eBay Strategies

Cashback+coupons - helping fight the downturn - webinar tomorrow.

It's official, ChannelAdvisor has been working with eBay diligently over the last month and we are excited to let everyone know that just in time for the holidays Microsoft's live.com cash-back system now works with the ChannelAdvisor checkout redirect system!  Consumers can save up to 30% with this promotion so it's very important and getting a lot of traction on eBay already, with more to come.

We'll be going over how everything works in a webinar Wednesday, November 26th at 2pm ET and a couple of other 'last minute holiday' prep topics.

Topics we'll cover:

• Highlights of eBay's promotions that are ramping NOW
• Focus on coupons
• Focus on MS live cashback 
• CA and coupons
• CA and cashback 
• Holiday DSR tips 
• Holiday FP30 tips   
• Update on the UK VAT issue  
• Q+A - please limit to one Q per caller. 

I'm looking forward to the webinar and we're all (eBay+CA) excited that we were able to get this done for our customes in time for the holidays!

You can register for the webinar at http://www.channeladvisor.com/couponwebinar

50% auction listing fees promo for 2 days!

eBay is having a two day 50% off auction "insertion fees" for Nov 24-25.  I guess they want to stock the shelves for next week's Black Friday and CyberMonday here in the USA.

See here for details.

eBay couponing update...

As mentioned in Q3 by eBay amanagement and what you'll hear on today's eBay webinar, eBay is allocating the bulk of their Q4 holiday budget to coupons.  There's lots of comscore data coming out that shows online consumers are really embracing coupons (coupon site traffic is up 30% y/y for example), so I think this actually makes sense.  

eBay is saying there will be '10s of millions of coupons' and they are shortly going to roll out some changes to the site that will make coupons more embedded than they already are.

Here's one example.  You'll see that starting mid/late November, there will be coupons added to the new deals section (click to enlarge)

Next, when a consumer has a valid coupon in their 'coupon bank', they will have a persistent little reminder at the top of all pages and really pulled out on the item page as shown here:

Finally, I believe there will be some treatment (like a little coupon icon) in the search engine results pages for those items that are 'coupon eligible', if the consumer has a coupon in their little coupon bank.

Note to ChannelAdvisor customers:

When eBay first came out with these there were issues and we have resolved those.  On top of that we are taking actions today to make sure ALL of the above site-integration 100% works with ChannelAdvisor customers. You can read more about it on this SSC post (login required -for CA customers only).

A final note to the Wall St. folks.  While you guys disdain coupons because they are contra-revenue, I do think this is a good move for sellers and thus transaction volume on eBay this holiday so therefore it should be good for eBay as well -even contra revenue.  We'll only know how it turns out when eBay reports Q4 results in Q1, so until then, use some darn coupons (at ChannelAdvisor merchants please)!!

SeekingAlpha disclosure: I am long google and amazon.

I'm back... awesome eBay webinar manana and some new stars to report

Update: eBay has a recording of the webinar here.

Good morning eBay Strategies readers!  Sorry for the little dry spell in posting. I always underestimate the amount of energy needed going into the holiday selling season and between some webinars we're doing, customer strategy meetings and ChannelAdvisor's big 11/8 release, (custom item specifics - hooray!). I got swamped which left little time for blogging.  I think we're through the worst of it so I'll try and catch up on some topics I owe you.  Specifically we've learned A LOT about fp30 at ChannelAdvisor and I want to share some cutting edge strategies we're seeing that give sellers a leg up on the competition which in this environment can be the difference between life and death.  That piece will be a good partner to the eBay webinar...

eBay Webinar tomorrow - 'MUST SEE' if you are serious about selling on eBay.

eBay's top seller team is hosting a webinar tomorrow (Thursday November 13th) at 1:30pm Pacific, 4:30pm Eastern.

The details are:

URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/intercall1/join?id=111308&role=attend&pw=attend

Meeting ID: 111308  - secret code for attendee entry: 'attend'

They have streaming audio, but personally I prefer to do the dialin as it's clearer.  The dial-in detals are: ( 866 ) 501 – 3202 / ( 706 ) 679 - 2073        Conference ID:  72758551

eBay gave us a dry run of the presentation yesterday and I have to admit this is by far the best webinar/information session that I've seen eBay do. Period.

Here's a sneak peek at the agenda:

• Refresher on policy changes
• BestMatch/Search (lots of good coverage on the new fp30 here too)
• Driving demand for the holiday season 
• Coming soon/2009 preview  (some DSR improvements - YEAH!!!!!!)

Having listened to several town halls and other presentations on these topics, I think eBay hasn't been great at communicating many of the nuances around BestMatch and FP30.  Thus most sellers are left with the impression that eBay is learning as they go along (or doesn't understand at all) and the system is unfair/random/stinks/etc.  This is the best explanation, rational and update on how it's working that I've seen thus far. 

This webinar for the first time laid out the facts on the format (there are tons of rumors and urban legend around these two topics in the eBay community) and did a good job of explaining a topic I hacked around here with fp30 on how the fixed-price and auction-style listings work together with BestMatch.  

Bottom line: If eBay still is a material part of your business,  this is a 'must see' webinar (and I'd tell you if it wasn't).  Feel free to post in the Q+A here before/after the webinar what questions you have and I'll make sure they are anonymously forwarded and after I'll do my best to find the information.

The new eBay 'eforcity' stars

New topic.  eBay has released a couple of new stars which I think really highlight the success of one specific seller on eBay - eforcity.  Here's a handy site, sellerdome that crawls eBay and lists the sellers by feedback (note - this is not the same as GMV).

eforcity is a ChannelAdvisor customer and we're really proud that our software played a roll in their achievement of getting over 1m feedback. Also in that lofty club is jayandmarie.  While not a customer, I've known Jay and Marie for a long time and they are a great part of the eBay community.    Jay and Jack (ceo@eforcity) are two of the smartest, scrappiest entrepreneurs I've ever met and they are a great asset to the eBay and ecommerce communities.  It's great to see eBay recognize their achievements in this way.

From sellerdome, you'll notice that the top four are accstation, eforcity, itrimming and everydaysource.  These are all sub-brands for eforcity so in reality this company effectively has well over 5m total feedback.  From personal experience, I can tell you they can make some servers hum over here at ChannelAdvisor!

Lots of sellers ask me about Jack's eBay success and I'll try and wrangle him into an interview here maybe after his holiday sales calm down.

The new stars are a shooting green and a shooting silver.  I have to admit the shooting silver looks like it's worked up a sweat so someone here started already calling it the sweaty silver star.  Sue over at Tamebay had the same reaction.   Maybe it's surprised and not sweaty?  Maybe it takes a ton of hard work and sweat to get to that level...

Enjoy the webinar and congrats to eforcity and jayandmarie on their snazzy new stars.

SeekingAlpha disclosure - I am long Google and Amazon