Report a Buyer Now Live on eBay UK

In the eBay Autumn updates which we covered in-depth here, one of the sellers favourites was the ability to be able to report a buyer for naughty behaviour. This is now live on eBay, YAY!

 

Video with James Stewart

In the video below from eBay, James Stewart, Director of EU Seller Protection explains the reasoning behind this being included and how to leave a report for a buyer.

How to Report a Buyer that Exhibits Bad Behaviour

When the process is put live it will be really straight forwards to notify eBay of a bad buyer and it is important to note that this can only be done through the eBay website and cannot be automated using the eBay API.

Step #1 – Select the “Report a Buyer” Option

After an item has been purchased, on the Leave Feedback page here http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?LeaveFeedback a new option will appear called “Report a Buyer” where the eBay account is the seller for one or more transactions.

Select Report a Buyer on eBay

Step #2 – Select a Reason

Next you’ll be able to select from one of the five options, these are:

  1. Buyer has made unreasonable demands
  2. Buyer has left inappropriate feedback
  3. Buyer abused the buyer protection program
  4. Buyer misused returns
  5. Other problems

And there is an appropriate link to solve unpaid items through the eBay resolution centre.

Report an eBay Buyer Step 2

Step #3 – Submit Report

After making your selection, you then submit the report, noting the text in the confirmation notice “Bad Buyer”.

eBay Confirm Bad Buyer

Have You Used This Yet?

So have you have to use this for a buyer yet, let me know in the comments box below.

The New eBay & What It Means for You (Podcast & Video)

You can’t of missed it, eBay has a new logo, but what they have released in the USA goes deeper, far deeper than just a logo change, the way that buyers interact with eBay is fundamentally changing.

In this Podcast & accompanying video we give you the inside track on what the new updates are and how they’re going to change the way that buyers interact with eBay as this is the biggest buying experience change in 17 years.

We’ve got a very special guest in this session, Chris Dawson from Tamebay.com who was at the unveiling of the “New eBay” in the USA and he gives us the low-down on what’s changing and we walk you through step-by-step through the changes.

 

The Podcast Version

Because this update is so important we’ve released this two versions, this is the first version which can also be downloaded from iTunes and is audio only. Ideal for downloading to your iPod or droid, choose this version if you’d like to get the inside track on the updates when you’re on the move.

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Because this is may be new to you, above is a green play button. Press play and you’re listening!

If you’d like to download the Podcast for listening to on your iPhone, Droid or iPad you can do or you can press the “Play in new window” button to be able to listen to the Podcast while browsing.  If you use iTunes, you can subscribe here for free.

The Video Version

In the video below we actually show you and take you through each of the sections of the “New eBay” from start to finish and in the rest of this article I’ll be focusing in on what each of the changes are.

The New eBay, The New Home Page

You can see the majority of these changes live on eBay.com right now and I urge you to go there and open eBay.com up in a separate browser tab or window so you can follow these changes along with the video and this article.

“The whole eBay landing page has changed”

The whole eBay landing page has changed and we’ll be working top down looking at each element in-depth to see how it’s changed and is going to change the experience for buyers on our favourite marketplace.

New eBay Header Bar

The New Header Bar

You can’t miss it, the new header bar is huge and dominated by the massive search box. This search box is 51.2% larger than what we have on the eBay.co.uk site and is carried across all the eBay pages, right up to the checkout.

We’ll have a unified experience for all pages and really highlights the importance of the weighting that eBay are putting in their search right now and also in their pending release of Cassini (a brand new way of delivering personalised results on eBay) that hasn’t had a date put on it yet.

eBay browse by categoryIn the Podcast Chris felt it really important to stress that there are no changes to the way in which the search results are being delivered for searches. We know that eBay’s new search is coming, but for now it looks like they’re giving us these updates in bite-sized chunks.

We’ve got the core categories shown in the upper part of the page and also the ability to browse by category using the link to the left of the search box.

I’ve highlighted these in the image to the right, and they appear as a new panel when you click on the right.

New Banner Area

New eBay Banner Area

It looks like the days are gone of homepage take overs, in the video version we saw that the eBay.co.uk homepage had been completely taken over by the Nectar points program. The Nectar points partnership is worthy of special note, but is this really what buyers want to see on their homepage? Hold on to that question because when you see what is coming up next, the answer is blatantly no.

The New eBay Feed

The New eBay Feed

The new eBay “feed” is going to complete change the almost pointless homepage (in comparison) which we have right now into a page that is higher personal and I can easily see this becoming the hub and sole entry point to items for buyers over time.

“The new Home page is a page dedicated to what you and only you want to see”

eBay have created a mash-up between Pinterest and Twitter, where you’re able to see products in a similar format to Pinterest, but you’re able to easily follow and search groups to return the results in your feed that are highly personal to you.

If we ignore how customisable the feed is for a few moments, this scale of this single change is immense, the homepage has turned from a flat, boring page that shows a few semi-related products into highly personalised stream of products that are focused on only your tastes, the tastes of your buyers.

Setting up Your Own Customised Feed

eBay Feed SuggestionsYou can test drive this by going to eBay.com/feed, on the left there is an option called “edit my feed”, using the same massive search box you’re able to enter your keywords of choice and see the potential results that would appear in your feed.

You’re also able to drill them down by category, format, condition and also price range to really home-in on products that only you are interested in.

Then after choosing your keyword groups, go back to the homepage and your feed, now personalised to your tastes, will be showing related items.

As you scroll down the page, the feed only stops when it runs out of items and as I found when looking for “BDU” (“battle dress uniforms”) sometimes you can pick up unwanted items, to remove these just hover on the product and click X in the top right and the item is gone.

Annoyingly you are taken back to the top of the page when you remove an item from the eBay feed, but eBay learnt from what you don’t like and admittedly after I removed about 15-20 baseball cards that had been appearing in my feed, I have seen little of them since.

You’ll also notice that the eBay “Daily Deals” are not featured at the top of the feed, I had expected them to be there, but instead you find them further down after scrolling.

Not what I had expected at all and if anything, this clear shows that eBay are expecting buyers to scroll this page and after you play with it for a few minutes, you can see that they will.

Dabbling in the Future of the Feed

eBay Hunch GraphWe do dabble in the future in the Podcast, suggesting that if eBay take their newly acquired Hunch technology which provides what they called a “taste graph of personalised recommendations” to what eBay might have install for us.

So as Chris explains, after buying a bed, why not show him other related items, as a bed is normally a once every few years purchase, but if you look at it from a wider angle, we now know he has a bed, so why not show him accessories, like linens or a duvet?

I’m a size 9 or 10 shoe, so I’m not interested in other sizes, if you’re a size 12-14, then why on earth would you be interested in a size 16 or size 8? Hunch could have the power, when combined with the item specifics we’re entering as businesses to really tailor the results exactly to your personal requirements.

Will ‘Hunch’ provide us with this kind of customisation? That is only to be seen in time, but if we’re thinking we know the boffin’s in eBay are too and as this is only the first incarnation of the personalised feed on the homepage, I’m betting we will.

The New eBay, The New Search Page

The New eBay Gallery View

Chris explained that it is only the formatting & styling of the search results that are changing, the way in which the results are returned on the rest of the eBay site is exactly the same as what it was before the update, but now they are clearer and have had a face lift.

There are two views of listings on eBay the list view, which is where you see one item per line and the gallery view where we see multiple items per line.

Currently in the UK we have four items per row in the gallery view, just like the list view, the main image is being increased in size from the current size of 225×225 pixels to 300×300 pixels, it’s a 33% increase and highly noticeable and there are just 3 items per row.

The New eBay List view

When it comes to the search results and also the feed, quality is really king here and we now understand why in the US that the use of image borders and extra junk in the images was removed, such distractions are not going to cut it in the new layout & design.

If we also look at the search results pages, the upper navigation has changed too, the format has moved to the left and also the filtering options above results have been made more compact and with easier access to sold & completed listings.

The New eBay, The New Item Detail Page

The New eBay Item Detail Page

The item detail page has been set up for a complete revamp and there is a little surprise we were not expecting in there too. I wondered where it had gone and Chris noticed it too, Dave spotted it after a few moments and we’ll get to that shortly.

The New eBay Image Gallery ViewWe’ve now got a more compact listing layout, but with the information the customers needs to make an informed decision if this item is the right item for them.

The Images area looks larger but in fact it is the same size as what it was before (500×500 pixels), but why it looks so much bigger is because the amount of wasted space that has been saved on the right-hand-side of the main image is huge.

While zoom is now enabled on images that are large enough, with the images, the biggest change is the size of the lightbox. When click on the main image, a huge lightbox layer appears and overtakes the entire screen.

You can see this in the image to the right, that is the entire web browser window taken up with the product images.

Just one image isn’t going to cut it for most items now and as we can see with this item, there are plenty of images to keep a buyer happy as they fall-in-love with the dress and make the purchase.

Quarters

the new ebay quarters section on the listing pageWhen it comes to the right-hand-side panel of the listing page, we’ve also have some major changes here too.

Annoyingly adverts are still present and take up one quarter (but that’s a topic for another day), the action buttons now have their own quarter, item specifics have been moved from that huge bar where they occupy above the description to their own quarter and we have a new section that combines both the seller information and the key facts about the item

Chris did point out in the Podcast/Video that there are too many options for buyers to click on here, if we count the options in the screen shot to the right there are 11 buttons, way too many for one page. Buyers need an “or” option, so their decision process is simpler.

If we focus on buttons only for “Buy it Now”, “Add to Cart”, “Make Offer” and “Add to Watch List”, that is two, too many options and really needs to be nailed down to “Buy it Now” and if needs must “Add to Watch List”.

Note: eBay’s “action colour” is blue, we can see this throughout the site, even in the advert eBay mobile, the action colour is also blue. While there maybe too many buttons on the page and to me heavily diluting power of the blue “Buy it now” you don’t have to make this mistake on your own site.

One of my favourite marketers is a chap called Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers, take a look at the video in this article to understand what is your action colour.  The action colour on this site is green see the box below… Would you like to subscribe?

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Item specifics still take up a load of space on the UK listings currently, it’s a good 2-3 inches of screen pace the buyer has to scroll in the fashion category and now we can see in the screen shot, that these are still available, but have been tidied into their own quarter and if you click on these any item specifics that are not being shown, will then appear.

eBay item details cardThe big change is in the top right quarter, the items key details. The condition now links to the description area, we’ve got the first delivery cost and also an ETA on when the item will be with us, along with a summary of the returns policy and the buyer protection notice.

The surprise I mentioned at the beginning of this section is in what is missing, next to the user ID we have the sellers feedback, but the eBay store icon is missing. Considering how much effort has been put into these updates that cannot be a mistake and raises the question, what is happening with eBay stores?

In the UK there are over 400,000 eBay shops (we Brit’s call them shops, not stores) which drive a massive revenue stream for eBay, some £81 million each year. So when I see them not being promoted, especially in such a radical update I’m concerned. The eBay shop has the been the hub for almost all eBay businesses and I certainly hope we’ll be seeing some changes here for the humble eBay shop.

eBay item description header bar

As you move down the page, we now have a unique bar that follows us down, so we can jump to each of the key sections, the description, shipping, seller info and the Q&A.

But what someone has overlooked, is the ability to buy from this bar. Where is the buy button? Seems to be the only major flaw we can find in the “New eBay”. Nice spot by Chris!

Note: In the video version of this article I’ve included an overlay to give a suggested impression what this could look like.

The New eBay, The New Profile Page

The New eBay Profile Page for Sellers

The next big change is to do with the “My World” page, you know the one, the pointless page where we’ve seen numerous failed attempts at getting users to update this custom page.

It’s had a complete revamp and you can see what yours will look like by going to http://www.ebay.com/usr/ and adding your user ID on the end of the URL.

Some important notes here is that there are now individual Facebook Like and Google Plus buttons and we again see a similar format of product images as we saw in the eBay feed page.

If you look at your own page, look on the right-hand-side, there is a feedback button that links to a survey here which asks “How effective was this eBay Page in helping you accomplish what you came to the page to do?” Is it just me or does that indicate to you too, that this page is somewhat useless? Would it linking to the sellers eBay shop not have been better and ditching this page all-together?

The New eBay, The New Checkout & Registration Process

The one part that we didn’t cover in the Podcast & Video is that eBay have changed the registration process and also the checkout process too.

New buyers to eBay only need to enter the bare information needed to start with eBay

The registration process now only asks for the information that is absolutely required to get started with eBay and then when an address is needed, that can be added the first time the buyer is in the checkout.

Linked eBay Accounts

Image borrowed from Tamebay

A massive change to the checkout process is the ability to link your eBay account and PayPal account together, so instead of having to login and move through some 3 or more pages, you can complete the checkout on a single page, because the PayPal account is attached and there is no need to sign in to PayPal too.

The New eBay, Summary

Personally I have for a long time suggested that eBay is becoming Amazon and that has been true up until now. I’ve got to eat my words as I hold Amazon in high-regard for the way that they market and re-market products, but eBay just dropped the bomb on that and has left Amazon for dust.

I’ve got to hold this has the largest single change to eBay, well since ever. We’ve now got the ground work for a highly customised, highly personalised home page and if the buyers take to this, for which I am sure of as it just works. If we sprinkle in some magic from the eBay developers team, then we have something I don’t thin k we’ll see change for another decade.

Patrick Munden Head of Seller Communcations at eBay UKI spoke with Patrick Munden, Head of Seller Communications for Europe, he had these words to add:

“With the new eBay Feed, the buying experience is now going to be truly customised to each of your buyers. This only has to be a good thing for sellers as we’re putting the right products in front of the right buyers.

As a seller, the focus really is on quality, quality listing titles so your items are found and quality images, as the eBay Feed is image centric”

Just as Chris did, he’s hit the nail-on-the-head. If there is only one thing we can take away from this update, that is the quality, size & standard of images now required by sellers has never been so high.

I’d like to say a special thank you to Chris Dawson for giving us the insight into the changes that are included in “The New eBay” and you can find more about Chris and Tamebay, the numebr one resource for marketplace and eCommerce news in the UK over at Tamebay.com.

What Do You Think?

What do you make of these changes and how do you think this will change eBay over the next few years? Let us know in the comments box below.

Are Multiple eBay ID’s Still a Viable Strategery on eBay?

So is using multiple eBay ID’s still a strategery that is viable on eBay? That’s the question M65 put to me in the forums, the answers are simple, but where it leads, no-one has gone there yet and I explore this with you.

Pull up the chair, grab a cuppa and let’s investigate this further.

 

The Question in Full

So firstly thank you M65 for posting the question in the forums and allowing me to have a stab at answering for everyone. This is what he asked:

I have been reading a lot of content on Matts website, there is a lot, and one of the issues Matt discusses is the ‘multiple id’ ‘multiple account’. In the posts:

http://lastdropofink.co.uk/mar…..ne-ebay-id &
http://lastdropofink.co.uk/mar…..ne-ebay-id

Matt talks about using the multiple ‘niche’ opportunity to sell more, in principle I get this, I used it quite extensively when I had my previous online business. Anyway, I never thought about the possibilities of doing the same on Ebay, and after reading the articles above wanted to explore the opportunity when I launch again on Ebay.

So, I had a look at the examples you mentioned, Barratts, and looked for the ‘Love your shoes’ store (this shop doesn’t exist) and ‘Petit Feet’ (this doesn’t exist), have Ebay cracked down on the ‘multiple id’ issue?

So my first question is, if you create another ID do you have to create another Paypal account to cover your tracks?

Do you have to have separate VAT numbers?

The reason I ask is that if I have a company say X23 Ltd., and I wanted to have 2 or 3 trading accounts, say ‘cheap phones’, ‘expensive phones’ and ‘all phones’ as ids in Ebay would it not be easy for Ebay to see the same details for all, e.g VAT and trading address etc.?

What a stonker! Let’s dig in.

The Quick Answers

Right so let’s jump to M65’s two questions and answer those, because they’re dead simple to answer.

So my first question is, if you create another ID do you have to create another Paypal account to cover your tracks?

Surprisingly, the answer is no. This is not a requirement and I know a multitude of accounts that use the same PayPal account to run multiple eBay accounts off.

Generally the reason is ‘simple’, literally it’s simpler to run from one account.

Do you have to have separate VAT numbers?

Nope, this is not required also. You can have the same VAT ID registered on multiple eBay accounts.

So, I had a look at the examples you mentioned, Barratts, and looked for the ‘Love your shoes’ store (this shop doesn’t exist) and ‘Petit Feet’ (this doesn’t exist), have Ebay cracked down on the ‘multiple id’ issue?

In the original article on multiple eBay accounts I was using these as examples in the web world and was referring to their websites eg http://www.pricelessshoes.co.uk/ & http://www.bigshoeboutique.co.uk/ not eBay accounts. The same for Littlewoods too.

The Full Reply

Now this is where it gets interesting, I got quite a bit of flack for posting those two articles to begin with, but it’s got to the stage where the use of multiple accounts has become commonplace and advocated by account managers within eBay.

It’s got to the stage within quarter of an hour of surfing any category in eBay, if you know what you’re looking for you’ll spot the duplicate businesses. Some do it really well and even I struggle spotting them, but there are always tell-tale signs to what and how they are doing it.

So if you’re wondering if the strategy still works?

Hell yes it does, if it’s done right.

If it’s Done “Right”
Now let’s explore that a little further and what I mean by this. If we just duplicate your entire business and product range, then what value is there in that?

If you’re going to consider setting up another account, then there has to be value to all parties. That’s you, eBay and the customer. So one of the ways to do this is by going niche, so if you break your inventory up into say sub categories, will one of your sub categories support a business “persona” by its self?

The term “persona” is key here as it’s not commonly used so to quickly clarify:

persona in the word’s everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask.

Its meaning in the latter Roman period changed to indicate a “character” of a theatrical performance or court of law, when it became apparent that different individuals could assume the same role, and legal attributes such as rights, powers, and duties followed the role.

The same individuals as actors could play different roles, each with its own legal attributes, sometimes even in the same court appearance. Wikipedia

There are a multitude of attributes you can tweak in a business, especially if it is a business that you can alter it’s persona on to complement an existing business. The persona defines how it looks, behaves and interacts with the outside world (even if it is the same business underneath).

If we ignore the 90 days of hoops to jump through with new eBay accounts now, it always used to take 3-6 months for a new account to gain traction, now it just takes a little longer to take hold, but it will.

I’ve seen a new account get in, in front of existing business and outstrip the competition 2 to 1, but that was the once and required some very fresh thinking. There were also some existing dynamics that aided this, so this is not the norm.

But what is the norm and what so you be expecting?
The main reason why you want to start a second eBay account as I detailed before, is basic risk management and it also takes time to set up and get running.

Assuming nothing major happens in your niche, you can expect to get close to what you’re selling right now on eBay. In a set of combined articles here and here where I consider why sales could be so consistent on eBay and explored a “Best Match” position bias “hypothesis” so it will even out given enough time.

However, that is what is working today and the problem is we need to focus on tomorrow and tomorrow is not certain.

But the HUGE Unknown

What eBay have dropped in the last update has the potential to completely alter this strategy. What am I talking about? eBay are changing the exposure of the Anchor eBay Stores in Q1 of next year.

If you’ve not read the full breakdown of the updates, you can find those here, but the piece that I am referring to is to do with the “Upgraded eBay International Selling”. This isn’t just the fluffy presentations that are kicking around for “Cross Border Trade” (aka CBT, which I thought was a bike test? anyway…) this has some meat to it and next year we are going to be served a change to the floor-plan and it could change everything.

The eBay Stores at Anchor level are going to allow selling internationally across numerous sites for the same fees. It’s at least 14 eBay sites and there are some other key benefits too:

  • Zero insertion fees for 30-day and Good ‘Til Cancelled fixed price listings on domestic, European and Australian sites
  • $0.03 insertion fee for 30-day and Good ‘Til Cancelled fixed price listings on eBay.com.
  • Final value fees charged according to the site that you list the item on. (You’ll also be charged relevant feature fees.)

Can you see why I’m suggesting this may change the floor-plan of the use of multiple eBay accounts now? It’s simple, if your single business, even with the lure of cross border trade, warrant a single eBay anchor store at £350 a month, then this could be a challenge.

Now if we ignore this for a few moments, if the whole of the EU, Australia AND the United States for peanuts is being opened up, then we have a serious pending issue over data.

Again I’ll explain :) What is an excellent by eBay as it will change the layout of the accounts and somewhat unify them, but what we are faced with a data nightmare. While we’ve experienced some category changes in the past 2-3 updates to make this easier as the eBay categories have become more aligned with each site, what even the more advanced businesses out there are going to struggle heavily with is the data needed to power so many sites properly.

Even if we use the most flexible tool out there currently to be able to do this (eSellerPro) then you’re going to hit some hardcore limitations in tackling the multiple eBay accounts

In Summary

So let me simply what I’ve covered, if you are never likely to hit the requirement to use an eBay Anchor store at £350, even with the extra exposure, then setting up a second eBay account and working on it for the next few months is an excellent idea (once you have defined it’s persona that is).

I did go a little off-track from the level from where you’re probably playing currently in the latter stages of the reply, however I hope you can see why I suggested that it needed more than just a reply in the forums.

My point is simple:

The whole game is about the change and I don’t think anyone has picked up on this properly yet.

Have you got a question you’d like personally answered? Well it’s time to register and ask in the forums and if you have any feedback on the reply to M65 above, let us know in the comments box below.

Podcast 005 – Social Marketing Is a Waste of Time (For Product Based Businesses)

I’ve suspected it for a long time, the evidence is now out there to show that Social Marketing for product based businesses, is a waste of time.

We’ll get to the details that back this claim up in a few moments, in this Podcast, Myself, Dave and our guest this week John Hayes discuss this topic and as John’s background is also email marketing perfectly suited to make the comparison between Social Marketing and Email Marketing.

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Because this is may be new to you, above is a green play button. Press play and you’re listening!

If you’d like to download the Podcast for listening to on your iPhone, Drioid or iPad you can do or you can press the “Play in new window” button to be able to listen to the Podcast while browsing.  If you use iTunes, you can subscribe here for free.

 

The Evidence

Forrester ResearchForrester, probably the world’s most credible research agency, conducted a study in 2011 called “The Purchase Path Of Online Buyers In 2012” in conjunction with one of eBay’s newly acquired companies “GSI Commerce” and it’s digital agency “True Action” to to evaluate how shoppers touched various marketing touchpoints, such as paid search and email, prior to completing a transaction online.

Let’s run through a few of the findings in the report:

  • Barely 1% of 77,000 transactions could be traced back to social links
  • Email has usually been an influencing factor in the transaction
  • 33% of new customers and 48% of repeat customers coming from multiple touch points
  • By far the biggest driver for purchases online are email marketing and search
  • 30% of transactions started with a click from an email marketing campaign
  • Email marketing is by far the most important channel for repeat customers
  • New buyers looking for a specific product or brand are more receptive to paid search than your loyal customers
  • Paid & organic search led to 39% of transactions from new customers
  • Still a significant proportion of buyer visits are driven by buyers typing in the websites URL
  • Directly typing the companies URL was found to influence a surprising 30% of transactions

Basically the study found that the impact on Social Marketing on actual sales was almost negligible.

Before Jumping on the Evidence

I chose John to join us on this Podcast for his experience with Email Marketing and yes this Podcast is going to be biased towards email marketing and iContact who John mentions in the discussion. This is because I wanted to give you an option that you can leverage immediately and for me that is Email Marketing.

I’m sure some of you reading this are going to be horrified by the study findings, as we’re all being told relentlessly that “we should be doing social marketing“, “we should be on Twitter and we should be creating Facebook pages and so on…” and there are a lot of companies that are purely focused in Social Marketing that want your money and want to give you a design and a service.

To be clear here, such offerings are beneficial to businesses in the right situations, John points this out too, there are other reasons to consider Social Marketing key to your business and even for me personally (as you’re likely to have found this article on Twitter) these are vitally important and we’ll cover those shortly, but as this report is showing for transactional volume, Social Media capability in the study for delivering transaction results, is tiny when compared to other methods of marketing.

When Should You Consider Social Marketing?

Getting the Marketing Mix RightJohn mentions in the Podcast a “mix” and this is simply referring to a “Marketing Mix” and he’s hit the nail on the head, with this study we’re able to say that Social Marketing isn’t carrying the weight that some would like you to think it does.

And instead for you to consider this as a one part of your approach to marketing your business and if I use the simple metaphor of a cake mix, that it’s likely that your balance through the marketing we’re all receiving is weighing too heavily towards the chocolate icing, imagine a cake made entirely of icing, ewww. So instead let’s change the mix and compare it to a simple cake mix:

How to Make a Cake / How to Have a Good Marketing Mix

  • 4oz / 120g butter
    This is your eBay sales
  • 4oz / 120g white sugar
    This is your Amazon sales
  • 4oz / 120g white self raising flour
    This is your website sales & other sales such as affiliates, PPC, CSE’s and so on…
  • 2 eggs
    This is your email marketing, that binds everything together
  • 1 tablespoon of milk
    This is what you’re up to on Social Marketing

Now I’m not a cook but milk is added to create a denser cake through its fat content. Now let’s think of this fat as being the reach that social has which is huge.

We’re adding it all in the right proportions and that is our point, as we discuss, gaining new customers is very costly and retaining them is generally of the highest priority and while Social Marketing can help this, Social is currently getting too much weighting when from shown in the study, the transactional volume is still coming from the traditional channels.

While I have a special note to the future of eCommerce and Social in the summary, right now Social should come at the end of the mix, when binding everything together as the high fat dose to give it the depth and exposure for the businesses.

Not to discredit social completely, there numerous are reasons why a company would want to use Social Marketing as part of their businesses and we’re not saying that you shouldn’t be using social marketing at all, just not in the weightings that some would consider you should be.

So what are some of the reasons why you should consider social marketing?

  1. Brand exposure
  2. Instant one on one contact with customers & Customer Service
  3. The potential reach of the internet world
  4. To be see as “human”
  5. To give evidence / proof to buyers that you are here and real
  6. To build influence
  7. With Google Plus specifically there is a search weighting applied to it

Note: I did also read a few days ago “because your competition is using social media”, for me that is a lame reason and I’m not including it.

I asked one of the businesses I work with what they thought of Social Media, the response back was interesting:

“We find it so different being able to give instant responses, sometimes lacking in emails”.

I didn’t see what he meant to begin with, as surely email support is the same thing, instant? However what he had inadvertently picked up upon is that social media for him was the most pleasing for both him and his team was when he was able to publicly demonstrate the excellent customer support that his team offers in a public environment.

I asked John & Dave the question

“Maybe why eBay and Amazon may need to think about publicly showing the response times to buyer/seller questions beyond just the detailed seller ratings and make a more comprehensive picture and clearer picture for both sellers and buyers alike?”

What John came back was with excellent as it’s a nice cross over between owning the content of the interactions and being completely transparent with customers, you can see for yourself and their latest stats from customer services here http://www.icontact.com/resources/customer-satisfaction.

icontact-customer-service-stats

Let’s make no-bones-about it, I’m absolutely saying that Social Marketing for product based businesses is not worth the hype that its being given and that out first point of call for expanding your business should not be social at all.

But what can you use instead? We can’t just say that and give you no option, that would be cruel so our suggested first point of call be as a viable alternative to social is Email marketing, for which we’ll take a closer look at now.

Why Email Marketing as an Alternative

We’re not just advocating using just iContact, John works for Vocus and I felt he by far the best person to speak to on this topic, proven by his experience and his input in this Podcast, there are many options for Email Marketing tools and I’ve included as many options that came to mind at the bottom of this section.

Having John as part of the Podcast was a huge help for us as John pointed us in the direction of this info-graphic from iContact that I’ve included below. It’s rather large and you can see the full version here (opens in a new window).

How effective is email marketing

What this info-graphic points out to us is that Email Marketing is not dead and infact it’s live and kicking and according the Forrester’s study, it’s kicking serious butt with “30% of transactions started with a click from an email marketing campaign”.

While the info-graphic give us a founding in the reach of Email Marketing, what I want to focus on here is the effectiveness and I’ve cut out several pieces to show you.

Dave while researching for this Podcast also found an interesting article and infographic from June this year that shows that for the first time that mobile devices combined are now on par with desktop email openings, that is just amazing!

The full info-graphic is here http://litmus.com/blog/email-client-market-share-stats-infographic-june-2012 and we’ve included a cut out of the cross over point we discuss in the Podcast below:

Mobile Email Open rates Now Take the Lead!

Email marketing is all of these and a lot more too:

  • Fully scalable
  • Highly personal
  • Extremely clear on what is working and what is not
  • Almost 100% reportable
  • Easy to split test and improve
  • Very easy to do
  • Its cheap
  • Widely recognised as the most profitable form of online marketing today

And ultimately it works!

Email Marketing Companies

I hope this gives you an insight into why Email Marketing could be lethal for your business, but to cover Email Marketing to the level that it deserves would need a couple of articles in a series to cover it back to back and we can’t do it the justice it deserves here.

I’m not going to cover the ins-and-outs of each of them here, but here are several options for you to choose from and you can find several of these covered in detail in the email marketing part of the solutions directory on this very site.

I also want to point out, none of these are affiliate links. That is I gain no commissions for referring you, to show that I am not biased here on this topic, it is genuinely what I feel you should be doing as a product based business owner to be doing right now instead of worrying about the hype behind Social Marketing.

About John Hayes

You can put a face to the voice from the Podcast and John is over to the left.

Not only is John our guest in this Podcast, but also he’s the author of an Amazing book that both myself and Dave have read called “Becoming THE Expert” which shows you how to use “Thought Leadership Management” to excel in your chosen field.

You can buy John’s book on Amazon or in the iBookStore and direct links can be found on the publishers website here: http://www.brightwordpublishing.com/products/view/865794/Becoming-THE-Expert/John-W.-Hayes/

In Summary

Personally I have been looking for this evidence for a long time, I feel that for small businesses that sell products online, that social marketing is currently a complete distraction and given the choice between Social Marketing of any-form and other methods such as PPC and as we’ve covered heavily in Podcast and supporting article, Email that there are many other options that can delivery tangible results more easily, for less money and are almost 100% traceable to the final result, the transaction.

Now before some new-age nut job writes us off as “traditionals”, I’d like to point out is the eCommerce arena that we play in is changing and while right now Social may not be worthy of all the hype it’s been receiving, as more and more people start to leverage it and discover how to use these still very new channels to market with, we are going to see the potential power of social influence on transactions increase.

So right now Social may-be-not for product based businesses, but wind us forwards 5 years, I think we’ll be seeing unique uses and unique ways of leveraging social marketing as stand alone businesses to drive transactions.

Now that we’ve covered our point of views, what do you think?
(Let us know in the comments section below) 

Sources/Credits: Image | Study | Views | Image

Podcast 004 – Sell More with the Same Products

Sell more products and make more money with almost the same products… That’s the theme for our fourth Podcast.

No we haven’t gone mad, this is perfectly do-able and we are going to tell you, with examples how you too can use this to give your business a competitive advantage.

In this Podcast with Myself and Dave Furness we are going to discuss how you can use this to your advantage of this but MOST importantly we want you to TAKE ACTION.

[powerpress]

Because this is may be new to you, above is a green play button. Press play and you’re listening!

If you’d like to download the Podcast for listening to on your iPhone, Droid or iPad you can do or you can press the “Play in new window” button to be able to listen to the Podcast while browsing.  If you use iTunes, you can subscribe here for free.

 

Sell More with the Same Products

This Podcast is all about action, we want you to listen to us and then look at the products you sell and think about how you could sell more with the same products.

We’re laying down the challenge. 
If you don’t think that there are any natural items that you could bundle together with your existing products then let us know, and we will do our best to give you a couple of ideas.

The key here is to sell more with the same.  This is something that you will of seen many sellers doing on the marketplaces over the years and if you’re not doing it, we are going to show you why you should be.

Customers on the marketplaces want one thing over any other, and that is Convenience.  It’s why they use eBay & Amazon after all. They are going to these marketplaces rather than trawling the internet to find the products they want.

You’ll notice that I didn’t mention choice here, it’s because in the marketplaces there is an overwhelming choice of products to look at, but in the end, generally they are only ever going to buy one product. (hopefully yours).

A common question that I get asked through is: “Why don’t people buy from me?”  The answer is simple, they’re either not finding you or when they are, they’re overlooking you because you’re not making a compelling argument for them to choose you.

As we mention in the Podcast these will probably be one of the following:

  • A better offer elsewhere, from your Competitors?
  • Lacking key details in description (As we mentioned here in our first Podcast)
  • Poorer image?
  • Are they getting something for Free?

And that’s what we’re suggesting you do, take the customer to the tipping point of making the sell. In the Podcast we take you through the four standard physical product business models which consist of

  • Stocked
  • Manufacture
  • Virtual / Just in time
  • Asset recovery

Read more about the four business models here with some handy embedded video walk-throughs too.

The 5th one that we mention is the Hybrid model, which is a combination of all four of the product models combined, taking as many strengths and leaving out as many weaknesses.

In this instance we’re going to be making an edit to the Manufacture model and creating our own products from what we already have, but the manufacture model can easily be a Hybrid of the others combining different products to make a new product.

How to Make New Products?

Post it Notes

In Podcast Matt refers to using these Post it notes for book marks, imagine that your customer uses these as bookmarks and sees them every time they use that book. Neat eh?

So the key here is to make “Unique” products, set yourself apart from the competition and get people buying your product.

In the Podcast we use a lot of different terms for what we are describing.  These terms are Kits, Bundles, Packs and Sets which all mean the same thing.

Taking your item, putting a smaller/ inexpensive item with this product and selling them together.  Therefore setting yourself apart from your competition and hopefully taking the online shopper past the tipping point to buy your item.

We cover loads of examples in the Podcast of example products that can be bundled together and once you start trying to think of some we found more and more ideas came together, and we think the same will happen for you too.

This type of selling has been around for years and as I point out, one of my favourite TV Channels use it all the time to take their customers to the buying point. Best Direct TV Smart Pen

Here is a seller on eBay who has bundled a Free bottle holder with their nappy changing bags. See the listing here

A lot of easy examples can be found in consumer electronics and we talk extensively about iPads and bundling stylus’ or screen protectors with these items.  They are incredibly cheap to source and could be the only difference between you and your competitors.

Below are a quick list of other items that we touch on briefly in the podcast:

  • Books – With page holders and Markers
  • Laptops – Cases, Printers, Keyboards, Anti-Virus software
  • Handbag – Purses, Umbrellas
  • Photo equipment – Light boxes, White screen, Tripods, spare bulbs
  • Taking your item and selling multiples of them so packs of x5, x25, x50 etc

Whilst editing the Podcast we created a new kit of buying a stylus and getting a free screen protector and vice versa and in that space of 5 seconds we had created 2 new products!

Logistics of Selling Kits

There are a couple of issues that can crop up with selling kits and how the logistics of that will work internally with your business.  As long as you are aware of these

  • The logistics of stock control and order processing Maybe a shortened stock number to make them easily readable by humans (or your picking staff)
  • GS1 Barcodes –http://www.gs1uk.org/pages/default.aspx  For making unique SKU’s on Amazon and Google Product Base.
  • Don’t forget to tell your staff that you are selling kits, so when it comes to picking and re-ordering they know what is going on.

Our Challenge to You

We want you to take what we’ve covered today and put it into Action.

Think about what products you have already that you can bundle together to make it easier for customers to make a choice, they don;t have to be cheaper products and as we explain later on in the Podcast with the extra section is that you can easily bundle related items together, maybe from a range.

If you have any questions, get stuck for ideas or just need a hand, ask. We’re both here to support you with this and just leave a comment or a message in the forums.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Dave & Matt

Amazon UK Release Seller Ratings – You’re Being Scored

Amazon UK is rolling out a new “Seller Ratings” that scores you bonus points for being good and slaps you hard for being bad.

At the time of writing, I’ve not seen this published elsewhere. I’ve also given the link to the dashboard to numerous people and it appears this is on a controlled roll out. It may not be in your Amazon Seller Central account yet, but it’s coming.

Update: This will be live in all accounts in approximately two weeks from today (26th Sept 2012).

Amazon Seller Ratings - Header I have always suspected that Amazon would have such a system in place similar to this, well it’s not hard to guess what else would power the buy box percentages? And now we can see the evidence that this is the case.

In this article I’ll be looking at the new Amazon Seller Ratings Dashboard, the details behind it and as a bonus, included are the Amazon videos on the new Seller Ratings and also I’ve transcribed them for you.

You can let me know your thoughts on how we’re being rated in the comments section at the bottom, but for now, lets dig in and see what this fuss is about.

Seller Ratings Widget

What Amazon have done is make their scoring system transparent and in the process revealed a few nice extras and cool interface to boot. You can track where you are succeeding and also where you need to focus upon. Amazon Seller Ratings Dashboard Widget If you have this enabled you’ll know. There is a whopping great big pop-up message that appears on the Amazon dashboard after signing in. You’re given a rating and on a sliding scale of Fair to Excellent and in this example we can see this account is “Very Good”.

Note that this rating is appearing above the standard “Account Health” that you find in a normal Amazon Seller Central account, I am assuming this is because this is going to become the new standard for sellers to keep an eye upon.

An Introduction to Amazon Seller Ratings

This is the first video that is being used to inform Amazon Seller Central users about the new “Seller Ratings” and I’ve included the transcription under the video.

Press Play

This is the transcription of the video above and I’ve put the key parts in bold.

On Amazon, buyers have a lot of choices. So, when they are ready to purchase, what makes you stand out? Customers tell us that a sellers rating plays a critical part in their buying decision.

Would it not be great then if there is a rating system that could accurately reflect the effort you put in to making customers happy? Better still, what if the system could help you pin point customer service improvements that will lead directly to better rating and happier buyers?

Introducing Amazon seller rating inspired by and built for sellers. This unbiased, data driven system automatically recognizes your performance on every order. So now, every order counts towards and excellent, very good, good, or fair rating. This rating is based on how quickly you respond to buyers and whether you ship on time, cancel orders, have credit card charge backs, A to Z guarantee claims or negative feedback.

With this new seller rating system, buyers can get a complete picture of who they are trusting with their purchase and you can reap the rewards of all your hard work.
Seller ratings is not just comprehensive and objective; it also gives you more control. The seller matrix clearly points you to areas of improvement. Concentrate your rating on those and watch your rating and customer satisfaction rise. Simple as that!

While we are very excited to release this new system to sellers, we have no immediate plans to make the ratings visible to buyers. This is because we really want your input first before we consider making it visible to buyers.

We also want to give you time to get familiar with your rating, understand how it is calculated and to make improvements.
At Amazon, we know how important building business is to you and we know how important happy customers are to your business. We are excited to introduce this new seller rating system that can help with both.

To check out your rating and learn more, go to the seller rating page or click on the performance tab on seller central.

Seller Ratings Dashboard

To go with this new seller ratings, there is a new dashboard that is easy to understand. Although I have a suspicion that we’ll see this page evolve over time and likely see what we have on the Account health tab (the standard tab for monitoring performance on Amazon) join together into a single tab.

This dashboard is broken down into four key sections and before I walk you through them, it should be noted that all values shown in these images have been edited and may not add up correctly.

My Rating

Amazon Seller Ratiings - Ratings Table Amazon Seller Ratings - Ratings Table FlyoverThis block shows how you’re fairing and where you sit on the scale of “Fair” to “Excellent”. I didn’t notice this until later, but each of these ratings has a score assigned:

  • Fair = 0 to 0.79
  • Good = 0.8 to 0.93
  • Very Good = 0.94-0.97
  • Excellent = 0.98 to 1

We’ll be looking at these ratings in the next section, but for now realise that you’re being rated on a scale of 0 to 1 and you are being expected to perform in the top 0.3 percentile. Well, just like eBay :)

Score

There is a video on the rating system for which we’ll get to shortly, but for now we can see from the dashboard to the below that we (as sellers) are going to be given points. Seller Rating Score DashboardThese points are broken up into 4 sections and there is a bonus too.

  • No problems = 1 point
  • Minor Problems = 0 points
  • Moderate problems = -1 points
  • Severe problems = -5 points

order score +1+1 No problems
If you have no issues with the order being processed and the customer receiving it ok etc… Then happy days we get a point, sweet!

order score 00 Points for Minor Problems
But if you fail to answer an email within 24 hours, you wipe out the point you would have got for an order despatched on time and with no issues. The same goes if the order is late to be despatched.

order score -1-1 Points
If you have to cancel the order, then I’m afraid this is where it starts to hurt, you receive a negative point for a cancelled order.

order score -5– 5 Points for Being Bad
Let’s face it the following four reasons are all bad and Amazon are going to slap you for a 5 points if you achieve any of these. Receiving a charge-back, an A-Z claim, a negative feedback or allowing an order to expire are all not nice to experience as a buyer, let a lone as a seller.

While I’m writing this I am reminded of a Ted.com video I watched a few weeks back. While I’m not going to include it here as part of the article (as it’s worthy of its very own), the dynamics being used in this system absolutely wreak gaming. The video which I’m taking about is here and it’s 10 minutes well spent.

order score +1-10.1 Points as a Bonus
If you get everything right then you’ll be awarded a 10% bonus, well 0.1 of a point for fulfilling your part of the process well, by including a valid tracking number, met the minimum proposed delivery date, had no refund and were delivered within 3 working days. Amazon Seller Ratings - Time Weighted AverageAssuming that most businesses include these details anyway, this could be an easy win.

But it gets better, Amazon has also included a special note to a time weighted average. Something that we all know from eBay with Best Match and the value of recent sales.

Amazon’s calculation favours order history in the past 90 days but still keeps note of your past experience.

We’ll be looking0 at the points system next in a video from Amazon.

How are these Seller Ratings Calculated Video

Amazon’s gone the full hog with this and we’ve got a second video for the seller ratings. Again a full transcription of the video is included with the key points highlighted in bold.

Press Play

Video Transcription

At Amazon we know your rating is important to you and that it helps you build your business. So we want to help you understand how objective data is used to calculate your rating and how by focusing on specific improvement areas, you have the power to change it.

Here is how it works:

Every order is assigned a score. If an order is fulfilled without any problems, it gets one point. On the other hand, orders that have problems loose points.

These include orders that were canceled or expired, shipped late, had increased from buyers that took longer than 2 hours to respond to, had credit card charge backs, A to Z guarantee claims or negative feedback.

Some problems are more serious than others. So, for example, an order gets zero points if it’s shipped late but gets negative five points if it receives an A to Z guarantee claim. If an order has multiple problems, only the most serious one is counted.

You can also get bonus points. An order with truly exceptional service is awarded with an additional bonus of a 10th of a point for a total score of 1.1. Next, the score for all your orders within the last 12 months are totaled and an average is computed by dividing the total points by the number of orders.

Since performance on recent orders is more recent than those in the past, a time weighted average is applied to determine your final score.

Finally, depending on where your final score lies within the pre-determined range, you will be rated as a one of excellent, very good, good or fair. You can identify problem areas and then improve your rating by looking at the order quality report or by focusing on the suggestions on the seller rating page.

Some of you may discover that you do not have a rating. That just means you are a new seller or you have not had enough orders this year to calculate a rating. As your business grows and you have sufficient order history, the system will automatically calculate a rating for you. Meanwhile, you can still view your rating metrics to see how you are doing.

At Amazon, we are excited about a comprehensive and objective rating system that rewards you for all the effort you put in to your business and puts you in the driver seat.

How can I Improve My Rating

How can I improve my ratings This section shows the number of negative feedback, number of seller cancellations and late despatches, that in itself is useful, but what is sat behind this is even cooler and we’ll be looking at the new reporting tools in more depth shortly. Each of the suggestions, link to the same help page on Amazon here, but this may not work for you yet!

Rating Trend

Amazon Seller Ratings - Rating Trends ChartDecidedly un-remarkable currently, this chart over time will track your performance so you can see where your account is going. It gets better… honest.

New Reporting!

Amazon Seller Ratings - Report FilteringTransparency has been a big issues for sellers on eBay, especially for DSR ratings. Some sellers get reports and some do not. Finding out who has left you poor ratings is ni-on impossible for the masses and this is where Amazon have done really well. Their reporting for this new section is amazing.

Well… that is if you spot the hidden side menu that allows you to filter the search results. But that is a tiny niggle. That side bar that says “Search & Filters” is not clear that it exist when you first load the page and I only spotted it by accident.

On opening you can see in the screen shot, there are numerous search filters and also a date range filter that I’ve not included in the screen shot too. But thats just the filters, you wait till you see the report below!

The screen shot below shows an edited version of a orders report.
I’ve put a huge TICK next to the tick box you want to click on as again this is a hidden feature that shows all the good stuff in the report.
Seller Ratings Order Report ExampleIn the report above I have used a couple of colours to indicated the different scores in action. For orders where there has been a screw up, then -5 points have been applied, there are a few -1’s and a few 0’s as well.

What is shown is that there are two 1.1 transactions and while this report gives a good overview of the scores in action, the filters used were to show the the zero and negative values and the vast majority of your account should be +1 and +1.1’s.

Amazon Seller Ratings Summary

Technically we already get the stats for the products rankings on Amazon through the seller reports and sales rank scores. Amazon have now made the variables that they see as important to buyers, ensuring that the customer is happy is now rewarded.

But when the customer is not kept happy, then they’ll slap you & take points away from you. No one likes anything being removed, taken away or deducted and if they play the gaming dynamics on this well, this should see some interesting results given enough time.

Talking of gaming dynamics, here is one for Mr Bezos, making the seller stats public, as much as they’d hate you for it (I’m sure a few of you just gasped at that), would make a massive game that pitches product based businesses against each other on a open(ish) playing field other than just the price race to the bottom.

The video content included by Amazon is excellent and in the video for the how the ratings are calculated, it’s mentioned that the ratings are not going to be shown to the buyers just yet.

I’m not sure that 0.98 really means a lot to buyers. The general public understands percentages a lot more easily and my biggest comment to Amazon is to that convert this number to a percentage and show that to a buyer instead. 0.98 means what exactly? “Is that not even 1 out of a hundred?” You see my point?

Along with keeping it clear to buyers, Amazon has so far kept a clean interface, but even while I believe that the have included is very cool, looks fab and it’s been explained well, I do have my reservations that this may confuse business owners, especially new businesses to Amazon with new seller ratings, if they’re not combined with the existing options quickly.

What do you think?

Do you like the idea of a points mechanism, where you are rewarded for good behaviour and slapped for being bad? Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea?

Let me know in the comments box below.

Podcast 003 – The 101 of eBay Variations + 7 Tips

They weld themselves to the top of eBay search results and now that eBay’s paid promotion tool for “Featured First” is going, using variations on eBay has never been so important.

In this Podcast with myself Matt (waves) and Dave Furness, we discuss eBay variations and why you should be using them, the benefits and the downsides and give you 7 tips to follow for success using variation listings.

We’ve listened to your feedback and today’s Podcast is a half the length of our previous Podcasts and comes in at a trim 30 minutes. If you think we’ve skimped on value, you’d be wrong, wait until the end :)

[powerpress]

Because this is may be new to you, above is a green play button. Press play and you’re listening!

If you’d like to download the podcast for listening to on your iPhone, Droid or iPad you can do or you can press the “Play in new window” button to be able to listen to the Podcast while browsing.  If you use iTunes, you can subscribe here for free.

 

What are eBay variations & Why do you want to use them?

Variations allow you to keep a product that has a range of options in a single listing. This makes selecting the right product as a customer much, much easier as they no longer have to go and find the variation they want, such as a shoe size, they can pick from a single listing.

eBay Variations Example

Several good examples of how these are used and are easier for both buyers and sellers are:

  • A pair of shoes that come in multiple sizes
  • A dress that comes in different sizes and colours
  • Rugs that come in different colours, styles and sizes.
  • Motorcycle helmets
  • A handbag that comes in multiple colours

Each of these products can come in different sizes, colours and styles. When linked together it makes it much easier for a buyer to make the right choice and also easier for you as a seller to track their inventory as instead of an individual listing for each colour/size/style, they are all contained in one listing.

Variation listings are now supported in 20 categories on eBay UK and you can see the full list and the exceptions here.

What other Benefits are there for sellers?

There are several key benefits to using variation listings and for best match rankings which is of special note and we cover that shortly too.

Key Benefits of using Variations

  • First picture is free so that if you have can extra free pictures on eBay, that swap when the buyer makes a selection
  • Saving money on listing fee’s as one insertion fee
  • The subtitle upgrade is better value as its £1.05 for a single listing
  • Increase of product visibility – every time a sub SKU sells the whole listing benefits
  • Stays clear of duplicate listing policy
  • Makes it easier for the buyer to find what they want which should make your listings stickier and increase conversion.

Note: You will hear us call them “multi variations” in the Podcast, even if you item has one variation, it’s the same thing. It’s just a term we use and it’s the same as variations, whether there is 1 variation or 5 variation options.

eBay Variation Tutorial Video

Earlier this year Dave Forest from the eBay UK seller team created a video to take you through the creation and use of eBay variations.

Dave takes you through a live listing on the eBay site, a Men’s T-Shirt that has colour and size variations and we can see how the price changes with his selection and also the how the image changes for each colour variation. Then how to create a variation listing in multiple colours and sizes like the example listing.

eBay Best Match & Variations

Listings that are variations become welded to the top of the search results. Even by eBay’s own admission in several categories you cannot compete unless you are using variation listings. They took hold fast and have completely changed the dynamics in every category they have been released in.

To make the point, we’ve made some searches on eBay below. Take a look for yourself and the listings that you see without “More Options” under them, you’ll find very few because for all the BIN listings, the single listings just don’t get a chance.

Example Searches of How Variations Weld to the Best Match Search Results

In the Podcast we refer to a rugs listing that has 17 colours and 10 sizes, you can view that item here http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/150669779518 at the time we looked at it, it had around 2216 items sold. Now it has 2255 at the time of writing!

Are there downsides to using eBay variations?

Although these are minor when compared to the benefits, unfortunately there are a couple of downsides to using variations.

  • Can’t rename the master variation SKU in eBay
  • Creating them can be slow
  • They are not supported by all 3rd party tools and even eBay’s own turbo Lister you cannot import or export them.
  • Cannot add separate EAN’s for Google search/shopping results for each variation

In the next updates we are seeing

eBay variations and Pricing UpdatedI’ve covered the eBay Autumn 2012 updates in huge detail, however the variations didn’t get much hype from eBay, but they were one of the biggest winners with numerous changes that will improve their performance.

  • We’ll be seeing “£9.99 – £129.99″ instead of the highest price only
  • Also seeing image swatches for colours, when common colours are used (shades)
  • Intelligent variation search – search for Pink shirt and eBay will show you the image of a pink shirt (Providing you have one uploaded).
  • Featured first is going, so your listings need to be as good as possible to get to the top spot…

Our Tips for Variations on eBay

Myself and Dave have put together 7 top tips for you on eBay variations and the last one is golden.

  1. Where-ever possible use them
    If your category supports them then you should be using them (we have the entire list on the website at… ) http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/listing-variations.html#categories
  2. Keep the options to a minimum
    Think of your buyers! Try and keep the variations to a minimum, Size and colour.
  3. You can change prices if needed
    Remember you can change the pricing for each combination and if one variation goes out of stock, the listing remains.
  4. Take advantage of eBay’s Fast N Free Option
    Don’’t forget that eBay are going to be showing products as “Fast N Free” when you have an estimated delivery of 3 days or less. So that means if you have a handling time of 1 day and first class or a courier of 24hrs or 48hrs with the same handling time.
  5. Don’t force variations if your products don’t suit.
    Certain categories are so suited to having variations, such as fashion and certain home items.  If your item isn’t one of them, don’t force it or have complicated variations.
  6. Use images for each core variation
    Make sure you have pictures loaded for each variation…in place for when the latest update comes in, it’s going to be even more important
  7. Name the variation labels well
    Apparently it is OK to do this, you are able to Keyword stuff the variation names. As the variation names may only show 35 chars in the drop down box but you can add variation names that are up to 50 chars long. So thats your eBay title at 80 + 50 + 50 + etc… There is an article I created a while ago here that includes a video showing this in action. eBay declined to remove the listing.

Thank You!

We don’t really say it enough, thank for taking the time to listen in, because of you we’re out growing our current web hosting and are moving to a new server this weekend.

Your Feedback

You may have noticed that the sound quality has got better and we’d love to hear your feedback about this Podcast and your thoughts and experiences with eBay variations.

You can let us know in the comments box below.

A Good Problem. We’re Moving!

Ola!

There are bad problems and there are good problems, I always prefer the latter and I’ve got an excellent one.

This is one of those amazing posts that I only dreamt about all that time ago when the LastDropofInk was first started.moving-home

For the past few weeks the sheer volume of traffic to the site has meant we’re coming to the end of what can be done on shared web hosting. It’s time we grow up and find a new home on a beastly dedicated server to allow this site and its services to grow even further.

This weekend the site will be moving to a new home and will be locked down to a holding page for a few hours which the data is transferred and DNS settings updated. Besides that you shouldn’t notice any visual difference to the site after the move and over the next 2-3 weeks I’ll start tuning the server to improve performance.

Two years ago I made the decision to not worry about web hosting and just get on a creating content,  the very first article was for Google TV. Since then with your help & support through all the conversations, emails, comments and support this site has grown & grown from a tens of hits each day  to thousands and for that I am eternally grateful.

I’ve got to run and edit today’s Podcast on eBay variation listings, the target time for the release is 2pm today, so I better get my rear-in-gear and get editing!

Thank you so much for your support.

Speak soon,

Matt

New eBay Logo, Your Thoughts?

The first time I saw the new eBay logo it did it no favours, with shadow and weird background, instead if this is the first time you have seen, look below in awe.

New eBay Logo

I liked the old logo a lot it’s done well, but let’s be honest, it’s old and it’s time has passed. Sooner or later we were going to get an updated version, thank goodness they have not strayed too far away from the original and frankly I think it looks ok and thank goodness it’s nothing like the Olympics 2012 logo, that would have been a disaster, but… What do you think? Let me know in the comments box below.

PS. It’s Podcast day! I’ve just started editing and should be ready for 2pm :)

5 Things You Could be Missing Out On In eSellerPro

eSellerPro LogoA little over three weeks ago I asked what you were struggling with and the larger topics I’m covering on the Podcasts we’re holding every Friday, but one of the smaller topics that you mentioned was that you’d like to know what you didn’t know for functionality in eSellerPro.

The following are relatively easy to set up and can save hundreds of man-hours each year. This gets deep really quickly and if you have any questions on these, just ask in the comments at the bottom or in the forums.

Note: For users of eSellerPro Lite who are in the ‘eBay Accelerated Growth Programme’, then you will still have access to the eBay templates, inventory details and also the custom fields sections, so you can use the conditional statements, but without the paragraphs. Also I’ve seen the courier rules set up with the shipping areas, so you may have access to these as well.

 

Using Keywords Inside Keywords & Conditional Keywords

When this first happened, it was deemed a bug. Really you should not put the keyword {{ItemDescription}} inside the description tab of a SKU and then preview or list it, what happens is that you get the description come out around 40 times.

Not ideal, but what it indicate is that you can put a keyword inside a keyword and with a little inspiration a few years ago, this turned into a really cool feature, which when used correctly can help structure your date very cleanly.

Let’s say you have a custom fields group called “Generic”, that group holds generic information about SKU’s, maybe 5 bullet points for Amazon and some other standard fields. If you add a new custom-field called “Description”, but make this custom field a list.

On the values tab for that custom fields group, you can then add values to it. If you were to add a value called “{{Insert:Description_Sofas}}” that just so happens to be a keyword, this keyword is an Insert command to bring in a paragraph block called “Description_Sofas”.

Thus if you assign this keyword in the dropdown box for the “Description” customfield on an inventory record then all you’d need to do is add {{CustomFields:Generic:Description}} to a listing template and wayhey! We now have the description contents being controlled in a custom field and completely separated from the listing template.

But that’s just simple use of custom fields, did you know you can logic test them too? I’ve written a couple of guides on these already and they should not be overlooked. You can make logic decisions if something is valid (that’s an IF clause), decide to do something if something is not valid (that’s an IFNOT) and there are other functions such as IFELSE and also a neat function to SPLIT the values in a data field.

If I’ve lost you with that last paragraph, don’t worry, read these three articles, they all have practical examples in them:

Courier Rules that use Postcode Ranges & Countries

Courier rules in eSellerPro are very powerful, but sadly sometimes they are heavily underused. These rules are business rules, that means that orders that come in with specific courier criteria may leave the warehouse with different information.

A really simple example of this is that a customer may pay for 2nd class on their order, that’s what they saw on eBay, however a business rule may be that because the order total was over £20 and in the United Kingdom then this order is automatically promoted to 1st class.

That is a simple example, but it’s because of what can be achieved through the courier rules, it has for a long, long time made me wonder why on earth people pay 12pence a pop to MetaPack, when obviously the tool you are using to process courier rules is not up to the job and MetaPack needs to step in a bridge that gap (albeit a little steep at that kind of price per package, although there is a compelling argument for redundancy in couriers and MetaPack does provide that).

Courier rules can get deep pretty quickly, so it’s always worth speaking with your implementer or support representative to work out exactly what you need, however the courier rules can be layered and you can create some complex rules that mean you can deliver your orders to customers faster and more cheaply than you ever thought possible, when you consider that you can factor in rules for the following conditions:

  • Order source
  • The method the buyer chose at checkout
  • The order weight
  • The seller ID
  • The order value
  • Quantity of items in the order
  • Shipping value paid
  • And finally the most powerful one of them all, the Shipping Area
eSellerPro Shipping Areas

You may be wondering why there are locations set for both United Kingdom and Great Britain and you’d be right that is a little odd, until you consider that eBay refers to the UK as “United Kingdom” and Amazon refers to the UK as “Great Britain”. Don’t let that one catch you out, I’ve already found that one out the hard way a long time ago.

You can easily create a logical process for your orders with “shipping areas” to filter through so that your orders go via the most cost and time effect paths and your staff don’t see any of the processing!

By setting up groups of locations, whether these be postcode ranges, such as BT for Northern Ireland or all the exceptions for your courier where you’re charged more. Maybe the core zones in Europe, so that your main courier say parcel Force is expensive to Euro 3 Zone, so instead you can easily switch to a different courier for that zone, or pick out a single country, such as Germany and have special rules just for that destination.

Packing Processes

This won’t suit all businesses, but the ones where it does this

will save you huge amounts of time through process control.

In short this is where orders are printed by one member of staff that manages the order queue and then using the document that is printed a special screen called the “Packing Screen” is used to process and despatch orders.

A barcode is scanned off the despatch document and that barcode is the order ID, this is then read in eSellerPro and the order contents are loaded up. Then for each line item the line item is scanned for it’s barcode and as each order line item is scanned it is removed from the order on the screen, until all the line items have been scanned.

Now we have a verified order and when this happens, with our courier rules above and assuming we have the couriers integrated in eSellerPro, you courier label will be printed. Pop the item’s in their package and slap the label on, job done, next.

Also as part of this process you can also scan barcodes, brilliant for refurbished or high value products that need the serial number recording for later verification.

Automatic Barcode Assignments

What is a barcode?If you have your own Barcode range from GS1, then it’s dead easy for this range to be added to your eSellerPro account and then when you send a new product to Amazon that does not have a EAN (or UPC) set, one will be automatically assigned for you.

If you’ve not got the foggy-est on what GS1, barcodes, EAN’s and UPC’s are, see this article, I explain them all.

Water-Marked Images

watermarked imageThe final topic that you probably didn’t know that eSellerPro could do is water mark your images automatically.

Before we go any further on this, it can be tricky to set up and it does mean that you do need to provide eSellerPro with standard sized images, so that the watermark that comes out in the final image is uniform.

This can also be done for multiple accounts too, but does require setting up by your implementer/support.

In Summary

So there we have them, five things you probably did not know that eSellerPro could do.

From stacking keywords inside of each other and then logic testing them, to making sure that your orders go using the most cost and time effect couriers and saving a fortune by not using MetaPack, packing them in a lean and mean despatch process with barcode scanners, the auto assignment of Barcode s from your range and finally, water marking your images automatically.

If you’re struggling with something, no matter how small or if you just have a question you think I or Dave can answer, ask us in the forums here.

How to Get Amazon Feedback Removed

Amazon Negative FeedbackReceiving a negative comment regardless if it’s on a marketplace or not is not fun, however with this simple to follow guide you can get some of your negative and neutral comments removed.

What Can be Removed from Amazon Feedback?

To set clear expectations this is not going to work for all comments that are left, however there is a certain type of comment that Amazon will remove that doesn’t include the normal reasons such as foul language or if they have left personally identifiable information, like a link, address or name (if you didn’t know those two, they’ve just scored two more).

“The type of feedback comment you can easily asked to be removed from Amazon is the type of feedback that includes a review of the product”

Amazon Neutral CommentAmazon has spent years building up their reviews database, from what started as staff adding their reviews to the vibrant feedback forum it has now turned into with products that receiving decent 4 & 5 star reviews outstripping their competition hands down. The type of feedback comment you can easily ask to be removed from Amazon is the type of feedback that includes a review of the product.  After all a product review should be in the correct section for others to see, not in a sellers feedback profile.

And it’s on those grounds you can ask (where apt of course) for Amazon to remove a product review from your feedback profile on Amazon and if that comment happens to be a neutral or negative comment, happy days.

Just before posting this article I thought I’d see if I could find an apt comment to use as an example, the very first seller I found on Amazon had one and I’ve included it as a screenshot to the right.

“Little disappointed as the adventures are quite short – one about 20-25 minutes and the other only 15 minutes. Perhaps I didn’t read the info section properly.”

That kind of feedback would be amazing in a product review, if you were buying the product that “AST” had bought and spotted in the customer reviews that they stories were rather short.

That to me is a product review, not a constructive comment for the services provided by the seller and as such is up for removal, Amazon see it that way too in their FAQ section.

Removing Neutral & Negative Amazon Comments

You have to ask Amazon to remove the comment(s) from your profile, they won’t pro-actively check your feedback cards. You can do this by following these steps:

  1. Go to open a new ‘Support Case’ in Amazon Seller Central
  2. Select “Seller Account Settings” on the left
  3. The select “Orders > Customer feedback problems”
  4. And include the details about the comment and clearly state that it is a product review.
  5. Select your contact method at the bottom and press “Send Message”

To help you, I have written you a template you could use when contacting Amazon. If you have had previous feedback comments remove, it’s always a good idea to include the previous ticket number, as it’s unlikely to be the same member of the Amazon Seller Support team that is going to be answering you email

Hello,

We have received a comment from <USERNAME> that reads as a product review in our feedback profile on our Amazon account.

The comment is:

<ENTER THE COMMENT HERE>

As you can see this really is a product review and is more suited towards the product reviews section, can you remove this comment from our feedback profile?

Kind regards,

<YOU NAME>

This is know to work well for comments that are reviews, let me know your experiences in the comments box below!

The One Box You Shouldn’t “Un-Tick” in eSellerPro

The HTML editor in eSellerPro is a menace. If you use it to edit your description blocks, it’ll add it’s own version of HTML it and if you’re trying to process any form of advanced logic past a simple IF/NOT statement then it’ll eat it for breakfast.

eSellerPro HTML EditorOur saviour is the checkbox that is found at the bottom of the HTML editor on almost all description/content entry points that stops the editor from being loaded. Thus you don’t end up with broken HTML descriptions and logic tests that no longer work.

You know when you’ve had your descriptions edited by the editor when you start noticing odd <p>,</p> and <br> tags all around your descriptions. Check your eBay templates, you didn’t put them there, the editor did and unpicking the mess can take a while.

My tip, never use the editor to begin with and turn it off. You’ll find this option in the following entry areas and if you ask support there is a user setting to disable the HTML editor system wide to stop staff from inadvertently turning the editor back on and it chewing your content blocks.

  • eBay templates
  • Paragraph builder
  • Postage template description
  • Customfield descriptions

Hopefully this little tip will save you ages trying to work out why a description is half way down a page when it should not be, then finding out that the editor has entered 30 <br> tags at the end of conditional statements.