eBay Strategies

Implications of Walmart Marketplace on eBay?

Over on sister-blog, Amazon Strategies, we have a post that digs into the new marketplace unveiled by Walmart today.  I've been on a bit of a blogging hiatus with B2S and what-not and also this time of year is when the retail world gets super-focused on the holiday selling season so things have been (good) crazy busy.  I do have some time carved out to catch eBay readers up on VSL, free shipping, etc.  Stay tuned this week and feel free to chime in with any feedback you have on this Walmart marketplace in comments.

eTRS in search results - this is only a test, but...

I haven't been able to reproduce it, but a reader sent in some great screen shots that show how the eTRS badge is being tested in search results.

You can see that there's a good sized badge right in results in a column between the description and the price/bid column. (click to zoom)

In this close-up you get a good feel for the size of the badge (much larger than anything like the PayPal logo or the powerseller logo: (click to zoom)

As this test expands, it's going to be interesting to see if eBay gives buyers a feature that allows them to filter the results and show "eTRS only".

SeekingAlpha Disclosure - I am long Google and Amazon.  eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor.

How Consumers Shop Online - whitepaper with survey results available.

Based on feedback we received at our Catalyst conferences where we have an online consumer panel that retailers love, we started doing a bi-annual survey of consumer online buying behavior.  The 2H09 version is out now.   This information is something I think every online retailer, regardless of size should read and understand as you make your Q4 plans.  You can download the white paper here.

Highlights

 

Here are some highlights of what consumers told us in the survey:

1. Consumers are spending about the same amount of time online but are spending less money – scouring the Web for deals that yield higher savings and offer extra value above and beyond low prices.
2.  Shoppers don’t necessarily realize where they purchase and may not understand how Google Product Search and other comparison shopping engines function.
3. Amazon and eBay are top-of-mind retail brands, but Amazon commands twice the mindshare of eBay.
4. Free shipping and peer ratings/reviews hold more influence over purchasing decisions than they did in 2008.
5. 70 percent of consumers said they regularly purchase from eBay or Amazon.
   
6.  81 percent of consumers begin their product searches with Google and 11 percent begin with Yahoo – which is an increase of five percentage points in favor of Google, and a six percent decrease in Yahoo usage.
7.  Bing is making a quick impact since it launched on May 28, accounting for two percent of searches and 13 percent of respondents already having used Bing Cashback – a share that will grow in light of the recent Yahoo/Microsoft search deal.
8.  Shoppers are diversifying the comparison shopping engines they use to research products, prices and deals. We discovered some useful trends by comparing consumer behavioral data to actual internal sales data from thousands of online retailers that make up the ChannelAdvisor customer base.

The white paper goes into tons of details on these items, and they are strategic tidbits to plan your Q4 marketing plan.  Is Bing in your mix?  Have you diversified your CSEs?  Which search engines are you spending time on and does it match the consumer-side?

We hope this enables you to align your resources and plans to have a successful Q4!

SeekingAlpha Disclosure: I am long Amazon and Google. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor

First sightings of the eTRS badge in the wild. Buy from the Best...

We started getting some reports of the eBay Top Rated Seller badges showing up on public pages on eBay today.  The badges are showing up on what we call the 'item page' in the eBay World and they are pretty big and over to the right of a seller's ID if the seller meets the criteria already.  Here's an example: (click for expanded view)

There's a link above the badge that says "Top-rated seller" and then the hover text says: "Get fast shipping and excellent service from eBay top-rated sellers."

When you click on the link above the badge it takes you here (screen shotted in case the treatment changes). (click for expanded view)

I'm all for raising the bar, but some a couple of concerns now that we can see the buyer-side of this program:

• I do worry that if only let's say 25-30% of eBay sellers can get in this program, what does that make the rest of sellers?  Will buyers assume they are low-rated or not trustworthy in some regard? Could this program back-fire on eBay because buyers think there are more 'bad guys' on eBay than 'good guys'?
  •  Perhaps a FAQ that says: "What should I do if a seller isn't Top-rated? would be helpful  
• The message on the second screen shot is a little tricky, especially this piece: 
  •  Top-rated sellers Must consistently earh 4 or 5 star ratings from buyers for blah blah.  
  • Well...... that's not really true is it?  You really need to NOT earn one/two stars to be in the program.  This sounds nit-picky, but I think eBay needs to let buyers know that when they leave a one or two-star it is essentially a SERIOUS NEGATIVE economic event for a seller in this new eTRS World. 
• Nit - eBay isn't being consistent in the capitalization of the T - in the hover text it is lower-case, in other places it is upper, etc. 

Those are my initial thoughts, I'm more interested in what reader's have to say!  Love it, hate it, can't decide?  Let me know in comments please.

SeekingAlpha Disclosure - I am long Google and Amazon. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor.

eBay announces the "I am eBay" winners. ***Updated....

**Updated - I was incorrect in this blog post.  There are actually two video contests running.  These are the results for an "I am eBay" contest.  There is another contest still ongoing called the "eBay Seller's Challenge" which has announce finalists here.  That contest will reward $25k to 4 winners and the "I am eBay" awarded $5k. Sorry for any confusion I caused by mixing up the two contests.

Back in June, I blogged about this "ebay sellers challenge" video contest and today eBay has announced the winners today.

The winner is (drum roll please)....

Miriam Otto from Blue Frog Shoes.  You can check out her store here and I've embedded her video here:

The runner's up are:

Jim and Kelli Shaw from dreamadventures: (note: I think they have matching eyewear?)

Finally, I know Kat Simpson and there's other way to describe her than a whirlwind.  You can see her in action here:

Congrats to everyone! I guess Miriam get's the $25k.

SeekingAlpha Disclosure - I am long Google and Amazon. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor

An interesting eBay search test and Apple vs. PayPal?

Two interesting tidbits today.  First, I was doing some broad searches on eBay today and in some cases was seeing this result set:

What this treatment does is take a broad search (ipod in this example) and it injects a category filter below the first two results.  This seems to be the kind of test you would run if you had found that people aren't using the left nav to do category filtering and you want to put it right up in their faces.   A couple of thoughts:

1. Whether you like the treatment or not - it's good to see eBay is starting to test some more dramatic changes to search than we've seen in the past.
2. I've long thought that eBay's search engine is at its worst for these broad terms (ipod, nintendo wii, etc.) where there are so many listings that typically what you are looking for isn't in the first 20-50 results. 
3. I've been criticizing eBay for not changing search enough in SR1 with SR2 they are ramping up the changes and this is another datapoint that they are starting to (finally!!)really tackle their biggest weakness. 

Apple to complete with Paypal?

This article in Silicon Alley today caused lots of speculation around Apple entering the payments space.  You have to admit it is interesting to think about the potential for Apple to come in and compete with Paypal.  I like the iPhone aspect as well - what if you could pay for goods on and offline with it?  They do this kind of stuff in Japan all the time and it hasn't worked it's way to the US because we lack the infrastructure.  So to put it in perspective we have these companies currently competing or looking to compet with Paypal:

1. Google - Google Checkout is largely on hiatus right now, but could be an area Google revisits should it decide that ecommerce is important (Bing is going to force them there sooner rather than later.
2. Amazon - CBA (Checkout By Amazon) is alive and kicking and slowly being added to  
3. Facebook - Is rumored to be expanding their 'virtual goods' payment system to other oline purchases.  Boy wouldn't retailers love access to that user base?
   1.  Within social, the social games are raking in the cash and they use a whole new class of payment system (good article here) 
4. Twitter -  In their leaked documents to TechCrunch, I found it interesting that one of the areas they were looking at is payments. FYI - there's already tweetpay.
5. Apple -  Now we can put them on the list.

The only big internet name missing from this list is Microsoft/Yahoo!. With their new marriage and focus on ecommerce, a deeper partnership with Paypal or a competing system seems like an interesting option to pursue.

SeekingAlpha Disclosure - I am long Amazon and Google.  eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor

Things that make you go hmmm... (google checkout edition)

http://storegadget.googlelabs.com/

Things that make you go hmmm... (google checkout edition)

http://storegadget.googlelabs.com/

Amazon vs. eBay in two pictures...

Over on sister blog, Amazon Strategies, we have two pictures (from Goldman Sachs) that really show the ongoing battle between ecommerce goliaths eBay and Amazon.  I thought eBay Strategies readers would be interested as well.

eBay Changes webinar and FAQs we'll be answering...

A quick reminder for everyone that tomorrow at 2pm ET we are hosting a webinar to go through eBay's changes in detail, give some guidance on what you can do now to prepare for the changes and 

You can signup for the webinar here and if you can't make it 'live', I'll be sure to post a replay.

After the webinar, I'll continue with the third part of the eBay changes series and the VSL advanced strategies (because yes they do change with the Sept changes).

Finally, we've combed message boards, this blog's comments, twitter and other sources and come up with are some of the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the eBay changes and we've clarified them all with various folks at eBay to help make sure everyone is 100% clear about the changes.  There's more urban legend and misinformation (and corresponding concern/outright panic) this time around than I've seen before.

If you have any questions that still remain from the announcements last week, feel free to email me, or leave them in comments or tweet them to me.

The top areas we'll be covering are:

• eTRS program - how and when is this calculated?
  • Can one buyer essentially destroy my eTRS discounts? 
• Recent sales changes- tell me more!  Does this (RS/impressions) replace RS or ? How is it calculated, what is in (and not in) the dashboard,  
  •  Why did eBay make this change?  
  • I currently have 'position 1' 
• While this release has lots of positives, the changes most likely to impact sellers negatively are the insurance change and changes to 'featured' listings.  We'll cover those in detail as well and offer up some ideas to help you should these impact your business.  

  

FYI - for the webinar we'll be using the twitter hashtag #CAECW (ChannelAdvisor ebay changes webinar) so feel free to start tweeting up some Q's that way too.