Seller Karma - Ebay and Ecommerce Zen

More Ebay Listings and Less Traffic - Not a Good Combination

2010-04-17T06:37:00.005-04:00

Ina Steiner at Auctionbytes just posted two incredible stories - that Ebay's listings has risen a whopping 670% in the last 2 years, and Ebay's traffic has declined 13% during the same period. The stories were so surprising, that I had to read them twice.

In the first article (posted 4/13 here), Ina points out that since January 2008, the average number of listings has increased a huge amount - and even more-so in specific categories, such as "Books" (2,222%). My first response was that she must be counting individual items, and not individual listings. I thought that for sure she was counting a fixed price listing for 50 widgets as "50" in her count. Surprisingly, she was not. I verified this by looking at the "gift certificates" category - which does, in fact., have 15,000+ listings - and many are multi-item. I am not sure if the 2008 numbers were for "core" listings only (auctions and fixed price) and excluded store items, but even if they did, that would only account for a mere doubling of listings (45 million to 100 million) - certainly nothing like the six-fold rise being reported.

She goes on to give a series of reasons for this astounding rise in listings - 2 of which point the finger squarely at large retailers - those pesky Diamonds, and those importing SKU's with the new Large Merchant Services API. I wish we could ferret out exactly how much of the rise is due to these sellers, because in many categories, they actually have a minimal impact. Most of the bigger ebay retailers are in electronics (particularly refurbs and accessories), media (all kinds, including books), and more recently, clothing. Are there any Diamonds in Art, Antiques, Collectibles, and Crafts? I don't think so - yet these categories have grown by leaps and bounds (300-700%).

I believe a significant amount of this "growth" in the "non-big-seller-categories" was from the store-to-core move at the start of this month, as well as the introduction of the cheap fixed-price listing (one of Ina's listed reasons). Many of these fixed priced listings are virtually "permanent". The crafter that make custom mailboxes might have a fixed price listing for 50 boxes, which he continuously updates over time, and gladly pays .35/month (now probably only .05/month) to keep this listing up so he can sell dozens throughout the year. "Sell through" rates no longer apply when a listing is really a fixed price item with virtually unlimited quantity and unlimited duration.

Her conclusion is straight-forward enough - there is a lot more competition for buyers on ebay - and is further supported by her 4/1/4/10 postings (which is here) that shows ebay's traffic has declined over the last two years. Her point is well made, with the small caveat that traffic has actually risen since last year (by a scant hair-thin less-than 1%). Even if we take account of the country's economic problems, it's hard to defend since Amazon's traffic has risen 17%, and ecommerce as a whole has been on the rise, even when general retail was at a loss. According the the US Census, ecommerce as a percentage of total retail has also risen continuously since 2001.

So as ebay sellers must absorb the most recent changes, so must the buyers. Ina says that if you sell clothes you were competing with 2.2 million listings in 2008 versus 16.5 million listings in 2010. But is that actually a reflection of buyer behavior? The buyer looking for an extra-large blue pollo shirt in 2008 was not lliterally searching through 2.2 million listings any more than they are searching through 16.5 million listings today. The only thing a buyer really sees is the result of their keyword search, and we really don't know if there are that many more extra-large-blue-pollo-shirts in 2010 as there were in 2008, even though the total number of listings in the entire category has grown eight-fold. .

One of the items I regularly search for are compatible Canon ink cartridges. I've been buying these things online since 2005, and I've bought them regularly from 3 or 4 different retailers. I don't like waiting around, and fixed price options are very reasonably priced, so I've always gone to the "BIN" tab to start my searches. The only "rise" I have noticed in my search results have been repeated listings from the same exact vendors. My four preferred vendors have gone from listing perhaps two or three instances of the same "ink packs", to as many as 20. Realize that all they really need is a single large quantity listing. As an ebay seller myself, I've never completely understood this, but my guess is that they are willing to spend a lot more in listing fees so they can "saturate" the search results. I also see a lot of this in the electronics's categories where one seller will have 50 almost identical multi-quantity listings for the same exact item. For all that everyone complains about high listing fees, the fact is that ebay's listing fees for fixed priced items has gotten so low that they are encouraging this kind of listing behavior. Cheap listing fees often result in poor buyer experience. Just look at any of the ebay alternative sites filled with over-priced unpopular items that wouldn't sell on ebay. When it's cheap to list, people will list anything and list in great quantity.

Some sellers have been begging for lower listings fees for years when, ironically, it's cheap listing fees - from large seller discounts to the current subscription packages - that have directly resulted in am explosion of duplicate listings. Far as I can tell, there aren't more sellers. In fact, based on my own categories that I list in, I think ebay's overall seller-base is falling. There seem to be far fewer "small" sellers and a lot more "biggish" sellers - those with 500+listings. This adds up to more listings, but less variety.

This situation also makes me wonder about the next couple of ebay quarters - how is all of this going to financially impact ebay's bottomline? By drastically reducing upfront fees for core items, while simultaneously encouraging larger listers, ebay hopes that overall revenues will increase. A larger pie should mean more money, right? Not for most sellers. The pie is surely bigger, but is it a better pie? Unless sales rise in some proportion to the rise in listings, we have a big problem for ebay and it's sellers. I know that I now have 3 or 4 times the number of listings in core than I have ever had in 10 years - but my sales since the change have been about the same as last year. My fees are about the same too. So my items are flooding buyer's searches (all unique items, by the way), with little result (so far). For every seller reporting on the ebay powerseller forum of improved sales since the change, there seem to be 2 reporting the opposite.

What about the buyers? Did they even want a bigger pie? Ebay's assumption here must be that to increase revenues, they needed to increase variety, and to increase variety, they needed to increase the number of listings. This is where, I fear, ebay got it wrong. Variety and quantity are not the same thing, and neither is quality. The pie is bigger, but I fear it may be too bitter for many consumers.

eBay is Retailer with Most Feb. Search Queries - Retailer Daily

2010-03-28T09:32:00.004-04:00

Here is an interesting article I almost missed (but didn't thanks to ColderIce).

Although Google was the leading online search provider by several different metrics in February 2010, among online entities whose primary function is providing retail services, auction retailer eBay had the most search queries last month.

eBay Leading Retailer for Search Queries

Search queries
While many of the sites which reported the most search queries in February 2010 have a retail component, eBay was the leading specifically retail-oriented site for search queries last month, according to comScore qSearch data.. eBay had 624 million queries, a 5% drop from 659 million queries in January 2010. eBay ranked 14th overall for monthly search queries.

See entire article here:

eBay is Retailer with Most Feb. Search Queries - Retailer Daily

What Every New Ebay Seller Needs to Know (Part 1)

2010-03-23T10:19:00.002-04:00

A good friend of mine called me this morning and said that his boss was preparing to sell a bunch of expensive collectibles on Ebay and wanted to know if I had any words of advice. I asked him if his boss had used Ebay before and if he had a Paypal account. He said, "No. He just signed up for both.". All I could do was sigh. There is a LOT he needs to know.

Every Ebay seller was once a newbie, but not until recieving this call did I realize just how tough it would be to be a newbie right now. Much has changed in 10 years. When I was a newbie, I signed up, I sold stuff, people sent me money, and I shipped stuff out.. I didn't even have a paypal account for about a year.

But what if I was a newbie right now - with a brand new ebay account and a brand new paypal account - ready to start selling today. What would I really need to know to get good prices and avoid major pitfalls?

Let's start with a few basics.

Your Ebay Account
Just because you signed up an Ebay account, doesn't mean you can start selling. You need to go through Ebay's process to "upgrade" your account to a what Ebay calls a Seller Account. Essentially this means that you provide Ebay with a credit card that will not only provide some verification of your identity, but also provide a means to pay your Ebay fees.

A good basic overview is provided here on the Getting Started Selling on eBay: help page.

Your Paypal Account
Make sure you complete all of Paypal's verifications - this means you will need to put a bank account and a credit card on file with Paypal. The bank account will make your account "verified", and the credit card will give you a "confirmed address". Failure to do these steps could limit how much money you are allowed to withdraw from your account after you get paid.

IMPORTANT: Before you start selling, don't forget to link your paypal and ebay accounts. Go to My Ebay > Account (tab) > Paypal Account. Ebay says this "adds a layer of security", and you need everything you can get.

Your Reputation
What reputation? You're a newb, and that's a big problem on Ebay. The sophisticated buyers my friend needs to bid on his rare collectibles will avoid "zero feedback" sellers. Nobody wants to buy anything of real value from a newbie (well, unless they can get it really cheap).

My advice is to do everything you can to increase your rep before listing your items.

Get some feedback. If you have the time, buy some things you need from large reputable sellers (the ones that love to get and give FB). In a couple of weeks you could easily rack up 10-20 positive feedbacks (buyers can ONLY get positives or none at all). For all appearances you're a 100% positive feedback "relatively new" Ebayer (definitely a step up from "Zero feeback newb").

Get ID Verified. The $5 charge is worth it if you plan on selling high priced items with very little feedback. You'll also get a nifty little badge that makes you look a lot more official. You're still a newbie - but your an ID Verified newbie.

ID Verify Signup

If you've made it this far you should now have an Ebay account capable of listing an item for sale, and a Paypal account capable of receiving payment. You have completed the bare basics. If you weren't such a good friend,. I'd send you on your merry way and let you learn the rest the hard way. The hard way is when you make mistakes that cost you so much money and aggravation that you either never sell on Ebay again, or you learn by them and never forget the lessons they teach you.

Though this is not a complete and totally comprehensive guide, the next part are some details I would make sure a good friend knew about before listing their first item.

Brace Yourself - More Ebay Changes Coming After April 2010

2010-03-22T13:08:00.015-04:00

While I predicted there will be some serious problems with the 3/30 Update (see March 18th Entry), I did not think Ebay would simultaneously attempt to make even more changes. Well, Auctionbytes just reported that Ebay will be announcing more changes in April that will take effect later in the year. The kind of change? Best Match search changes of course. Somebody at Ebay must have a programming job for life just working on search.

But here is what bothers me: - If these changes are in response to the "store to core" because "Store listings to core next week, it could exacerbate the problem [with search] and create a glut of merchandise in certain categories." - then why didn't they think of that before proposing the 3/30 changes? Their approach sounds reactive instead of proactive. If you and I can anticipate issues with a massive change like this, shouldn't Ebay?

Another way to look at this is that Ebay has no idea exactly what effect the 3/30 conversion will have on search, listings, and sales. In that case, wouldn't it make sense to let these changes settle a bit with sellers and buyers before immediately launching into yet another new series of changes? After giving the market a chance to absorb and normalize after this change, then they could see exactly what tweaking is needed - or if any is needed at all.

Right now sellers are frantically trying to decide exactly what to do. Do they upgrade their stores? Do they list more or less? Will they sell more or less? Nothing hurts a market worse than uncertainty. Some people tend to sit on their hands doing nothing while they wait to see how things pan out, while other embrace change as an opportunity to "get a jump" on everyone else. It will probably take a couple of months before anyone really knows the full effect of these recent changes. Sellers sitting on the sidelines may then join in - or quit completely. Most sellers will make a series of adjustments during those first couple of months. Personally, I need to decide exactly how many fixed price listings is optimal in this new selling environment.

So wouldn't it make a whole lot of sense if Ebay actually sat back for a few months, took a deep breath, and let this change sink in a bit before racing towards the next series of confusing search modifications? Better yet, why not plan on dedicating the entire programming staff for 60 days to fixing all the new glitches the 3/30 changes are certain to create.

Only 12 Days to Ebay D-Day - Convert Your Store Inventory NOW!

2010-03-18T12:55:00.008-04:00

Sure, you can wait until midnight on 3/30 and hope and pray Ebay converts your 2,500 store inventory listings properly to fixed price listings, or you can do the conversion yourself.

After all, what could go wrong?

Store inventory "upgrades" (bold, subtitles, etc) are supposed to be renewed at the store inventory rate "as a one-time courtesy and then removed at the next renewal cycle".
30-day store inventory should convert as 30-day fixed, and GTC store inventory should convert as GTC fixed price.
All store inventory items will be given new Item ID#'s.

I predict that there will be problems with one or all of the above processes.

For #1 above, what if you are charged potentially thousands of dollars for upgrades that are now very expensive on each listing? How long will it take Ebay to reimburse you, and will you have to pay it before your next billing cycle?

For #2, what if your GTC's become 30 day's, or vice versa? Since you cannot change this parameter once a fixed price listing is started (either directly or in batch mode), you could be forced to manually delete these listings (if GTC).

Then there are the new ID#'s. I've already run into this possibly big problem, at least for those using 3rd party auction management systems. If 1000 store items become 1000 fixed price items with new ID#'s, my management system will no longer know they exist. Yes, I can import them, but I can no longer use the imported data to re-list. For some this is no biggie, but I'm sure that having all of your ID#'s change over-night is going to have unforeseen consequences.

And finally....what if the entire conversion process fails altogether? What if the process takes days due to the huge server overloads this will probably cause? What if all your entire store inventory is simply lost....or scrambled?

As Dirty Harry would say "..you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

Some Ebay Sellers Really Don't Understand the Store Inventory Changes

2010-03-16T09:28:00.005-04:00

As was evident in several recent Auctionbytes "Letters to the Editor"

There are some basic misunderstandings here that could use some clarification.

- Store inventory format items are not in core search, and will never be in core. Period. The point of signing up early for the store upgrade is to allow sellers to have everything in place for the new setup and NOT be charged for the upgrade (until after 3/30). The .10 fixed price promo is for much of the same thing. I converted all of my store items to fixed price, and upgraded my store, so now 3/30 will be a non-event.

- After 3/30 there will only be auctions and fixed price. Both are in core search now, and will continue to be.

- Fixed price items do - in fact - show up in Google. All of my fixed price ebay items (formerly store items) are in Google. There are factors to consider - how long did you wait? Google can be slow. Also...if the item is exactly the same as your old store-inventory item, there is a duplication issue. Google might need to expire your old item before it inserts the new one - that can take a few weeks.

- Many sellers, including myself, are experiencing both a huge rise in item views and sales as a result of having items in core search. Many of my older store inventory items are having a robust resurgence - which really shows how poorly store inventory was being handled before.

Nobody know how things will be on ebay after 3/30, but I'd guess it'll be similar to how it is right now since most of the larger sellers have already done much of what they are going to do.

I'm not finding any noticeable increase in alt site or website sales (which remain good), so I'm not seeing buyers flocking elsewhere. However, I do think buyers will continue to move towards direct webstore sellers - especially the big ones - over the next few years..

Shelbyville Times-Gazette: Is eBay coming alive for you? Especially store entries?

2010-03-14T18:45:00.008-04:00

Yes Mr. Mills, there is a Santa Claus.

Shelbyville Times-Gazette: Blog: Is eBay coming alive for you? Especially store entries?

Is it really that mysterious that Fixed Price items in Ebay's "core" search do MUCH better than store inventory format that is virtually invisible to many ebay buyers? Fixed price sellers (like me) have known about this for years....and now....so does everyone.

Ebay Changes: Fixed Price & Best Match

2010-03-13T09:30:00.009-05:00

So back in July of 2009, Ebay announced they were changing their Best Match algorithms later that year (as if we understood how they worked to begin with). These changes went into effect in late 2009, and affected how "Best Match" would be scored in certain of categories. In these categories "time recently listed" would now count more than the "listing performance score". The listing performance score is basically how well an item is selling in relation to how often it's viewed - a sort of popularity contest that places best selling items above poorly selling items.

These changes are spelled out by Ebay on their "Best Match Tips" help section, and mentioned prominently in this excellent Brewsnews article, "An Analysis of the New eBay Pricing Change by a Seller In-the-Trenches"

Beginning late September 2009 eBay changed the Best Match criteria for Art, Antiques, Coins & Paper Money, Collectibles, Dolls & Bears, Pottery & Glass, Toys & Hobbies, Stamps, Sports Mem, Cards & Fan Shop, and Entertainment Memorabilia. In order ”To keep the freshest inventory on top and surface a broader selection, the main sort factor for Fixed Price listings in these categories will be recency of listing instead of listing performance score“

Conventional wisdom said it was always better to use a Good Til Canceled (GTC) listing over a 30 day listing because only the GTC format carried over the accumulated "search score" - sometimes over many months. In fact, according to my own tests, the single most important factor was "recent sales". I noticed that as soon as an item sold, it would often be followed by several other sales. This was due to the sudden search ranking boost from the first sale. Immediately following a sale, a keyword search would often find that item in the top five "best search" placement, and often remain there for several days. Some items with many sales (20 or more) would remain in the top ten for weeks at a time - even if there had been no sales at all for several weeks. I also noticed that items with more "watchers" and identical sales histories would usually rank a few places higher.

Fast-forward to March 2010 where we all all awaiting the impending 3/30/2010 fee and store changes. Over the last month or so, I have converted all of my old store inventory format items into Fixed Price. If ever there was a time to re-evaluate how items should be listed, it would surely be now.

But I had a bit of a dilemma. According to this article, and ebay's tip sheet, if I went with GTC listings, I'd lose the search boost my collectibles category gets for having new listings. Apparently when a GTC item relists, it's not seen as a "new" listing. So clearly it would be better to use Fixed Price 30-day and just create an automated rule that re-lists them indefinitely. This would give the added advantage of being able to cancel re-lists easily (GTC's need to be canceled individually - yikes!).

But the devil is in the details.

When a 30 day fixed price listing is renewed for another 30 days, it's completely relisted - all original sales data is cleaned out, and it's assigned a new ebay item ID#. Ouch! Huge problem since I use an offline auction management system that tracks by ID#.

So having little other choice, I converted my 500 or so listing to Fixed Price GTC and just crossed my fingers my Best Match rankings wouldn't suffer too much. After all, my items are competitively priced, ship for free, and I am a Powerseller/Top-Rated-Seller. So maybe 3 outta 4 will be okay?

After running this configuration for a month all I can say is that I am very pleasantly surprised. My best selling items are definitely ranking highly in Best Match search rankings - and they are working almost exactly as they always have. Despite what ebay has said about changed how they rank items last October ('09), recent sales and most watched items are clearly getting the search karma.

I have many items 20+ days from renewal - so they are NOT seen as newly listed OR ending shortly - that are outranking fixed price items that were listed today AND auction items that are ending within 4 hours. The only thing they have going for them is 5 or more sales over the last 2 weeks. I also have several high ranking (top 10) items with no sales for 2 weeks, but several sales 3 and 4 weeks ago.

So what does it all mean? Simple - GTC fixed price is still the way to go - even in the Collectible's category. Regardless of what ebay is saying, they are, in fact, still ranking successful GTC items higher than the "fresh inventory" they claim to be giving special treatment.

Is Ioffer the Future Ebay? Nahhhh....

2010-03-12T10:49:00.006-05:00

Ioffer right now is what ebay was becoming back around 2003 - a global source for pirated materials, illegal items, and porn. I used to say that ebay was becoming such a dirty back alley that in another year they would no longer be "mainstream" and would lose critical mass.

Ioffer is there - and much worse.

I've had an Ioffer account since 2004, and I have listed over 20,000 items there over the years. I believe I have sold around 400 items - been paid for maybe 250 items.

I stopped selling there altogether back around 2007 when my NPB rate hit 75%

Way too much time dealing with I-idiots (yes, ioffer buyers make ebay buyers look like friggin geniuses), and way too many technical issues.

But I did take a chance and list 200 of my best-sellers from Jan-Feb of this year after I see how they've cleaned up their software. I will say that their system is improved, and I encountered no technical problems.

However, after nearly 60 days of listing items that I sell daily on ebay and my own website, I sold zero items. In fact, I had only 2 items viewed more than 5 items. Around 150 items were viewed twice. and 40+ items were never viewed at all.

So something has obviously changed with their organic traffic, and I'd guess that it's now a very tight niche buyers market. Not sure if it's a youth market, or a pirate market, or a porn market - but it's not my market.

Under it's present form, I don't believe Ioffer is mainstream enough any more to even be a significant e-commerce player, much less serious competition for ebay or Amazon. Certainly not a place for "mom and pop" anything (well, unless it's a "mom and pop" sex act).

Places like Bonanzle and Atomicmall have a much greater mainstream appeal - but neither site feels "scalable" enough to get that big. I think there's a certain appeal to the "small town" feel I get from both sites, so maybe that's a good thing.

Amazon is just way to big and selective - both in what they sell, and who they allow to sell, and how they process money and orders. I don't see small time sellers flocking there. I also don't think Amazon, in the long term, really needs or cares about it's 3rd party "marketplace".

Maybe facilities like Google-base will ultimately succeed (or something better) and it won't matter where mom and pop online sellers are. They could be on eBay, or Bonanzle, or have their own shop, and people will find them based on what they sell. "Critical mass" will be created by search aggregation instead of site aggregation.

Think ahead a bit. Imagine a world full of devices like the new Ipads, Iphones, and Droids (by Google). Internet everywhere. Will they be using cumbersome archaic looking sites like Ebay, or even Amazon? No way. They will be using new small-screen-centric specialized search facilities. This will also be a boon to the old B/M sellers since when a buyer is looking for a product, the device also knows exactly where the buyer is - and where the B/M store is.

Arguing about which online site is gonna be the next ebay is like arguing about future DVD formats - there ain't gonna be DVD's in the future.

Seller Sues Buyer on People's Court

2010-02-23T06:29:00.002-05:00

Karma really can be a bitch....

Does Free Shipping Close the Sale?

2009-09-02T13:30:00.000-04:00

The trend is clearly towards a free shipping model for a lot of the big online merchants. Are they on to something that the smaller seller should also consider?

When the issue of "free shipping" comes up on the average ebay-centric message board, the response is always the same...

"I can't afford to offer free shpping!"
"It's an Ebay plot to suck down more fees!"
"Buyers don't need free shipping - they want combined shipping discounts"

I believe that a lot of these sellers are missing the point. We are no longer living in the online world of 2000. Buyers are not only more online savvy than ever before, but the availability of online retail options is now immense.

While a lot of sellers weren't paying attention, the online world became a very competitive place to do business. Just like the real "brick-n-mortar" world, the small mom and pop shops are getting swallowed up by big box discount retailers offering convenient online shopping and....yes....Free Shipping.

The small online retailer will need to step up to survive. Buyers don't care about your costs - if they can get it cheaper or with less hassle somewhere else, they will.

So why are all the big guns of the online retail world offering free shipping? Well, it's all in the numbers and it's all about shopping carts.

Not those things you wheel around the grocery store - but those computer carts full of items ready for checkout. When was the last time you saw someone "in the real world" take the time to pick out a cart full of goodies, roll up the the cashier, let them tally it all up, and then go "oh, no way, I'm outta here!". Well, in the online world of retail, this is what happens more than half of the time - and most retailers don't even realize it.

In 2004, Forrester did a study of online consumer behavior to try and explain why nearly half of all online shopping carts are abandoned before completing checkout, and why nearly 90% of web shoppers say they have abandoned carts at some time. About 60% of them leave the carts specifically because of shipping costs. But if you look hard at the numbers there is overlap - most of the remaining leave because of total cost (which includes shipping).

Another study in 2008 by Paypal also had the #1 reason as shipping costs and indicated a 66% abandoned cart rate (higher than the Forrester study 4 years earlier).

The overriding conclusion, however, isn't that everyone should therefore offer free shipping. But what we do have is a major problem in search of a solution.

When a buyer goes to the hardware store for a wheel barrel, they look at the price tag and go to checkout. They don't care how much the item weighs, how the merchant had it shipped, or how much the stock boy makes per hour. They see the price - perhaps calculate tax - and get rung up. The final bill meets their expectations and they pay.

All costs other than tax are embedded - that's how "offline" retail is generally done.

The point of free shipping is extremely simple. It's to increase the predictability of the purchase for the consumer. Just like the local hardware store - there are no surprises. When the online customer gets to checkout, the final bill meets their expectations.

When was the last time you got an email for an online "special deal" that didn't include free shipping? The reason why 99% of all online specials now offer free shipping is because buyers have become immune to the $9.95 deal (+ s/h) - cause they know they are gonna get stuck for big s/h.

Nothing is simpler for the buyer than free shipping.

Back last year when the Ebay Power Seller bonuses started, I needed to change out about 500 items. What I did was upload all the new items w/ free shipping so they would be ready when the old items expired in a week or so. The sales on the new items w/ free shipping were excellent. In fact, I didn't sell any of the expiring items (with shipping costs) during that overlap time. Even though - for multiple items - it would of been cheaper for buyers to pay the s/h with combined discounts.

While combined shipping discounts seem simple to the (myopic) seller, they are not simple to the buyer. Every seller has a different "calculation" and expects the buyer to read carefully and figure it out. We all know that buyers don't read :)

Nothing is simpler for the buyer than free shipping.

How many of the sellers reading this have ever done any hardcore face-to-face sales? I was practically raised in a retail store , and my wife is a realtor, so the idea that a "sale" is a "state of mind" is something I don't even have to think about. There's an old saying that the "last person to talk loses". That's because a buyer makes a purchase after completing a mental calculation - if you interrupt the process before it's complete (in other words, you have already closed the deal and just don't know it yet), you run the real risk of creating doubt and blowing it.

That's what the shipping calculation does to the online buyer. I click on what I want - pull the handle on the slot machine - and wait for the final numbers to roll in. then I do "damn, look at those shipping costs". IMHO, the worst thing you can do to your item is use a shipping calculator. Every time I've used one, I kinda hold my breath, brace myself, and say "wow, that's a lot - maybe buying this online isn't a good idea after all". It's that last word that breaks the deal before the close.

Nothing is simpler for the buyer than free shipping.

Bonanzle Razzle Dazzle or just a new Fizzle?

2009-04-14T12:54:00.001-04:00

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.

Auctionbytes Etsy Article Comment

2009-04-06T10:22:00.011-04:00

Auctionbytes recently ran a blog article focusing on Etsy and the problems trying to integrate vintage item into their "handmade" product base. That post can be found here:
Etsy, Where Handmade and Vintage Collide - Saturday, April 04, 2009
Since I was currently working on an Etsy vs Bonanzle article, I added the comment shown below. - Seller Karma

Etsy has succeeded at something that no other alternative site has - it has it's own traffic. I believe this traffic has come specifically because Etsy doesn't have the same junk that's filling all the other sites. Most buyers come to Etsy for the handmade and art stuff - not for old comic books.

Unlike Bonanzle, who makes the "find everything but the ordinary" claim - but it's only a slogan since the site is filling up with thousands of ebay-migrated items (that, let's face it, isn't selling on ebay). These items never expire, so like an enormous trash bin of unsellable, often over-priced, waste products, they just fill the site like some binary landfill. With no actual customer base of their own, at least outside of their own desperate sellers, they depend soley on Goggle traffic. Sorry, but I want buyers, not bored people looking for a place to chat all day.

What Etsy has are actual buyers - and they are not coming in from Google. Nothing wrong with Google traffic, but anyone can get Google traffic. It's free and only marginally effective - but all the alt sites offer it - and anyone with a webstore can get it too. It's the least-common-denominator of web traffic.

Like Ebay, Etsy generates it's own traffic. What this means to the online seller is that when you pay .20 for a 4 month listing, you are buying real traffic that you might not otherwise get in any other way. That's the kind added value sellers need - not just another website with freebie googler's.

It's no wonder that those selling non-homemade stuff want a piece of the action. Etsy had over 400 million visits in February and sold over 600,000 items - in February alone. Wannabes like Bonanzle had just 1% of that traffic - and won't even tell us their meager sales figures. That's the difference between hype and real business.

A lot of people say that Ebay's single biggest mistake was forgetting what made them successful to begin with - the small time auction seller. I'd suggest that Etsy learn by Ebay's mistakes. It's handmade items that have made you what you are - stay focused! You do not want to be "just another ebay alternative".