago and wrap-up in San Jose to celebrate eBay’s 15th anniversary!

Each event is jam-packed with practical information to build and grow an eBay business. Learn new strategies in large and small classes, live demonstrations and a Top-rated seller panel discussion. Plus, you’ll have plenty of chances for one-on-one interaction with eBay experts, business gurus and other small business and part-time sellers like you!

Along with the eBay sponsored event in Atlanta, there are a couple of Pre & After events you should consider putting on your calendar!

Danna Crawford The PowerSellingMom is co-hosting a Pre-Event Lunch Friday the 19th.

John ColderIce Lawson will be hosting an AfterParty at 8:00 PM on Friday the 19th.

eCommerce Merchants: eCommerce Summit 2010 Las Vegas  April 13-15, 2010

This is one of the most targeted conferences for internet marketers regardless of the venue they sell on. See the agenda on the link above to see the star studded lineup of presenters.

Channeladvisor Catalyst Conference May 3-5, 2010

Internet Retailer Conference & Expo July 8-11, 2010 Chicago IL

Just One Question????

Why don’t they have these things in the winter so us nothern tier of states people can get out to the warmer parts of the country?

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Have you really sat down and figured out the cost for actual BUYING customers? What goes into this calculation? Advertising, inventory, time, equipment, staff, research, and much more goes into calculating the cost. And trust me, when this series of posts is done, I believe you will be amazed at the true numbers.

Advertising

I chose advertising first because many business owners really don’t know what is all included in advertising. It is more than the ads you may place in newspapers, telephone books or flyers and postcards. If you sell online, using venues such as Amazon or eBay you are paying for advertising. You are paying for these venues to bring POTENTIAL paying customers to your products. You are paying for these sites to promote your products via SEO and SEM on search engines. If the sites you HIRE to promote your items via SEO don’t send your products to search engines YOU must do it yourself. The ecommerce market has changed and the vast majority of buyers use SEO or comparison shopping engines to find the producst they want.

While the costs associated with listing on these ecommerce sites have shifted more towards success based fees, meaning if your products don’t sell you don’t pay a large fee, these costs must be spread over those items that do sell, because this a TRUE cost of aquiring a paying customer. In the case of Amazon and soon (in my opinion) eBay, you will not really own these customers!

Advertising also includes buying Adwords or keywords. If you do this for your own website, these costs must be spread over those customers that are actually converted to BUYERS. So, in reality those that buy pay for those that don’t. This is sort of like buying something at Wal-Mart. The price you pay for an item includes the cost of all those newspaper inserts they put out even though a very small percentage, usually about 1% or less of actual shoppers buy that item on sale.  

Advertising to the correct audience is important. Using ecommerce venues helps to achieve this. So does self promotion, directing your products or services to those most likely to purchase them. Advertising is not an expense but rather an investment in the success of your business, but you as a business owner must realize what EXACTLY your are getting for this investment!

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eBay has released the dates and locations for the eBayLive replacement events known as eBay On Location. Back in July of 2009 Lorrie Norrington announced that eBayLive was being replaced by the eBay On Location events, designed to be less costly for attendees by being held in major cities less than a day’s drive to as many members as possible. Originally I was under the impression there were supposed to be 10 of these events. Further research indicates eBay stated they would be conducting UP TO seven On Location events according to the Wall Street Journal.

The above image shows the areas covered by a 500 mile radius of the 3 chosen cities. It depicts the large portion of the country that is being left out of the “days drive” range eBay was initially striving for.

In yesterday’s announcement 3 cities. Atlanta GA, Dallas TX, and Chicago IL have been chosen along with a 4th event coinciding with eBay’s 15th anniversary in San Jose CA for September 1-2, 2010. This cuts the number of events to 4 instead of the possible 7 earlier reported. eBay previously announced the first On Location event was to be held in Orlando, however that event was canceled without explanation in December 2009.

One interesting note is that the 3 On Location events other than San Jose happen to be in cities that have recently established Ecommerce Merchants Trade Association local chapters. Purely coincidental? I don’t think so. I feel that eBay chose these locations recognizing that many ECMTA members are eBay sellers, and that by holding the On Location events in cities with local ECMTA chapters it may provide a built in base of promoters. This, if true makes perfect sense, go where you know you have supporters.

Just my thoughts.

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Then, as we internet marketers grew and larger businesses realized that the internet was a viable way to market, more features were requested from the venues and providers we used. Technology advanced to meet these demands. I recall an interview that John Donahoe, President and CEO of eBay did with Pierre Omidyar founder of eBay. The interview was posted on eBayinkblog.com. In that interview Pierre said, and I paraphrase here, sometimes users don’t know what is best for them.

Technology Rushes On

Many ecommerce sites have advanced their technology to utilize the very latest features. eBay, Google, Amazon, Bonanzle, Etsy, and many other venues have advanced with the times, but is it really for the better?

Google changes their search algorithms very very frequently, and of course it takes either a 10 year old or someone with an advanced doctorate degree to figure it out. eBay has been making changes to the way items are found on the site in such a way that the small to medium sized seller really has no chance to compete. Here is just a very small example of the way algorithms are utilized in search on eBay.

All of the variables that sites like Google and eBay use make programmers have nightmares. How in the world can we as ecommerce marketers ever hope to understand, and more importantly utilize the sites to our advantage? My answer is we can’t. The fact is use of these venues puts us at the mercy of their technology.

I fully realize that times change, and technology advances. My question is just because it’s there should we use it? 

In some instances I think not.

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I believe the answer is very simple. There will never be another meteoric single marketplace like eBay or Amazon, however I feel that there is an opportunity for several ecomerce sites to band together and create a mega site that could incorporate the best each site has to offer to bring buyers storming to this site. What Wal-Mart and Sears have discovered is that they don’t have to carry everything their customers make be looking for, but rather let other third party sellers provide these things while still shopping the Wal-Mart or Sears sites.

Sites such as Etsy.com, Bonanzle.com, Dealitlive.com, and Onlineauction.com each have something special and unique to offer buyers. Each brings their own set of buyers and sellers to the table. What if, sites like this worked together to create the aforementioned megasite as a joint venture? Could they work together utilizing their infastructures to build a site that could cater to a wide variety of users? I think so, if they are willing to put aside their differences and work together to create something that has never been done before.

Such a site could offer the creativity of Etsy, the community of fixed price sellers of Bonanzle, the thrill of live auctions on DealItLive and the online auction experience of Onlineauction. 

While I realize this may be a pipe dream, because heaven forbid several entities work together for the benefit of all rather than individual success, which by the way will never happen to the extent that it did with eBay or Amazon, it is my pipe and I will continue to light it every once in a while!

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