ChannelAdvisor

Live Blogging from 2013 Catalyst Americas: Scot Wingo Keynote (Part I)

Welcome to the live blog for ChannelAdvisor.  We’ll be live blogging the general sessions at Catalyst to make sure attendees don’t miss anything.  Also, make sure you’re following hashtag #CatalystAmericas and @ChannelAdvisor on Twitter for all of the latest.

Speaker: Scot Wingo

Title: The State of E-Commerce

Part 2: http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_strategies/2013/04/live-blogging-from-2013-catalyst-americas-scot-wingo-keynote-part-ii-.html

Part 3: http://ebaystrategies.blogs.com/ebay_strategies/2013/04/live-blogging-from-2013-catalyst-americas-scot-wingo-keynote-part-iii-.html

Welcome 1,000 retailers and sponsors!  Thanks!

Where are we in the e-commerce adoption cycle?

2004--only 4% of retail sales were online, more than doubled by 2012 to 10% (comScore).  Only the beginning...15% in the UK, 20% in S. Korea.  Forrester predicts 15% CAGR over the next 4 years. 

By 2016, we'll hit a TRILLION dollars in e-commerce (eMarketer). 

We think it's Conservative.  Why?  4 Waves.

Waves--retailers often feel like they are caught on waves of e-commerce; we're helping retailers get on top of waves. 

Wave #1: Amazon Effect

Amazon growing at 25%, compared with 15% for e-commerce as a whole. 

Amazon Financial are preplexing to Wall St.  Why?  Growth rate is coming down.  Well above e-commerce and overall retail sales.  Profits are shooting up.  Why?  Third-party marketplace. (3PM)

Amazon has lowered its costs, so its profits are increasing.  Kindle, fulfillment centers, China, Prime all being funded by 3PM. 

A genius model--other 3PMs are following suit.  (Newegg, Taobao, Groupon, Facebook, Best Buy, etc.) 

ToolKing Video: Ben Skigen

15 percent of sales occur on Marketplaces now.  Was initally worried that they'd be competing with themselves, but now they have 7 to 10 different opportunities to win a sale from someone with all of their marketplaces.

Ben Skigen joins Scot on stage. 

"Any sale is better than no sale."  Ben Skigen. 

ToolKing getting in to more categories due to their success--way more than just tools now. 

They've had great luck with eBay Global Shipping program.

To be continued.....

 

Reminder for the Catalyst America’s social presence:   

• Follow @ChannelAdvisor on Twitter as we’ll be tweeting out updates, reminders about sessions, networking events and more
• Tag your social posts, Instagram pics with our show hashtag: #CatalystAmericas
• Keep tabs on discussions, networking opportunities and more on the Pathable community at https://catalystamericas2013.pathable.com/
• Keep an eye on the eBay Strategies blog where we’ll be live blogging the Keynotes and Main Sessions at Catalyst

 

Exclusive First Look: Google Shopping Express - Google's new same-day delivery offering

In late March, Google unveiled their new same-day delivery service - Google Shopping Express (GSE for short).  The program is in test mode in the San Francisco/Bay area and previously was tested heavily by Googlers.

We were one of the first early testers added to the program yesterday and immediately placed an order with the help of a friend in the shipping zone.

In this post, we'll walk you through the complete experience from shopping to delivery in a complete tour of the GSE service.  The tour is very detailed so before we get into that, I wanted to point out the highlights and learnings from the exercise.

Google Shopping Express (GSE) Headlines....It ROCKS!

• While we had high expectations for the program, we were blown away by the level of service: If you need a product delivered to you ASAP - this is a tremendous service.  Shopping, tracking, delivery were all 100% nailed.
• Same-day delivery is $4.99/package, however, GSE has a Prime-like subscription program (free for first 6 months of test period) that I signed up for and got free delivery
• Google seems to be using 1800courier for their delivery - the courier was wearing a GSE shirt and the package presentation was great.
• The courier mentioned he was doing 50-60 deliveries a day!
• From order to delivery took less than 2hrs.
• My only concern with the service is that it's so good and 'white glove' today, I worry that the economics aren't sustainable and Google is forced to turn back some of this. Anyone remember Kozmo or UrbanFetch? 
• Kudos to the team @Google -you guys have nailed this service.  My only request: expand nation-wide quickly.

The biggest revelation/excitement about GSE for me is that Google has finally crossed the chasm and opened a 100% marketplace.  Yes it's local, but that's actually harder than a national marketplace.  I don't know if Google will 'go there', but they have proven with GSE they have the ability.  We've long been believers they would need to 'go there' to counter the momentum that Amazon has.

The other thing I found interesting is that @ Google, the mantra is "mobile first".  The entire GSE experience was web based.  There's no iPhone/Android app that I can find.  The experience worked well from iPhone/Android/iPad, but it was interesting to me this wasn't an app, which was the approach eBay Now took.

The GSE Detailed Tour

There are four parts to this deep dive into GSE:

1. The fictional scenario
2. The GSE Shopping Experience
3. After the sale - tracking and a big surprise
4. Post sale - the delivery

Tour part 1:  Fictional scenario

I'm a work-from home dad based out of SFO and my wife works down in the Bay.  I wake up on Tuesday April 23rd and have back-to-back conference calls.  I'm working away and during my 1-2pm conference call my wife texts to remind me:

• We are out of dog food
• We are having friends over and need some crackers and rigatoni for the meal
• Our son decided to clean the bath tub with his favorite Star Wars toothbrush and when I made him throw it away, he broke into tears - no way he'll go to bed tonight unless we solve this problem.

What can I do??? I need four items by dinner and I'm booked solid!!

GSE to the rescue.

Tour part 2: The GSE Shopping Experience

While on my conference call, I fire up GSE.  The experience is very much a marketplace type model.  After setting my delivery area to SFO, I can search broadly, shop by retailer, browse by category, etc.  I quickly realize that the retailer Nob Hill Foods has all of the items I am looking for which is great as I'm trying to get $10+ from one merchant to reduce costs.  Here's a look at that experience:

I load up my cart with the four items and am offered same day delivery free for 6 months.  Note that payment is offered via Google Wallet throughout the service, here too:

Now I am presented with the final step before checkout.  Notice:

• I can select the time window I want.  It's 2pm, so I pick the 4-9 window and cross my fingers.
• There are instructions for the courier - you can check a box to allow them to drop off in a safe spot if you are not home (or not)
• This item is $10.39 with free shipping:

Tour part 3: After the sale: Tracking and a big surprise!

 Immediately after the sale, I'm sent this order and also the after checkout page to both summarize and track my order:

One of the cool features of the tracking is I can see my destination (the red marker on the map) and the source (the A on the map).  It also tells me the status of three sub parts of the process : Ordered, Packaged and Delivery.  Here you can see my order landed at 2:30pm and is estimated 4-9.

What happened next literally blew my mind.  It turned out that the Nob Hill Foods in location A (San Carlos?) did not have the dog food.  GSE detected this and routed the order to another store at location B (Mountain View).   GSE alerted this to me and started to track the split delivery like this:

Here in the process:

• Package 1: Ordered at 2:30, packaged at 3:18, ready for delivery
• Package 2: Ordered at 2:30, packaged at 3:14, in transit at 3:54 (90mins order/transit)

This is what the dashboard looked like with both orders on the way:

Then, there was a knock at the door!

Tour part 4: The delivery

It's 4pm and a courier is here in a GSE shirt and brings me this package with my dog food in it from location B.  The delivery person told me I was one of the first non-googlers they had delivered to.

This is a look at the label on the package:

There's a QR Code driven survey inside the package  along with return instructions:

20minutes later, another knock at the door as package 2 arrives.  This one was more in a bag (toothbrush, rigatoni, crackers):

There was a survey postcard in here as well.  This driver told me he was doing 50-60 a day deliveries and people were raving about it.  There was no branding for Nob Hill in either package (but I knew where I ordered in the earlier part of the process).

 

That concludes our first look at this great new service by Google.

 

 

 

 

eBay's Q1 2013 Results (from a seller's perspective)

Yesterday, April 17, 2013, eBay announced their 2013 Q1 results.  Long-time readers know the drill, but if you are new, we always take the results and parse through them focusing on a) the marketplace part of the business and b) those metrics that we feel are meaningful and actionable for sellers and retailers.

Don't forget Catalyst

Before we dig in, I wanted to remind everyone that our annual conference, Catalyst, Is coming up April 29-May 1 in Vegas at the M.  We are nearing capacity, so I recommend if you want to come, sign up ASAP.

We have executives from eBay (Devin Wenig), Amazon (Sebastian Gunningham) and a host of other e-commerce channels coming as well as lots of retailers sharing their success stories.  We're really looking forward to seeing everyone soon!

Overview of eBay's Q1 results

While ComScore hasn't come out with their Q1 report for e-commerce growth yet, forecasts  believe that we will see US e-commerce growth in the 13-15% range.

Earlier in the Q, eBay hosted a comprehensive analyst day.  It's extremely detailed, but I recommend all sellers watch (Recording is here) at least the Donahoe, Devin Wesnig and Christopher Payne segments (you can jump to them using the very handy speaker navigation at the bottom of this viewer.  If you are interested in CBT, the Wendy section is very good as well.

During analyst day, eBay outlined a three year journey highlighting their plans for eBay, Paypal, etc.  If you listen to the Q1 analyst call they outline how Q1 fit into that 3yr plan.  Here's a highlight from Donahoe's segment from the transcript.

Let me briefly recap three areas that capture the strength and opportunities for our company. First, the $10 trillion commerce market represents a bigger addressable market for our company. In fact, as we shared at analyst day, by 2015 we expect eBay Inc. to enable $300 billion in commerce volume. That’s up from $175 billion in 2012. This is one of the ways we will measure our success. And as a first step on our journey toward $300 billion, we enabled $49 billion of commerce volume in Q1.

In this post we'll go over the seller-oriented highlights from the Quarter with information drawn from the press release, the analyst presentation and conference call.

Updated Q1 dashboard:

Here are the key metrics from the quarter: (click to enlarge)

As you can see from the table, eBay's US GMV grew at 16%, ahead of the likely e-commerce growth rate of 13-15%.   International growth slowed a bit to 11%. eBay cited headwinds with Europe, China and Korea on the call. 

Some other metrics of note from the conference call:

• The CSA category and Home and Garden were material growth drivers.
• Fixed price is now 68% of GMV and grew 17%
• Auctions grew 2% y/y
• Top Rated Sellers (TRS or eTRS) were 42% of eBay's US GMV and their SSS was up 17%.  

The most exciting metric from Q1 was active user growth.  Users grew 13% y/y to 116.2m in the Q which is the fastest we've seen since we've been closely monitoring it (circa '08).  Why did active users accelerate......?

Mobile mobile mobile mobile

 eBay attributed the bulk of the new adds (3.9m added sequentially) were driven by mobile: 2.8m.  In other words 1.1m new users were from desktop-systems (28%) and 72% (2.8m) were driven by mobile platforms.

That's quite impressive and hopefully if eBay can keep these new buyers engaged, they will increase their buying over the next year.

 

eBay Category Details

Unlike Amazon who is very closed with their category data, eBay releases detailed category metrics every quarter that we analyze for you.  Here is a chart that lists each category from largest to smallest indexed by their Q1 2013 GMV.

A couple of things to note in the above:

• There are 7 categories (in yellow) with quarterly GMV over $1B.  
• H+G continued its reign as the king of eBay categories, coming in at $2.7b for the Q - a solid 35% ahead of the next largest category, CSA.  One yellow flag, H+G slowed to 10% growth (it grew 16% y/y in Q4, so this is a bit of a deceleration.
• CSA grew very nicely at 18% y/y, making it not only a top tier scale category, but a top grower as well - kind of the 'magic quadrant' for an eBay category.
• CE was strong for eBay as well.  That's good news as the category appeared under pressure the last couple of Q's.

The next chart looks at each category by their y/y growth rate (more relevant in our world than sequential Q->Q growth).  The green indicates the category grew faster than e-commerce (ComScore  reported Q4 at 14%), the yellow is in-line and the red is substantially lower than e-commerce.

Outperforming categories

• Cell phones - eBay is doing quite well in this category.  eBay offers a plethora of inexpensive accessories, refurbed phones and new phones that are hard to find.
• Tickets - still on fire.
• B+I - we are seeing a huge sea change in how businesses buy.  Amazon has AmazonSupply and eBay has the B+I category - businesses like the consumer experience vs. the heavy b2b type experience and a sleeper category for eBay (meaning you don't hear any buzz about it, but it continues to outperform) is B+I.  B+I is plugging right along at 14% without much concentrated focus.

In-line categories

• P+A - I was surprised to see P+A here as it usually is the fastest growing category.  Unfortunately we experienced a very harsh February from a weather perspective and that appeared to really slow P+A.

Underperfoming categories

• Musical instruments - Not sure what's going on with this category, it should be a sweet spot for eBay given the focus on price and substitutions for refurbs.
• BMV, video games, coins and stamps, vehicles are all categories that have historically be structurally challenged, so no surprises there. 

Conclusions

For Q1 2013, eBay started the year with 16% GMV growth in the US  in a 14% e-commerce growth environment.  Active user acceleration was the highlight of the Q, driven by new users flowing into the marketplace platform from mobile.

Up next, we'll be reporting on Amazon's Q1 which they release on April 25th. Stay tuned to sister site AmazonStrategies for a preview and similar analysis of how they performed.

Scot Wingo wrote this blog post. I am CEO of ChannelAdvisor where eBay is an investor.

 

eBay Q1 2013 results preview

Today, April 17, 2013, eBay announces Q1 results after the markets close.   In this post we preview the Q1 report and provide an overview of what we will be watching for from a seller's perspective.

eBay Q1 Dashboard

As usual, before the results, we are publishing our dashboard so sellers/retailers can track the relevent pieces of the results:

Shortly after eBay announces, we will update the dashboard with the actuals to see how they did vs. their guidance, wall st. expectations and Q4 12.

What else are we looking for?

In addition to the 'usual suspects', we'll be watching for these trends:

• eBay has been talking up CBT at analyst day - we'll be interested to see if there are any new metrics or datapoints there.
• Mobile mobile mobile - eBay likes to reveal some interesting mobile stats which we watch with interests. 
• Any insights into user growth are always of interest
• Growth rate of top rated sellers vs. above standard sellers.
• Any changes in mix between US/Domestic and FB/Auctions - 

Scot Wingo wrote this blog. He is CEO of ChannelAdvisor.  eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor.

March 2013 ChannelAdvisor Same Store Sales (SSS) for eBay, Amazon, Search and CSE

Note: This is a monthly feature published by ChannelAdvisor highlighting the Same Store Sales (SSS) across our wide range of thousands of retailers and billions in GMV.  Details on the SSS including background, methodology, disclaimers and schedule can be found in this post.

Today we are releasing March  2013 data for Marketplaces (eBay/Amazon), Search and Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE) along with supplemental data.  In the world of e-commerce as we look at y/y trends it's important to understand any anomalies in the calendar that can distort (positively or negatively) the data.  March marks the end of the first quarter and gives us a good read on how 2013 is setting up for the world of e-commerce.

Don't forget Catalyst 2013

We are less than thirty days away from our ChannelAdvisor Catalyst show and I wanted to remind everyone that we do have limited space and you need to reserve your spot ASAP. We'll have Devin Wenig from eBay, Sebastian Gunningham from Amazon and execs from Google, Facebook, Groupon and top retailers - plus you can always expect some surprises.  Details can be found at http://www.channeladvisor.com/catalyst2013

March 2013 SSS Results 

• Amazon - In March, Amazon came in at 31.6% which is a nice tick up from Feb's 30.8%. 
• eBay -  eBay's SSS for March came in at 19.2% which is a significant rebound from Feb's low point of 8.2% (largely weather driven) and reflects the better consumer+weather environment in March. Further in the report we provide eBay internal component details which provide details on the March results.
• CSE - Comparison Shopping came in at a 2.4% y/y  positive growth for March.  Traditional CSEs remain under pressure from Google, but Google Shopping/PLAs are doing quite well.  We provide details below.
• Search - Search came in at up 6.5%, a nice increase from Feb's .5% - there are lot's of moving pieces within search we will highlight in the search details section.

SSS Chart 

The following chart details the SSS data for March 2012 through March 2013: (click to enlarge)

eBay Details

eBay's 19.2% SSS result for March is their highest of 2013 and a good bit faster than overall e-commerce (15% per ComScore) and certainly a huge improvement over February's very sluggish  8.2% y/y SSS result.   To get a feel for what is driving the marketplaces' performance, here are the interior datapoints for the month:

• eBay auctions - Down 6.5% y/y - Believe it or not, this is the best month for auctions we've seen since July 2012.  Auctions have become such a small part of ChannelAdvisor's eBay business and eBay's business, I wouldn't read too much into this, but we'll keep an eye on this and look for any indications that the decline in auction has hit a bottom.
• eBay fixed-price - Up 24.2% y/y - Fixed price had a nice bump in growth in March to ~10% greater growth rate than e-commerce's 15% growth-rate (per ComScore).
• eBay Motors  (parts and accessories) - Up 20.9%, as previously mentioned P+A tends to be weather influenced and in March the return to faster than e-commerce growth returned to the category, showing the first green shoots of Spring.  Note that this is the largest growth we've seen in the category for 2013.

Based on the eBay details, essentially every component contributed to the return to larger than e-commerce growth for eBay overall.

 Here are the TTM (trailing twelve month) trends on these eBay internals.  

Supplemental data for Search

Here are the March Search internals: (click to enlarge)

Search (traditional adwords) increased in March to 6.5% from a Feb decline of .9% . Looking at the internal data, we continued to see cannibalization from PLA/Google Shopping (clicks down 1%), but search CR's ticked up nicely to 3.19% (a 3% bump y/y) along with AOV up 6% which helped generate a positive outcome even in the face of click cannibalization.

Note that google is in the process of rolling out 'Enhanced Campaigns' (EC) which essentially remove the ability to pay less for mobile clicks which historically have not converted as well.  Overall this change is expected to increase mobile clicks, but as retailers move over to EC, they will likely pay more for mobile and thus less for desktop as the two networks blend together.   You can read our full coverage of the EC rollout over on sister site SearchMarketing.com - here's one post.

Supplemental data for Google Shopping

In August 2012, we introduced a new set of data around Google Shopping.  Here is the March Google Shopping supplemental data:

So far with Google Shopping/PLAs, things are up and to the right - increasing conversion rates and AOVs continue to drive very strong ROI for this program for retailers.  Most of the improvements are driven by retailers improving their still-early campaigns and figuring out to optimize this new program.   Google is tweaking the program to drive substantial improvements to consumer conversion rates (a 18.6% improvement is quite impressive).

Conclusions 

March delivered a nice recovery from the February speed bumps we saw - particularly for eBay.  With e-commerce growth at 15%, Amazon and eBay's fixed-price growth show that the marketplaces continue to take share from CSEs and search.

We'll have detailed coverage of eBay and Amazon's Q1 results as they are revealed in April and we look forward to seeing everyone at Catalyst!

This blog post was written by Scot Wingo, CEO, ChannelAdvisor. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor.

Shopping.com Changes its Name to eBay Commerce Network

As of this week, Shopping.com is now the eBay Commerce Network--a name that accurately reflects the program and accentuates its broad reach and exclusive access to placements on eBay.

For those of you who didn’t know, eBay purchased Shopping.com about eight years ago, and over the years Shopping.com has evolved from a comparison shopping engine into a more robust commerce system. Retailers can send one product data feed and maximize exposure on this advertising platform.

ChannelAdvisor has a number of customers live on this network, which enables them to connect with consumers during the various stages of shopping cycle. ROI is typically strong for retailers here and we feel that the Value Based Pricing system helps to ensure efficiency.

We feel that this integration is a good move for online retailers. eBay has lots of rich consumer data that could be leveraged to make the network even more effective in terms of customer acquisition and revenue generation through increased targeting options for advertisers.

No doubt, the comparison shopping landscape continues to shift. For the past few years, the cost of acquiring traffic to comparison shopping sites has been on the rise, making the network aspect even more important as a reliable source of volume. This change is a natural progression in response to this evolution. We look forward to working with eBay on this program as it evolves.

Blog post by Mark Vandegrift, ChannelAdvisor Director of Managed Services @vandegrift

Improve Catalog Matching for eBay Motors (List Better Fitment Info!)

Many OEM, Performance, Motorcycle and Powersports Parts & Accessories dealers have struggled with taking full advantage of eBay Motors’ catalog of application data. It's clear that listing the correct fitment info for parts & accessories is one of the best ways to connect shoppers to the parts they need for their vehicle. But there is still a big challenge in listing to eBay Motors with the right information!

Frequent Shoppers on eBay Motors tend to save their vehicles to eBay Motors' "Garage"

There are two types of application data used on eBay Motors:

1. Information supplied by the seller
2. Information maintained by eBay Motors and made available to all sellers to enhance their listings

In this post we’ll be discussing the second topic—eBay-maintained catalog data and how to match your listings to this data so you can increase product visibility and sales while providing a better purchase experience.

When shopping for parts & accessories, buyers often select vehicle settings to filter the parts shown in search results.  Logically, most eBay Motors buyers are only interested in seeing relevant parts that will fit their vehicle. If your product and part application data isn’t listed using the eBay Motors catalog data or through your own efforts via Manual Fitment (a topic for another day…), shoppers won't see your parts!

The above is a screen shot of the product listing page where the eBay Motors catalog application data is shown in a table that displays all of the relevant vehicles a part can be used with.

There are two options for matching parts & accessories with the application data in eBay Motors’ catalog:

1. Supply either the Brand & MPN (Manufacturer Part Number)
2. Supply the UPC code if one is available.

The MPN or UPC is a specific number, but what about the brand? Sellers often stumble here; should it be K&N, K&N Filters, K&N Engineering? How does a seller know the right brand name to send to eBay Motors?

Download the Official eBay Brand List

Fortunately, eBay Motors provides a list of the acceptable brand names that are used in its catalog. This list can be downloaded from the same location as the official Master Vehicle List (used for creating and submitting Manual Fitment). Download the brand list here (select “Parts Manufacturers” under Manufacturer Information).

If you are managing your eBay Motors listings on your own, you will have to update each listing one by one to make sure that your eBay Motors listings use the same brand name that eBay Motors is using in its catalog. This can be a very time-consuming, tedious process for sellers with a wide variety of parts.

Automate your Listings with Lookup Lists

For a more automated approach, ChannelAdvisor customers can take advantage of a custom product import template that leverages a Lookup List. This Lookup List can find and replace certain values automatically. For example, if the seller’s listing contains the brand name "Pro-Tech” and the eBay Catalog naming convention for that brand is "PRO-TECH Automotive Products LLC," the listing will automatically be updated to match the eBay-approved format.

In the example below from the ChannelAdvisor platform, the “Name” listed in the left column automatically becomes the “Value” (eBay-approved name) in the right column. As you can see, seemingly small variations (a space in AC Delco, the addition of AVS in parentheses in the second listing, etc.) can be the difference between your part being seen or becoming invisible to a buyer once they filter by part specifications.

 Lookup Lists and other ChannelAdvisor automated features are crucial for dealers looking to quickly expand their number of product listings while making sure to adhere to eBay Motors’ listing best practices.

Summing it up

By matching to eBay Motors’ catalog data, successful dealers can ensure that their product listings are seen – and purchased – by shoppers, especially those searching by vehicle make and model. This will not only increase seller sales on eBay Motors but also help to reduce customer support headaches related to buyers making the wrong purchase.

Blog post by David Monterroso, ChannelAdvisor Senior Solution Consultant @montycommerce

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If you're an OEM, Performance, Motorcycle and Powersports Parts & Accessories dealer online, don't miss ChannelAdvisor's AutoCommerce Conference featuring speakers from eBay, Amazon, DCi and more.  AutoCommerce takes place April 29, 2013, the first day of the ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Conference. 

eBay's Devin Wenig, President Global Marketplaces, joins Catalyst US lineup!

 

I'm really excited to announce today that eBay's Devin Wenig, their President of Global Marketplaces will be joining us at Catalyst Americas this year.

Background on Catalyst

We started the Catalyst show ~10yrs ago because we found that none of the other conferences offered a tight focus on what we call e-commerce channels: search, comparison shopping, marketplaces and the innovative forces behind these channels (mobile, social, cross-border trade, etc.)  

This year Catalyst will be held in Las Vegas, NV April 29-May 1.  Highlights include:

• We have a ChannelAdvisor-user focused pre-conference (April 29)
• There will also be an AutoCommerce pre-conference held April 29 focused exclusively on retailers in the automobile parts and accessories industry.
• The main conference kicks off the evening of the 29th and wraps on May 1.

This year we are taking Catalyst to a whole new level and having eBay's President of Global Marketplaces is a big part of that.

To set the stage a bit, here's a little background on Devin:

Background on Devin

• Devin has a BA from Union College (upstate NY) and a JD from Columbia University Law School
• 2003-2006 - He held several positions at Reuters and served on the board
• 2006-2008 -  He was COO of Reuters Group LLC
• 2008-2011 - He was CEO of Thompson Reuters Markets
• 2011+ Devin joined eBay in September of 2011 as the President of eBay Global Marketplaces

In his 18-yr career before eBay, Devin had a huge amount of senior leadership experience as well as a lot of global responsibilities, making him a great addition to the eBay team.

One logical question is what are Devin's responsibilities at eBay?

• Devin reports directly to CEO John Donahoe and essentially is responsible for the marketplace business at eBay Inc.
• This includes all of the global marketplaces (US, EU, Asia) as well as other pieces of the marketplace business  (ebay.com, the global sites, mobile apps for eBay, local innovations, etc.)
• In addition to marketplaces he runs:
• Stubhub (top ticketing marketplace)
• Classifieds (eBay operates 10+ classified businesses)
• Shopping.com (old-school CSE)
• Half.com (old-school marketplace)
• brands4friends (EU flash sale site eBay acquired a while back)

What are we going to talk about?

I'm going to be leading a fireside chat with Devin on Tuesday, April 30 @4:15.  What I love about the fireside chat format is that we can be unscripted and let the conversation go where it takes us.  That being said, I have about 8hrs of questions I want to put into that one hour including topics such as:

• What is his take on the eBay Spring changes?
• eBay is doing a lot around cross-border-trade (CBT) and Devin has been very vocal about it being a top priority of his - I'd love to know his thoughts there and how he arrived at this conclusion after being at eBay a short amount of time.
• Mobile - you can't talk about eBay's dramatic turnaround without thinking about mobile.  I'd love to hear what Devin has to say about this trend.
• Social - eBay has been sitting out this party for the most part.  Would love to hear why and any thoughts Devin has here.
• Sellers - Finally and most importantly, how does Devin (and eBay) think about sellers?  Towards the end of the Whitman regime, the relationship between eBay and its sellers hit rock bottom and now is very high.  I'd love to hear Devin's thoughts on that.

What do you want to hear?

Since we talk to thousands of retailers on a regular basis @ChannelAdvisor, we have a pretty good idea of what is top of mind with folks, but part of the fun of Catalyst is this is YOUR show.  To that spirit, if anyone has any questions you want to hear from Devin on, feel free to comment on this post and I'll see if we can fit them in.

In addition to Devin's keynote, eBay will be bringing a very large team and presenting on a variety of topics.  This is one of the few opportunities you will have for one-on-one time with a plethora of eBay employees.

Where do I sign up?

Past attendees tell us that Catalyst is THE show they can't miss every year because it helps them both strategically (channel expansion, global expansion, etc.) and tactically (you will leave with 5-10 easy to implement items that will help grow your business).  You can register today by visiting: www.channeladvisor.com/catalyst2013

 

This blog post was written by Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor.  eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor.

 

 

Reminder - eBay changes webinar tomorrow March 22 @10am ET

Tomorrow at 10am ET we are hosting a free webinar where we'll detail eBay's Spring changes, with a deep dive into the fee changes and answer any questions you have.

 

Details are here and you can signup via:  http://www.channeladvisor.com/ebay-spring-release-2013-webinar

If you want to put any questions in the comments here on the blog, you'll be at the front of the queue ;-)

Part II/II: eBay Announces Spring 2013 Changes - Seller and Fee Changes

This is part II of a two part series going over the big changes that eBay has announced today (March 19th, 2013) commonly referred to as the eBay 13.1 release.

• Part I/II - In part I (here), we gave an overview of the changes and detailed the non-fee changes for sellers that eBay is rolling out this Spring.
• Part II/II - (you are here) The 13.1 release marks the biggest changes that eBay has made (in the US) to the fee structure since April 2011 when they started charging final-value-fees on shipping-and-handling.  We believe that sellers are going to really want to understand these change so have devoted a whole post to just the fee change portion of the 13.1 release.

We are also planning to host a webinar detailing these changes and answering any questions you have this Friday at 10am ET.  Details are here (www.channeladvisor.com/resource-library/webinars).

In this post, we'll introduce you to the eBay 13.1 fee changes that are designed to simplify the eBay fee structure, and will impact all sellers.  We'll also go over a detailed anlaysis of the impact of these changes.