Of all the new online marketplaces, few have managed to create as much buzz as Bonanzle. Numerous articles from Auctionbytes to BusinessWeek have touted this new site as the definitive "up-and-comer". Not so much as an Ebay competitor, but as an Ebay alternative. A site dedicated to it's sellers and buyers, offering a new philosophy and new approach to online selling. A place where you'll find things that are "not so ordinary". A simple clean approach because, as the site founder Bill Harding is fond of saying: "simplicity sells".
But does the site stand up to all the hype?
The Good
It's pretty.
When you fist visit Bonanzle, you are presented with a beautiful collage of similarly themed product pictures. Some of these create such an extraordinary mosaic that you might wonder if you've found some obscure new art site instead of an online marketplace. It's even more amazing when you realize that it just isn't some random grouping of items, nor is it a set of paid "featured" items. Instead, it's a unique "hand picked list" created by one of the online sellers. Your expectations are immediately raised, and your anticipation of something really unique excites you. You want to venture into this place to see what other new things you might find.
Who ever designed the Bonanzle interface is very good at what they do. In fact, I think they're inspired. I've probably visited every new "ebay alternative" site released over the last 4 years, and I can't remember any of them. They either all look like they're running the same PHP auction software, or they look like a high school web project gone bad. Bonanzle is a big step above the rest.
Customer Support.
I've only had a few occasions to use Bonanzle's customer support, but their response time was "same day" and not some pre-packaged automated kiosk answer. Someone actually wrote me back - a real human - and their answer was friendly and precise. Could it be that they actually value me as a seller?
It's social.
Not only does every seller get a free store (and free listings to go with it), but each store has an integrated live "chat room" that is automatically active whenever anyone visits a seller's store. If two buyers are browsing the store, they can instantly strike up a conversation, or if the seller happens to be hanging around, they can ask questions. I'm not exactly sure if this helps seller's actually sell things, but I have to mention it as a "plus" since everyone seems to think that social networking is some form of advertising or promotion.
The Bad
The listings.
Once you get past the gorgeous facade and start searching the actual listings you quickly realize that the site's motto of "everything but the ordinary" must be wishful thinking since most of the inventory is not just ordinary, but a bit less than ordinary. The site is chock full of junk listings - and getting junkier each day.
Bonanzle's innovative listing import systems enable sellers to quickly copy their listings from Ebay and virtually any inventory system - a boon to sellers, but a bust for buyers. The end result is over 1.5 million listings - mostly from Ebay - and lot of stuff that wasn't selling to begin with. Lured by the "free listing" incentive and the fact that Bonanzle listings never expire (never ever - really?), the listing count has no where to go but up.
How many seller's decided to give Bonanzle a try, import a 1000 items, and then never returned?
A lot of listings simply don't look so good. A "blind import" of thousands of items from a big Ebay seller is not a small cosmetic issue. Often the imports fail to format the listing information correctly, leaving a jumbled, illegible scramble. At a miniumum, most retain significant references to Ebay. As an Ebay seller and Bonanzle importer, I can understand this when I see it - but I don't find it a pleasant shopping experience. I find it hard to imagine what the average non-technical buyer thinks when confronted with the same thing.
The Search
The first problem the average buyer will run into is how Bonanzle has decided to structure it's search routines - it's not what most people would expect. All searches are "full text" by default - so everything plus the kitchen sink comes up with every search. Searches are sorted by "relevancy" - is that how often the search term appears in the listing? All I know is that every time I've tried to use the site to find something I'm shopping for, it's been difficult and frustrating- and I search for things online a lot.
When I actually do find something and happen to click on an item, it takes me to the item page - with no indication of how I got there. No idea what category the item is listed in. No bread crumbs indicating my prior search. No index showing other possible matches. My only choice is to use the browser "back" button.
For such a well thought out and beautiful site, the whole search process feels almost like an after-thought, and it's lack of scalability is astonishing. What will happen when the site has 10 million listings?
Little Direct Buyer Traffic
Bonanzle seems to derive the majority of it's traffic from two sources - sellers and Google. Seller traffic is fine for the occasional sale, but extremely limited unless you happen to listl seller-oriented supplies. Free Google traffic, while having a poor sell-thru-rate (STR), has a superb return-on-investment (ROI) since it's free. But the problem with relying on Google - or more specifically, Google Base Imports - for nearly all of your traffic is that you can get that kind of traffic anywhere. Many sites either automatically or optionally export their listings to Google. All of the free webstores - OsCommerce, Zencart, Cubecart - have excellent modules for exporting their items to Google.
What Bonanzle needs is some buyer-oriented promotions that go beyond what we can get for free.
To be successful, Bonanzle can't just compete with Ebay. Bonanzle is competing with everyone - including standalone webstores. As one of the owners of a webstore, I need something more than a pretty face. I need buyers that I do not already have.
Posts
