Matthew is an eBay Expert & consultant with over 10 years of experience on eBay. Has worked for two eBay auction management companies and has helped hundreds of eBay based businesses sell on eBay, including his own for 3 years.

Having run his own business on eBay UK for 3 years, been featured on BBC News 24, BBC Radio 4 “In Business” with Peter Day and also featured in the Sunday Times.

eBay Top Rated SellerHosting the very first eBay PowerSellers meeting of its kind in the UK, attended by eBay, which then lead to the eBay university program. Then working for the USA auction management company MarketWorks.com (now owned by ChannelAdvisor) here in the UK and then later on eSellerPro.com another eBay listing software company, Matthew has probably seen more eBay based businesses outside the confines of eBay than anyone else in the UK.

Matthew takes a different approach to eBay and it really shows in the articles he writes. eBay is just a sales channel, admittedly a rather large one at that, but this should never be forgotten and he knows that its all to easy to become caught up in a whirl-wind of noise that is generated by selling on eBay and does his best to help keep your feet on the ground and focus at the job at hand, making more profit.

Its unlikely you’re going to ask Matthew something he does not already know about eBay, you can contact him on his dedicated Contact Matthew page.

Cheaper Toys than Large Retailers? eBay UK? I’m Not Buying It

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Have just been reading an interesting article by AuctionBytes called ‘eBay UK Says It Has Cheaper Toys than Large Retailer‘, but I’m not buying it. Not Toys, I have two kids, but the indication that redundant staff maybe behind the trend.

Quote:
eBay cited unnamed retail analysts who believe that redundancy (layoffs) may be behind the trend, “with former employees unable to find jobs setting up their own businesses instead.

animagic-daisyNow the reason why I am not buying it, is because generally the Toy distribution network is based upon distribution rights management, in short you normally have one company distributing in one country and another in another.

I know this because trying to sell toys across multiple countries is a minefield and the toy manufacturers are exceptionally anally-retentive when it comes the Internet. Its only in the past year that some MD’s have opened up to the ‘Internet’ being a viable sales channel.

The other reason why I am not buying this, is because the greatest danger (to price) is not ToysRus or similar going ‘eBay’, its their suppliers, the ones that run the distribution networks you need to be looking at.

As the old blood dies out, new, more open minded figures will move in, when this happens (and it will, given enough time), that’s when the whole toys selling-floor-plan will change.

Complete Disappointment @ eBay Austin Reed Outlet

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This could be simply compared to paying absolute top-whack money to locate your store in a shopping mall or popular high street location, with its perfect location and an insanely high volume of passers with a 100% chance of walk-in custom. Just like it is being featured as an eBay Outlet in fact, but without the top-whack money outlay.

Giving the physcial store  a fantastic front-of-house display, spending decent money of staff and designer time to create a brilliant display set-up, with this season’s designs, for both her and him, plus the accessories, stands and covering it from all angles of entry (shop displays are very rarely hit straight on, always need to be angled sideways to capture walking custom).

But then forgetting to replicate the style in the inside of the physical store. Tatty shelves, everything boxed up and not on display. Just left in a heap on the floor. Like a Kwik-Save from the 1990’s.

Yep, you’d never do it on the high street so why are you doing it on the net?

austin-read-ebay-shop-front.jpg

Austin Read eBay Shop Front

Yes, the front of house does have issues, but thats minor when you compare it to when you leave the front page and enter a category, try it and you’ll see this:

austin-read-ebay-shop-inners

Austin Read eBay Shop Inners

Its completely lost its style, that fab looking store front, that front of house display, you know the one, the one that can make or break a retail shop… its.. gone.

There is a gaming term, that is most apt for this, its called the *face palm*, you know the action, place your head in the palm of your hand and move you head gently side to side.

As you can see from the two purple links, I was looking for shirts (my shirt spend is almost as bad as my book spending habit on Amazon currently), the inner templates are OK, but are lacking a close up shot of the fabric, that’s a big thing for me when buying a shirt, the fabric.

It would take someone less than 30 minutes to put a nice header together, probably even less then that as you could almost copy the one from the home page.

Look, this took me < 1 minute in Paint, see how much better it looks?

austin-read-ebay-shop-inners-better

Suggested Header

Going from the shop home page, to a category page is such a shock to the browsing buyer. Remember they’re[customers] crazy creatures and do not like being scared, the same if coming from an eBay listing to a shop category page, it would be far less distressing with a header in place.

Do not let your buyers think, buyers thinking is a bad idea, make it easy for them, make it a common experience, make it simple.

eBay: Doing ‘Whatever is Needed’ to Keep the Seller Entertained.

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Following on from eBay Conspiracy Theory Overview : Part 1 I am sure that eBay do what-ever is needed, even if it costs them sales overall to keep sellers entertained on the eBay platform.

Think about it, DSRs, best match, duplication policy being rolled out right before Christmas, numerous other ‘we’ll panic the **** out of sellers’ with these changes right before a holiday season, they have all been released at really awkward times for sellers.

Best match was a monkey last year with it being tweaked into the holiday season, this year, this statement sums it up:

eBay –  eBay continued  to perform well (especially given the softness we saw in the first 10 days of November due to the duplicate listing policy impacts) and came in at 8.1% for November, way above October’s 5.5%.  Like Amazon, eBay has benefited from a strong secular e-commerce holiday selling period in November.
Source: Channel Advisor

Basically US sellers were screwed over (that’s harsh I know, but imagine if you were a US seller and eBay did this to you right before Christmas) just before the busy season started for vast majority sellers. Look at the date, for goodness sake ‘POSTED OCTOBER 26TH, 2010’. The UK had this (although slightly differently) last year, LAST YEAR. Come on, was there any need to do this at the end of October?

Selling on eBay could be a lot simpler, look at Amazon, they have it down pretty well when products exist in their database, barcode or ASIN, quantity and price, what more do you need?

Well you need everything apparently, every single toy and moving goal post to keep sellers entertained on the eBay marketplace and crucially not on other marketplaces, like Amazon for example.

Why else would such stunts be pulled so close to Christmas?

So my point is?

eBay have proven they will do what ever is needed to keep sellers entertained with the eBay market place. I’m not saying this is a bad thing for eBay, its a brilliant coo, but from a sellers perspective, its a minefield, but also a fantastic opportunity for those sellers who can move fast and take these changes on.

I fell into this trap a few years back, stop looking art DSR’s, stop looking at your feedback every 2 seconds, screw it, what counts is sales, profit and converting existing customers into repeat ones. Anything else is peripheral junk.

Be fully aware of the game that is being played. Work the system, rather than bitching about it. As such, I’ll shut up now :)

eBay Its a ‘Trust’ thing : Part 2 – Always Selling

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In my earlier article where eBay and Amazon were being compared directly (you can see the article here eBay V’s Amazon – Its a ‘Trust’ thing).

Today (was a while back now) at the top of the inbox an email from eBay ‘Who says nothing is for free, username?’ OoO another free listing day, nope, just the spam that we had been expecting from the announcement that eBay were trying to reinforce that trust is an issue on eBay.

eBay Shop With Confidence

eBay Shop With Confidence Mail

Let me be constructive here and let me point out a few things that makes this email more than just spam, but a great email:

  • Its branded towards eBay.
    This sounds like a no-brainer, but I have seen some shockingly crap’n’ugly marketing emails lately that have bared little resemblance of the companies brand. So sounds really daft, but 10/10 for making it look like the corporate brand.
  • A clear message
    Again sounds really daft, but having a simple message to convey is much easier and is responded to much more than some long winded paragraph.
    Keep an eye out on the net for reinforcement lines like these:
    You can Shop With Confidence < Header Line
    We’re Here to Help you < Reinforcement
  • Suggestive Icon
    Now this is the bit I love, the mere ‘suggestion’ that you could ring eBay is a brilliant ‘calmer’. Its like displaying your phone number in listing templates and on the website, the customer probably will never ring it, but feels reassured that its there if needed.
  • Clear Call-To-Action
    Now this is genius and needs to be learnt from. eBay appears, that they did not actually want the reader to read the rest of the information, just tell them that it existed.
    Why? Simple, look at the two call-to-action buttons, the much larger one, the real one, is twice the size of the smaller, on-topic one. If you were give two seconds to click which one would you hit? Now where do you think it goes? Brilliant!

I rant about this a lot, but buyers are idiots, its your job to guide the customer where you want them to go, knowing where you want them to go is paramount, eBay in this case knew exactly what they were doing, pulling a PR trust and safety stunt, BUT pulling off a massive coo, by slipping past mask of the email and turning it into a buying experience. Absolutely brilliant. Now, how do we do that with your email marketing?

OK, I’ll Leave ToysRus on eBay Alone. Well May be…

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This is quite an old article now. I have considered removing it and I have edited it slightly since. However I decided that it would be better to leave this and the other articles on the site, as with anything, experience is only learnt through fire, this was one of those times where I could have done better and approached the subject more tactfully.

I’m leaving it, as it shows I’m just a mere mortal, like us all.

Thats right, I’ll definitely not mention any of following:

Listing titles are being heavily wasted

I covered this off previously in the post called SuperDryStore The Wasteful eBay Listings where they were also wasting their most important asset too (besides the unhealthy amount of ‘Daily Deals’, *coff*).

Picking on a random item ‘Playmobil Firefighter’s with Water Pump’ racks in at just 39 chars, that leaves 16 beauties or 29% wasted. Now times this by +10,000 items, thats a lot of potential lost.

Its really easy to deal with adding extra chars in excel, obviously humans with decent product knowledge are best, but as a temporary measure, you can readily create your own formula in excel that combines cells together. If you use the LEN() function, you can work in layers, here is an example from a recent project:

=IF(A2="","",
UPPER(
IF(AD2="something",IF(LEN(E2)<48,"something "&E2,IF(LEN(E2)<48,"UK NEW "&UPPER(E2),IF(LEN(E2)<52,"UK "&UPPER(E2),E2))),
IF(AD2="something else",IF(LEN(E2)<48,"NEW UK " &E2,IF(LEN(E2)<48,"UK NEW "&E2,IF(LEN(E2)<52,"UK "&UPPER(E2),UPPER(E2)))),
IF(LEN(E2)<48,"UK NEW "&E2,IF(LEN(E2)<52,"UK "& UPPER(E2),UPPER(E2)))
)))
)

In many cases, the eBay listing title and its restrictive 55 chars is a benefit to sellers, as it makes them think about the important keywords and can ‘sometimes’ (I say this very loosely) have a positive effect on website titles and Amazon titles. Although for both of those marketplaces, I’d suggest altering them, if you’re using excel or similar to create titles, you can be extremely coy in the titles that are created and make many variations easily from the same source keyword sets.

Wow, Wasted Subtitles

Obviously a eBay freebie, because no normal seller would waste these little gems so extensively. Again using the section called ‘Subtitles, WTF?‘ in the previous post, using the formula:

Seal | The | Deal

Should work quite well, lets face it, its unlikely that each will have their own special subtitle, so a common approach is needed and of course for those daily deals, a hand written one can be employed. But for now, anything is an improvement.

I’m not in a creative mood currently, I’m sure you can use the similar process I used and knock up a winning subtitle.

Think About The Shipping

Using the image to the left, which is the shipping box from one of the eBay categories [4631] and then look at one of the toysrus listings and you quickly spot that as soon as customer selections expedited or free shipping, the listings are gone from the results, that’s BAD.

This is where covering as many bases as possible is really important, to the point, I may have let loose a naughty one to cover 50% more bases in this post by abusing the new and used options.

Sooo with this in mind, if you can load a sensible shipping price into the item and offer a free shipping option by default, then add at least one upgrade option an expedited service too.

I’m not even going to go-there for international deliveries, the feedback is already too hammered to even contemplate suggesting this, plus it would probably not be a wise decision and would be better run from stock held locally in the local countries (plus knowing what toy distribution is like, it would be a damn nightmare) .

For those not aware, the free shipping options does not appear to carry the same kind of weighting to best match as eBay would like to lead you to believe, it helps for sure, but its not a hugely important factor. I’m suggesting a free shipping option purely on the basis that as many item specific options need to be covered (and then some).

Item Specifics

I’m not saying much on this, at least they’re marked as new. A great job of categorisation has been done, so for now, no comment. Categorisation is secondary to the listing titles being correct. I do rant about item specifics quite a lot, they’re important, but I have always classed the order of importance as titles > categorisation > item specifics.

Although saying that, I do suspect I am now wrong, and categorisation and item specifics need to be swapped around in the order of importance.

*coff* the toys categories support custom item specifics, at least setting brand on the majority (most haven’t, I checked) of items would help.

Listing Design

I’ve already gone on a bender on this, you can see the full break down here, if only a single change could be made, add the shipping ( if CA can total prices?[doubt it thinking about it] total order price to the ‘Our Price’ box, so a total cost of ownership can be quickly worked out in ones head.

Please note that buyers are idiots, making them think is a bloody stupid idea, so give it to them on plate.

It is your role as the business to provide clear, informative details so that a buyer can make an informed decision, that this item, really is the right item for them. Never forget this.

eBay Shop

At least it has a header and I do like the extra boxes that have been added to the left navigation, although a custom landing page would be a better idea.

Ask your self this:

If you were to walk into M&S and they piled every item infront of you, what would you do?

Not a lot right? Wood for trees and all that? Exactly, when entering the front of a store, people need to be guided in a decompression area (this ‘decompression area’ is from Why We Buy, brilliant book that, finally gave a name to it) so that they can then navigate themselves to the right area (I am not saying don’t make offers here, just do not overwhelm the idiot, err I mean buyer).

Last one feedback

Yep, you knew that one was coming… Get the wallet out and get on the phone and bribe your way out of this mess.

Negatives, attract negatives.

They always have done and always will do. Anyone remember the Shu screw up a while back? I have never seen sooooooo many negs left in such a short amount of time. At least follow them up with a constructive personalised comment for goodness sake. Admitting you made a mistake is the first step forwards in anything.

Summary

Sooo, use every one of the 55 chars you get for listing on eBay, its the most important asset you have; If you’re using subtitles, ideally they should be personalised to the inventory you are selling, or carry a reinforcement message for the companies USP’s, sorry my bad, ‘Unique Selling Points’.

Break the click-loss battle over that left hand bar in the eBay navigation and work it to your advantage, in some cases being smart is your only advantage, dumb-brute-force also works too as clearly shown above.

The listing template isn’t even worth mentioning in detail, it my frank opinion its been done really poorly and I would have expected better from the companies involved (Channel Advisor, eBay and I suspect GSi had a hand in this somewhere).

Wow and those negs, if you ever get this issue, get the wallet out and start bribing, its Christmas time as well, any seasoned idiot can work out what motivates people this time of the year, use it and abuse it.

As Big as Big Boys – How Appear to be Big on a Shoe String

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Looking BigLooking big is really quite easy on the internet, all it takes is some time, some cunning and a nudge in the right direction. Follow this step by step guide and you’re look like an established or corporate business in next to no time.

Here are some key page names you need to create and add to your site, ideally linked from your footer area on all pages (except the checkout if possible):

  • Press Office
  • Affiliates
  • Meet the Team
  • Careers, Recruitment or Join the Team at Company Ltd
  • Partners
  • Store Locator (if you have a trade or customer collections site)

Even if you do not have a press office, affiliate network set up, a team (other than the parents & pet cat), partners or a store. Get these pages up.

Get the Email Addresses Sorted
First off, with any decent hosting account you get a load of email boxes or forwarders, create a selection of email addresses, press@, affiliates@, careers@, store@ and forward them all to your main email address. It doesn’t matter that these go to the same email address, its the message they convey.

Press Office
For the press office, write a little blurb, here is a great example, minus the link to the PR company, make the contacts name up or even copy Donna’s name.  70% of that page is one fat image, do the same.

Affiliate Network
Even if you don’t have an affiliate network set up, lob a page up offering 2.5-8% of sales to affiliates, you never know you might be approached before you go looking to join an affiliate network.

Meet the Team
A personal favourite of mine, get some half decent pictures taken, I didn’t say pay for them, you’d be amazed what  you can do with a phone and the grey scale setting in photoshop, just check my about me page. That was me taking the pee in Tesco’s sporting a pack of ‘spam slices’.

Talk you friend, mum and dad to get in as well, a short bio, although if you don’t want to go the ‘family’ route you may want to alter their surnames.

If you’ve got any accreditations, lob them on. I used my MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) logos for my eBay stuff, although for the best part it was pretty much unrelated, but looked FAB!

Careers, Recruitment or Join the Team at Company Ltd
More of a personal preference here, if the company you wish to create has a more relaxed feel, go for the ‘Join the Team @ Company Ltd’ , otherwise name it careers or recruitment.

You know the drill, we’ve all looked at sites we’d like to work for, google them and copy/paste and edit a few lines.

Partners
Always a firm favourite, if you shift, sorry I mean market branded goods, then include a few logos and make the impression that you work with these companies, even if there is someone in the middle (a few times probably). If they’re unbranded, brand them and knock up a logo in paint.

Store Locator
If you have premises, then this is a shocker for both the website and any marketing materials, if the buyer has no intention of visiting, a picture of a shop, office, warehouse or tent will reassure the customer, you’re real. Oh and include a google map, they’re free or just screen shot and paste the image in.

A big tip here is include the phone number and email address in clear sight, customers will normally always phone or email rather getting off their butts to come in.

So your website should have a cracking footer line up now, the above should take no more than 15 minutes per page (thats 5 min’s googling, 5 min’s pasting, 5 min’s editing).

Press | Affiliates | Meet the Team | Careers | Partners | Store Locator

It looks swish doesn’t, almost a ‘real’ professional company that you always were. You’ve now paved the way to these departments in you business structure, all in an hour or two. What its says to the customer, ‘is these people are real’. Get over that hurdle, the rest is easy.

Show Our Age
Talking of easy, thats not the end yet, here is a quality chestnut, under you logo, do just have some cheesy by line, include the date the business was established.

Ask yourself, which sounds better?

  • I Love My Feet
  • I Love My Feet | Trading Since 2006

Thought so, do it. It adds an immediate age to the company and puts the browser at ease, this is a defo a tick if using right under the logo placed in the top right hand corner, no fancy text, just plain Arial or similar font face.

Facebook & Twitter
Include these pages ONLY and ONLY after you beefed it up, spoken to the entire pub and got Aunt Bessie to hit the like button too, get at least 100 likes before trying to promote it to people you do not know.

You’ve seen the pages & invites, ‘come see my Facebook page’, its got 1 fan and some ‘hello’ post, watch the dust balls ride on by, they’re clicking the back button. You want something to model for this, see MyProtein’s facebook page, its got some FB guru company beefing that one.

Warehouse or Store Picture
Take a look here on Google for some ‘warehouse‘ pictures, pick one and include it in your listing, about pages or on the site footer. If you actually have a warehouse and even a team of staff, ike em out and take a picture. Only takes a few mins and the staff get to see daylight.

I’ll stop here, I hope you’ve taken on board the point of this blog post, if you are to be big in business, then you need to give the impression that you are big in business, even if you’re not.

Who said this was TameBay, AuctionBytes or Similar?

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I had quite an interesting chat on Skype with a previous colleague last week, apparently I am getting bad press at eBay for ‘dissing’ their enterprise clients.

Speaking openly, it did cause me a few restless nights (it was really hot at night as well, Malta is not far from the equator and over 20C almost every day, I managed to completely miss all the snow, pity…), however I decided the following:

  1. I don’t want to work for eBay (believe it or not, never have done either)
    As such, as long as I am sensible (calling the design ‘shit‘ was probably a little too much in hindsight, apologies (but it still sucks)) I am going to carry on pointing and making fun of ‘botched’ jobs.
  2. I have no intention or desire to replicate ‘Tamebay’ or AucitonBytes.
    Tamebay is great, I love Chris & Sue’s views on ‘happenings’ in this arena, but its not me. Sorry, if you were expecting fluffy nice-ness, if it sucks, it sucks, why should I say anything different?
  3. Advertising
    It was also suggested the selling advertising space, sorry no. I would indicate that there are too many disclaimers on ‘other’ sites and I am only biased solely by my own opinion. If i want to recommend something I will do it personally, openly and crucially with the reasons why (like mailchimp, its fab).
  4. I also need to be ultra careful when it comes to clients & acquaintances, although I do my best to ensure I am translucent to outside parties.

Purpose

For those unsure on the purpose of this blog, take a read of Project Matthew Ogborne, quoting a section from this page:

If it wasn’t for a client of mine and great friend of mine who gave me a stark kick up the arse a few months back, I’d be keeping all this all to myself. Enjoy it, this is a professional nut case in action. Stand aside.

As Lisa said, its the application of ‘Matthew Ogborne’ that counts, anyone can point and poke but you[me] got the know-how, nows its for you to explain why and where and educate these people.

My point Is…

That there is a lot to be learnt and to continue learning from, pointing and making fun is the easy part, actually suggesting corrections and adaptations is a completely different ball park, what I regard as ‘my ball park’.

People have implemented my suggestions, made serious cash and also passed off them off as their own, this time around, you get them fresh, in their raw form to do with as you please.

Now, wait for tomorrows post…

ToysRus – Putting My Photoshop Skills Where My Mouth Is – The New Listing Template

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This is quite an old article now. I have considered removing it and I have edited it slightly since. However I decided that it would be better to leave this and the other articles on the site, as with anything, experience is only learnt through fire, this was one of those times where I could have done better and approached the subject more tactfully.

I’m leaving it, as it shows I’m just a mere mortal, like us all.

Original Article

In a meeting today with a client, the topic of outlets came up and I explained about ToysRus and my post two days ago and how I thought it was amateur.

Phil [the client] quite rightly suggested that I should explain my actions, going around and pointing at things and saying they are ‘poor’, it isn’t on, prove they’re shit and explain why you think its better he said, this is for you Phil.

10 Minutes in Photoshop

I set the stop watch , well looked at windows clock and started, 10 minutes of my pr0 photoshop skills were unleashed. Thats right, I bodged this together in 10 minutes flat.

My point is that its not my photoshop skills you should be interested in, its my reasoning. I’ll shut up and lets get looking at my copy and paste jumble. But before that, lets do a before shot, then get to the happily ever after.

Before Any Changes

toysrus-before

Toysrus Before Screenshot

If you click the image above or you can view the ebay item here in the flesh and ore at its design nastyness.

10 Minutes of Photshop Hacks

Yep, 10 minutes of copy/paste, chop and insertions, I arrived at this master piece.

toysrus-better-design

ToysRus Better Design

Explaining My Actions

Now this is where if it wasn’t for another customer an great friend of mine who gave me a stark kick up the arse a few months back, I’d be keeping all this all to myself. Enjoy it, this is a professional nut case in action. Stand aside.

As Lisa said, its the application of ‘Matthew Ogborne’ that counts, anyone can point and poke but you[me] got the know-how, nows its for you to explain why and where and educate these people.

Lets go:

  1. I left the babyrus in the top right, this sits well with the websites and although that babys template is just as bad. Moving on…
  2. I kept the top eBay header bar from the listing, but I inserted the category bar from the website. (Yes that really is the cart section in the header, I told you, this was 10 mins flat in Photoshop, its one cut get over it. I am not that thick)
  3. The search box area needs work, I am not 1oo% sure on this area art all, it needs more than a few seconds chopping to set this right. Maybe where the cart is?Not sure at all. This defo needs some consideration outside of the post.
  4. Now that banner, brilliant idea from their website and exactly why what ever muppet designed this looked at their website with their eyes firmly closed. Yea it says free shipping, this is not my point, the banner existing is. Think of some USP (Unique Selling Point) and promote it, hey here is one. ToysRUs official eBay outlet, that’ll do for a few days to doge the negs.
  5. Going down the left menu, I spotted a neat little feature on the ToysRus site ‘back to’, lets set this as a link back to the shop home. OR wait for it…. drum roll… set it to the same category where this item is listed in. You getting it yet? You feeling it? I am saying WE know which shop category this item is listed in, so we can offer a ‘Back To’ link feature by using this to make the shop category link. Genius!
  6. The category menu is OK, personally I’d prefer a more well thought out category structure with sub menus, similar to the website, but with the limitations of eBay taken into consideration (eg only two shop cats per item).
  7. That eBay newsletter is bordering on miss leading, its implying that its from eBay, not that its Toysrus, its there because I think its needed, but it needs work to clarify its source.
  8. You’ll notice I have slipped in the ‘Helpful Links’ section on the bottom left. You betcha, that right hand side useless menu is a goner.
  9. Back to the top again and a full width title has been placed, this is crucial. Hold on to your seats here, stellar information overload coming.

You have 10 seconds to sell this item

  1. WTF(remember this term?) Matt, 10 seconds? Yep 10 seconds, you have just 10 of them before the customer decides to continue reading the rest or looks for a bail out option. So lets give them to information they need to make this decision in 10 seconds.

    This is a research done by a company sellathon about 4 years ago, yes its old but I swear it holds true today as well. And yes the bullet point numbers in this list are now out :)
  2. So with the right menu gone, we’re able to give the main image pride of place smack in the middle, BUT also reinforce the product message with some key information pointers.
  3. We show the selling price, shipping price and total it. Actually now looking at it, we need to do a little link for more info and drop that shipping box all together, its confusing.
  4. We have ’email a friend’ and ‘watch this item’ as before, but vertically, but I have added the ‘similar items’ box. This comes from the link I suggested way up in point #5. Have an exit strategy at all times, this item may not be the right one for the browser, so deal with it effectively.
  5. The description area was nicked from the website. a welcome replacement to the crap that was in the original design, ToysRus have a fun clean design, lets not cheapen it, but bend it to eBay.
  6. The last section, related items. by their name its related items. What I’d do here is actually offer two lots, one for true related items, like other trucks, but also accessories. This can be easily done with some Javascript that I have set as a blog post to be released sometime next week.

Summary

I hope from the above I have explained why I pointed at the original listing and said it was crap and have now given a full break down on how it could be bettered with a bonus 10 minute mashup photoshop visual.

If you can only learn one thing from these sets of posts on the ToysRus designs, is that do not be a yes-man and take the first design given to you, especially when its blatantly obvious its been done by a muppet designer who looked at the corporate image with their eyes fulled closed and missed all the good points and delivered something that I wholly think is substandard.

ToysRUs Negged Twice @ Day 2 +28K Listings Will help

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This is quite an old article now. I have considered removing it and I have edited it slightly since. However I decided that it would be better to leave this and the other articles on the site, as with anything, experience is only learnt through fire, this was one of those times where I could have done better and approached the subject more tactfully.

I’m leaving it, as it shows I’m just a mere mortal, like us all.

Original Article

Howdy, things are pretty busy here with some crazy sales coming through already this week, predictions are being smashed and we still have next week to contend with, which was the week I was expecting previous sales histories to be smashed in. I’ll try and keep this one to a few paragraphs.

I am away for a few days soon looking at property in Malta, but its been amazing the response back from the ToyRUs post I made yesterday. I think I hit a nerve as the stats went bonkers after that got tweeted. See the post here, sorry but it does look crap and spoils the clear cut brand they have with a cheap layout.

I looked at it again today (see here) and could not help but wonder if they should have perhaps left this under wraps for a while longer as the ID is being trashed already?

Last Year Tesco Outlet

Tesco-logo2It was a round this time last year when Tesco launched Tesco_Outlet on eBay and it was running late by 2 days because the design was held up and it was launched on the Tuesday when I was away[in Malta]. Jeas that was some ‘faith’, Kim, I am forever indebted. There was no way I could get out of the trip, for the men out there, when you get ‘the look’ you know the answer is a no.

It was mad, the UK’s largest retailer launching live on eBay UK and I was not around.

A well briefed Kim [Implementer at eSellerPro] was on the case though and I had put four days on-site in previously, Clive and the Team were well versed (also inherited my odd perversion to eBay customers) and I am happy to declare that the first week sales were crazy and all-in-all pretty smooth. The full page add in the Times helped.

Even though I knew I had had the planning & all the ground work done and knew the the Team were there, it was quite a nervous trip and I did have a sleepless night which involved the trashing of the eBay ID. What if someone has a massive grudge against Tesco and trashes it, they must have pissed off at least one customer…? But we were lucky and nothing eventful happened. They did get the odd negative, but the Team were able to resolve them amicably.

Ouchy, Negs!

Back on topic, to ToysRUs, I think now with hindsight of Tesco Outlet, it would have been better to soft launch, built some feedback up and then swapped eBay ID’s, at least to build a buffer. Even more when you see the below:

So much for the few paragraphs, I do feel for the chaps & girls that must be behind the scenes on this project, I am sure a few favours will be pulled in and those negs will go eventually. Laying down +28,000  listings will certainly help, even if they do look crap :)

ToysRUs on eBay.com – But it Looks Crap

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This is quite an old article now. I have considered removing it and I have edited it slightly since. However I decided that it would be better to leave this and the other articles on the site, as with anything, experience is only learnt through fire, this was one of those times where I could have done better and approached the subject more tactfully.

I’m leaving it, as it shows I’m just a mere mortal, like us all.

Original Article

Was just catching up with the Google reader over a cuppa and spot an interesting post from AuctionBytes that ToysRUs have launched on to eBay.com, you can read the article here.

Superb, another massive name hits eBay. Now this is where I’m going to go off the rails a little and point out that wtf is this crap template?

Now for those who don’t know Fooition basically left a load of their customers in the brown when eBay changed its shops format (was ittoysrus-logo twice? pretty sure it was) so I have never been a raving fan of the company. Their designs have always been front page only, although their more decent versions have got a lot better. Even still this is a company that has been around enough and are fully in-bed with Channel Advisor.

But surely between the pair of them (CA & Froo) they could have come up with something that doesn’t look so, whats the best word[?], basic, primitive, crap?

Look here:
http://www.toysrus.co.uk/Toys-R-Us/Toys/Role-Play/Little-Tikes-Side-By-Side-Kitchen(0078942)

And here:
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4319472&ab=Tru_homepage_aspot:leftnav:Dollhouse

I really hope this is just a beta or mock up version, otherwise this will be another amateur set up.

You think You Could Do Better Matt?

Yep and I’ll tell you for free. Its easy get the designer to copy the corporate brand and port it to eBay, this is not hard and when done properly can be done superbly well. If it does not look very, very like http://www.toysrus.com/ or http://www.toysrus.co.uk/ then it needs work.

Drop menus can be done (there is a post on this in a few days on the first eBay store that has this), the flash elements are easy and get rid of that right bar, product product product.

Note

I do try to be an advocate for the majority of the time. Frootion have some great designs, like I said they have got better (recently), While not a huge fan of Channel Advisor (due to history pre-Marketworks buy out), it has its place and I do admire its PR machine. But come on, it admit it, the listing looks crap and if you were ToysRUs would you be happy with it? I know I would not be.

Rant over, coffee finished.

Update

I put together the following article called ToysRus – Putting My Photoshop Skills Where My Mouth Is – The New Listing Template which summarize suggested changes. The template works, but it frankly sucks.

In hindsight (that beautiful maiden) , I should have perhaps joined all posts regarding ToysRus into one mammoth article. However, you can read all of them in this search:
http://lastdropofink.co.uk/?s=toysrus

Tesco Taking on Amazon, Great Choice!

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Tesco Logo

Update: This article has been expanded upon further, see Part 1: Battle of The Giants – Tesco V’s Amazon – Who Will Win?

The PR wheels have been turning for the past few days on the news that Tesco is to take on Amazon. It was interesting reading the comments left by users on the article posted on Tamebay, as they had a distinct eBay feel to them.

Amazon in many ways is almost the perfect model to follow, its core differences between its  marketplace and eBay are reason for its huge success year on year.

The Marketplace Differences

eBay UK LogoeBay facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers, but does not sell or create product to sell on its own marketplace (like a ‘farmer’ hosting a ‘carboot sale’), where as Amazon is its main (note not sole) selling platform which ‘allows’ other sellers to sell along side ‘it’ and to use the Amazon umbrella.

Another huge differences is the way inventory is handled, eBay is still a free-for-all, although a few categories like Sat Nav and DVD’s are moving towards single listings, multiple sellers, but for the best part, its a mess of same items all designed and displayed differently [this is both a positive and a negative] in vast amounts of listings.

Amazon UK

Hey look, Amazon!

Where-as Amazon’s structure is quite different, this is a true single record > multiple sellers environment and its a fight based upon ‘mainly’ price. So instead of creating a listing per seller, its one listing per multiple sellers.

This is not without its complexities over duplicate records and damn annoying duplicate barcodes especially in the media categories (sold a book when it was supposed to be some fancy dress item, grrrr) but generally the system works, if its to work then Tesco need a backend system that can cope with the creation of new records, a way of verifying them on multiple criteria and allow edits to them to maximum inventory creation potential.

Seller Thrashings

Another fundamental difference between the marketplaces is that you can generally talk around eBay and cover up miss-haps. If you piss-off Amazon, then you are screwed. Its their marketplace and if you let their customers down, then you better have a damn good contact list to start bailing on, its extremely rare for sellers to get back on. I know of only perhaps just three in almost 10 years.

OoO Wait, What About Play.com?

play.comIts worth noting here that no-where I have seen has anyone mentioned Play.com, not I think this has a potential in itself. Again for those new to the different platforms, Play.com offer something called PlayTrade and PlayTrade Pro, which allow sellers to sell on their platform along side their existing stock.

Now the biggest limiter (by their own design I hasten to add) is that Play.com have chosen to the stance that ‘if its not in our database you cannot sell it’, which in many ways keeps things cleaner, but also seriously stunts their growth when compared directly to Amazon.

Yes you can ask Play to create new records, but the data better be squeaky clean and its not a fast process by any means as from I know if its checked manually [poor Chris B!].

Processing the Sales Data

The other no-brainer for Tesco is that they can pull an Amazon style javari.co.uk on the data they pull. Again for those who don’t know this, remember you are selling on Amazon’s platform, they sell there too, its their platform. So when they spot a sweet spot, like footwear, don’t be supprised if they do a javari.co.uk or an endless.com with this data. If I was Tesco, I’d be gunning for this data, data that says what sells, when, how and who for, its utter insane when you think that Amazon have been doing this for years and haven’t even started to monetize their data to sub sites.

On a side note, checkout javari.co.uk and endless.com they are super slick and not a patch on what Amazon have released in the Amazon Webstore platform for merchants.

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate!

Now if Tesco is going to open its doors to other sellers, then it better have some ‘common’ tools at its disposal to enable sellers to port data (coff, just like Play.com did) from existing marketplaces (Amazon) and enable its use on their own site.

A few common sense things, like keeping condition codes the same as thats used on Amazon (coff Play.com) and file formats would be a good start. One thing that Amazon lacks on in direct comparison to eBay is that its API isn’t that great. eBay’s API has to be one of, if not the the best documented & thorough API there is.

Working with 3rd party tools like eSellerPro , Channel Advisor, AManPro etc is going to be key to the marketplaces success, I really do not see such a channel taking off if no-one can list data there quickly, especially the businesses that already have great data sat there waiting to be deployed.

Fulfillment By Tesco?

Infact I don’t even want to contemplate this right now, but thinking about it for a few movements, if Tesco are smart enough to take a swipe at Amazon, why not go for the jugular and take some FBT (Fulfillment By Tesco) as well? Buy up a third party like ProFS, bingo instant fulfillment network to take on Amazon’s. See crazy stuff! My head hurts on the sheer potential they have here.

Tesco Affiliates, Amazon Style

Another topic that I have seen absolutely no-one mention and that is affiliates. For those who have never heard of this concept, its simple, you transfer a customer that converts, you get a commission (its what I have been hiding away doing for the past few months on a larger scale).

My point is, Amazon have BOAT LOADS OF AFFILIATES and the crazy thing about their affiliate program is that they offer 24hr cookie where the rest of the industry is around 30 days, but Amazon converts like crazy, times this by thousands and an astore product that is simple to use for community sites and can be deployed in minutes.

Its like an army of sales staff working for you, its crazy.

Note to self, need to find out the figures quoted for Amazon affiliates, I am sure they account/contribute for a massive amount of the total sales revenue of Amazon.

So Matt Your Point Is…

Tesco would be insane to try and copy eBay, by-god thats a dirty marketplace when you compare it to Amazon. I have no idea how this is going to pan out, a new site or a bolt on module to their existing Tesco Direct site at http://direct.tesco.com/ (which again for those did not know it has a proportion of an amalgamation of supplier feeds branded as Tesco, well and some Tesco owned items too I suspect).

If its going to work, they’re[Tesco] are going to have to push their brand name to the limits of what can be pushed. That Amazon logo instills a sense of comfort & trust that just isn’t found elsewhere on the Internet and is going to be extremely hard to get anywhere near to it, regardless of their starting base.

They’re not going to need luck, they’re going to need some damn gifted management heads, every single corporate based tool at their disposal and some fairy dust for good measure.

Exciting times ahead for all of us, be sure of that.

Part 4 : SuperDryStore The Wasteful eBay Listings

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SuperDryFollowing on from the three earlier posts regarding the SuperDryStore on eBay, we have a lot to learn from their eBay listings. Lets dig in and get dirty.

I’ve picked the first item I’ve come to which is a bag, you can view this item below:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290488798635

Interestingly this item has picked up 26 sales, keep this in mind as we go through the points that follow and ask yourself the question:

“How many more could have sold?”

Categorisation

Following the category breadcrumb trail along the top, we are taken to the Mens Bag category http://clothes.shop.ebay.co.uk/Mens-Bags-/52357/i.html.

A very important step here is to realise that eBay serve different pages to different people, its always worth using another machine or a third party proxy like http://hidemyass.com/, even logging out can cause the pages to alter. So now knowing this, you should have three tabs open in your browser(s), one signed in, one signed out and another via proxy.

SuperDryStore Mens Bag Item SpecificsThe reason why we do this is extremely important, as by checking the category where the item is listed we can quickly pick up any commonly used item specifics or in this case the absolute important of the following factors:

  • Offering expedited delivery
  • Offering a free delivery option
  • Specifying the condtion
  • The absolute important of the listing title due to the ‘absolute lack’ of product based item specifics in this category.

I’ll come on to the item specifics in part 5, however lets get on to their largest fundamental eBay listing flaw…

The eBay Listing Title, Your #1 Asset

Let me spell this out in the simplest of terms possible.

The eBay listing Title is THE MOST Important Asset on eBay

Screw feedback, Screw categorisation, Screw a crappy looking listing, Screw everything.

Without a quality listing title you are knacker’ing up any chance of buyers finding you. Sorting out every other issue is secondary to the listing title. Something like 80% of all eBay purchases are made by search. Its not just important to have good titles, its categorically important to your business survival that you have ‘brilliant’ tittles.

So with this in-mind don’t do what these ladies are doing, out of a extremely limited title character count of just 55, the first cardinal rule is use everyone of them and  they’re not even using all the characters even when stuff it with mindless junk

The Current Title: New Superdry Large Haversack Bag MW140/0531

This comes in at 43 chars, so we have 12 left or some 22% wasted real-estate being lost. When you take into account the removal of the mindless junk (more on mindless junk in a moment), we’re left with ‘New Superdry Large Haversack Bag’ which is only 33 characters.

Thats 40% of theirs and imagine if it was yours, the most important marketing attribute on eBay, pissed up the wall.

So you think you can do a better job Matt?

You bet my-left-nut-I-can and I bet you could too.

Lets quickly brain storm this bag:

  • Man Bag
  • Large
  • Haversack
  • Canvas
  • Messenger
  • Shoulder
  • New
  • Grey
  • Vintage
  • Faded
  • Worn
  • Strap
  • Adjustable

Oh brill, we have an excellent assortment of keywords here, lets string some together so that the title is kewyord-rich and helpful to the customer too:

  1. Large New Vintage Superdry Messenger/Haversack Man Bag
  2. Superdry New Shoulder Man Bag Worn Fade Vintage Grey

Actually we could be here for ages, I actually quite like #1 and I’m sticking with it, it comes in at a cool 55 char count. “Happy and Days”. Lets ore at it:

Large New Vintage Superdry Messenger/Haversack Man Bag

It sure kicks ‘New Superdry Large Haversack Bag MW140/0531’ butt any-day.

Side Note: I am a Man Bag pro, I was even on BBC Radio Wales for them. I kid you not, see here.

Mindless Junk

Now lets try and understand why they’re stuff mindless junk like ‘MW140/0531’ into the listing titles.

In short, its probably an aid to their despatch process or a legacy carry-over from their early listing days. I suspect its caused by a combination of them not having a proper inventory management tool for their back end, needing this information in the titles to identify stock at the time of despatch and a crap tool like Auctiva.

You do not need to make the same mistake, even in eBay’s selling manager you can add stock numbers to goods (yea and via the SYI form), this is a separate value for your items so you can identify products by a name you recognise the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit).

In all honestly, I’ve not looked Auctiva in about 5 years, it was always crap, I doubt much has changed, although the cash injection from Alibaba.com might help. On my mental list to investigate sometime before 2014.

Subtitle, WTF?

No idea who wrote this listing subtitle, but I suspect subtitles are freebies from eBay and are being randomly filled out with not-very-well-thought-out-crap. Oh like this:

RRP £29.99 – Buy from the official Superdry eBay Store

Now the key point here is that the contents of the 55 characters of the ‘subtitle’ do not impact search results, so you need to use these to nail the customer to open your deliciously tasty listing and reconfirm the title and your USP’s (Unique Selling Point).

Again, lets pause for a moment and brain storm some options for the subtitle:

  • eBay Outlet
  • Official Superdry Store
  • RRP £29.99
  • Save 50% off RRP
  • Free Delivery
  • Feedback, +89,000

See this is the kind of thing you should be doing not only for every title, but every sub title too! I’m going to go with the following, you can think of your own super sexy subtitle:

Save 50% | Free UK Delivery | Official Superdry Outlet

Why did I use the pipes? Simple Seal | The | Deal

Quick Summary

All this and we’ve not even got past the subtitle yet! Lets quickly summarise the above into some bullet points:

  • Check the eBay category you’re going to be listing into for item specifics (covered in part 5)
  • Do not waste your #1 eBay marketing Tool, the title
  • If you get free subtitles or use them, use the the simple rule Seal | The | Deal

Time has run out for me today, if you only pick up one thing from today’s session, get the titles right!!!

Click here to view part 5 of this series.