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This Weeks To-Do List

September 18, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

I’m here writing out what my “to-do list” is for the week and thought I share parts of it with you.

Reading

I need to make a serious dent in a book I have been slowly reading over the past few weeks, its called “On Competition” by Michael Porter. I’m now only 75 or so pages in and what is covered is best described as ‘epic’. I’ve never looked at competitive advantages in such detail and finally understand the power of straddling and why the lust for growth can make compromises to a business.

I also just completed Freakonomics over the weekend and have ordered the following book, Superfreakonomics which should be here Tuesday, along with a book I took from Scot Wingo’s reading list called Founders at Work. I have previously read ‘Rework‘ by the chaps at 37signals.

Accountant

VAT registration is on the cards again and a special thanks to Chris from Tamebay on some pointers earlier today. I have a meeting with the accountant on Thursday. I’m also quite excited about this as there is the potential to bring her in on some of the topics that I have to cover as part of ProjectE.

Social Networking

I’m going to flip my usage of social mediums this week, one change I made a week or so ago was to keep the spam down on my personal accounts, for example, not posting updates from here to my FaceBook account. I’m going to take this a stage further and keep as many of the interactions as possible incoming, rather than outgoing, if that makes sense?

Podcasting

You might start to see a new side to this site later this week. I have been toying with the idea of releasing podcasts for quite sometime now, they’re part of the road-map for this site and you might just see this come to fruition this week (but no promises).

ChannelAdvisors Amazon 360

One of the largest strengths of ChannelAdvisor is their ability to create reports that make sense and part of their changes due out soon is something called “Amazon 360”, the Autumn press release is here and I’m hoping on seeing this before it goes live in two weeks time.

Two Key Articles

I’ve got two key articles I have been working on, the first is a critical observation from the eSellerPro council and the other is regarding the limitations on eBay and well marketplaces in general and it’s already raising more questions than it answers. Both are pending authorisation by 3rd parties, so you are may or may not see these this week.

Other Tasks

I’ve still got 4 tasks from last week to complete, none of them were simple either.

The ongoing commitments to ProjectE and the ProjectE 6 are taking up my entire Friday. They’re half way through right now and its too early to comment on their progress, other than we’re at the stages that I expected. We had an exceptionally interesting conversation on Friday regarding pricing strategies I can tell you!

How does this compare to your to-do list?

“Apples are Apples” or are they? – eSellerPro V’s ChannelAdvisor

September 7, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Yesterday was an interesting day’s reading. On the one hand CEO of ChannelAdvisor Scot Wingo was elected to Shop.org’s board of directors, which is frankly quite a feat considering there are only five places for non-retailers & is a highly coveted position.

A quote Scot Wingo:

“I am absolutely honored to join a board of such diverse executives and e-commerce leaders to serve the Shop.org members and continue the development of such a prestigious program,” said Wingo. “I look forward to collaborating with these other industry leaders to influence and inform many of the top issues facing the world of e-commerce.”
Source: Business Wire

And on the other hand a few minutes later, this crops up on Twitter:

It really has been a fantastic year for eSellerPro so far. I joined the company as the new CEO in January,and since then we have seen several other key additions to the management team and the sales team has doubled in size. Our annual revenues have grown to £2.4M with more than 100% growth forecast for the current year. If that wasn’t good enough, the business now has more than 200 customers, including well-known brands such as BMW, Dixons Group, JJB Sports, Office Shoes, Maplins and Tesco.

It is a very exciting time for us all at eSellerPro, and as we continue to grow we can only expect things to get even better.

Keith Bird, CEO, eSellerPro
Source: eSellerPro Blog

While at least three of these are 3rd-party clients is almost irrelevant, what is interesting is the ~100% growth and disclosure (see here) that the platform is churning over £1M in transactions per day.

Summary

While some way from the $3 Billion USD ChannelAdvisor processed in a year[2010 ?], £1M appears to be rather small. However apples are certainly not “Apples” when trying to compare two SaaS (Software as a Service) platforms that operate in the same market, one has been around since 2001, the other is just getting started, however could this be where its heading?

Image courtesy of Fir0002

The 3 Ways to Increase Your Online Business Part 1: Efficiency

July 28, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

As far as I see it there are are three core ways to increase your online business, this is pretty much universal across all the marketplaces and yes, I am blatantly ignoring some of the “traditional methods” in this article.

The first of these three ‘ways’ is “efficiency” and I’m looking forward to detailing the following two in the next few days or so, but for now, lets get right into ‘efficiency’.

Efficiency

Efficiency in general describes the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose. It is often used with the specific purpose of relaying the capability of a specific application of effort to produce a specific outcome effectively with a minimum amount or quantity of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort. “Efficiency” has widely varying meanings in different disciplines. Wikipedia

This article has two spurs, the first is internal efficiency and the second is external efficiency. They are quite different and I’m looking forward to showing how they differ and what they mean for you.

Internal efficiency

What I mean by this is making the processes you use each day more efficient. This could be the implementation of software products like eSellerPro, ChannelAdvisor, Linnworks, 247TopSeller etc… What you’ll not be openly told, is that such tools add processes and normally the gains made by using such software stem from a single source, which is…

Efficient Processes!

None of these tools (yes they are tools, they are not the be-all & end-all) are not quick to learn, however if you’re migrating from one to another, then they are generally all very similar, they just have different interfaces, features and dare I say it quirks too. But the underlying factor in them all, regardless of design, is that they enforce processes onto the business and typically they are a lot more efficient than the processes the business was using before.

This might be inventory creation, unifying the data that is created, so that it can be ported across many sales channels, courier rules to match orders to the most cost/time efficient service or just simple order processing of orders from multiple channels in a single place.

The list goes on, however ultimately, these tools are designed to automate the labour intensive tasks and this is where the one of the largest gains can be made by a company, because after the initial learning curve** (see note), strict (ish) processes are in place and the bi-product of efficiency here is time gained, which typically goes into three places:

Sourcing & creation of more stock
Greater focus “on” the business
More leisure time (lol, I had to add this one, I’ve only seen one do this thoroughly and I envy them greatly)

** This varies greatly from not only one software product to another, but to person-to-person also. Noting that some people just fail at this stage, its typically tied to either the person not being capable (through lack of applicable skills) or through their unwillingness to let-go of certain tasks.

Outside of “software products” that add obvious efficiency gains, focusing on the processes that are used to do the following, all allow extra efficiency to the business

Sourcing stock & supplier relationships
Managing accounting
Managing staff (internal and external)
Create new, better products (and/or inventory data, if not a manufacturer)
And so on…

Internal Efficiency Summary

Internal efficiency is everything that happens inside the business, this could be the use of software “tools”, that typically give the biggest gains or becoming more efficient with accounting, so that the funds that are in the company move quicker (or slower) or even developing better relationships with your suppliers to then leverage a greater buying power outside of pure monetary forms.

External Efficiency

To define what I mean here by “External Efficiency”, this is everything that happens on sale producing platforms and not internally related (such as accounting or sales order processes). I know these are directly linked, but if you simply think of the internal efficiency as everything you do in your offices and the external efficiency as everything your customer sees.

As the majority of readers here are focused on three areas eBay, Amazon and Website commerce, I’ll keep to these three areas.

eBay Efficiency

Starting with eBay, I am implying that gains can be made through more efficient listing practices & styles. This could mean using more item specifics data, reworking your listing titles, especially if you consider that the titles on eBay are going from 55 chars to 80 chars soon, why not rework your current titles now, but also rework them so that you add-in the extra characters later, when the longer listing titles have been launched.

Note: I’m thinking reworking listing titles now using market research, but also keeping track of the current title in excel, the new title (to be changed now) and a longer title that is ~80 chars long, all with the custom title, so that they can be updated through the said third party software, or if you are not using these, then something like eBay File Exchange to update them en-mass later.

Adding of cross-selling modules to listings, better product images, reworking item descriptions that you know are poor or have caused numerous questions and so on…

I could (but I’m not going to) go on a bender here with regards to eBay, however, let me pose you this question and leave you to make your own decisions:

If you were starting from scratch and could change anything you wanted about your current eBay set-up, what would you change?

Now change them.

Amazon Efficiency

Focusing on the external side to Amazon, when was the last time that you looked to see if there were any duplicates of your products on Amazon and listed against those as well?

While Amazon is supposed to have a single record for a single product, with so many merchants creating inventory on Amazon, you’re bound to find duplicates across your product range and you could leverage these to gain extra sales and sometimes for more money too as there are less competitors with these records.

This is just one area of many that can be employed with Amazon, the other two note-worthy tasks in relation to Amazon is to increase your exposure across the other Amazon sites, as Amazon have recently enabled UK accounts to sell across Europe and the second is FBA.

Have you looked at Fulfilment By Amazon yet?

If not, do so now here http://services.amazon.co.uk/services/fulfilment-by-amazon/features-benefits/ oh and this tool is well hidden, I only found it a few days back, here is Amazon’s FBA calculator! https://sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/fbacalc/fba-calculator.html

Website Efficiency

Perhaps the biggest opportunity, yet the biggest challenge for online businesses. With eBay & Amazon, the marketing fees (yes eBay and Amazon fees are MARKETING FEES, not a fee for being party of a community and drooling over feedback counts), its hard for merchants to comprehend that they need to spent more on the promotion of their website than they do with either of these channels.

Its a common complaint, that they[merchants] do really well with regards to the other two channels but fail completely when it comes to their website channels. If you’re focusing 99.9% of your time & resources on eBay & Amazon, its no wonder that they account for 99.9% of your sales. What would happen if you flipped this on its head, do you think you’d make a pretty hefty dent in the 99.9%?

I’m over a thousand words at this point, so if you’ve got this far you’re doing great. This topic deserves hundreds of thousands, but I’m going to cut it short to stay on topic and detail a few ideas you could focus upon to make your website more “efficient”.

Look at page load times
Improve categorisation
Add better category descriptions
Create backlinks in forums
Create a email marketing campaign
Create a blog
Do some article marketing
Add tracking counters (or set events/funnels) for critical pages, such as home, category, item detail, add to cart events, cart, checkout stages and the cart final page. So you can measure them and then make changes to improve them and have quantifiable data to measure the impact.
Try some simple A/B testing using www.google.com/websiteoptimizer
Set up a Google Adwords campaign, if you already have done so when was the last time you looked at the ad groups or where you were gaining links from, could you create some targeted backlinks on the content sites that are delivering click through’s?

Efficiency Summary

While both mutually dependent & a little tricky to get-ones-head-around to begin with, internal efficiency is everything that happens in the background and external efficiency is everything that the customer sees. In both cases there will need to be efforts made to improve efficiency, some will be simple and quick to do, while others are much longer term.

Reading

I’m inclined to include two books for some light reading here (both aff links) and the full list of my reading materials can be found in my library:

4 Hour Work Week
The first is the 4 Hour Work week by Timothy Ferris whom takes the concept of efficiency and smashes it to pieces (also introduces you to a concept of dreamlining, but that is quite a shocker and you need to read the book to at least comprehend this, its why I sat in the sun all day yesterday with the kids & friends enjoying a picnic)
e-Myth Revisited
The second is another personal favourite, E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Sarah and ‘All About Pies’, I can vividly imagine the manager of the hotel taking the file off his shelf and showing him the processes, the walk from the reception to the restaurant & the orchard.The last chapter is rubbish compared to the rest of the book, but if you need (and I’m guessing you do, because I did) a easy step into the franchise model, even if you have no intention to ever franchise your business, this is a fantastic starting point. Oh and when you’ve read the book, I have the managers hat on currently, whom is whipping my technician in to writing this article.

This concludes this section of a three part article on “The 3 Ways to Increase Your Online Business”. The next two… I’ll release in the next few days, but for now, did you find this useful?

9 days to Go ChannelAdvisor Checkout Closing

May 9, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Just in case you’ve not had an update, the 3rd party checkout system that was employed at Channel Advisor is being removed on the 18th May. You can see the full update and requirements here.

This is a forced change by eBay to move all buyers through a standardised checkout flow. Although, as far as I’m aware they have yet to provide an alternative that can deal with the complex shipping and tax requirements of some businesses and countries. A huge benefit outside of these two requirements for the 3rd party checkout system was the ability to offer credit card processing outside of PayPal, I suspect we’re unlikely to see anything threaten the eBay revenue cow ‘PayPal’.

Note: While there is a tool for very large retailers called municipal-level tax calculator its unlikely that “normal” sellers would be allowed access.

While personally a fan of the 3rd party checkout system myself for the reasons above and having the chance to actually alter a 3rd party checkout system to how I actually felt it should look like and feel at eSellerPro with fully customised and branded checkout experiences.

The only real advice I can offer is that is look upon this as a chance to simply processes. Complex is great, but sometimes simple is just as easy and much easier for customers to understand too. Ultimately this is a win for buyers as it gives a unified checkout flow and it does enable the eBay shopping basket that eBay have been trying to implement for 3 or so years.

ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Europe Keynote Speakers Released

April 15, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

I’m looking forward to finally attending this years ChannelAdvisor Catalyst in May. For the past few years when asked by clients whether they should go, the answer has always been a resounded yes, you should.

Not only for the actual even itself and the highly topical conferences, but for the interaction between the other people there, merchants like themselves and for a day or two out.

If you look past the conference itself, its also a chance to look at the ChannelAdvisor platform in detail, it really cannot be dismissed as viable platform for merchants to use and their IDS and SEM stuff is crazy.

I can hardly comprehend that “some” $3 Billion went through their system last year, you just cannot imagine the sheer amount of data movement and even back when MarketWorks were bringing in external help and the stark comment from Oracle of “Its not supposed to work like that”; ChannelAdvisor have nailed issues that only the likes of Facebook, Google and eBay receive public notification for.

Back on to topic, ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Europe shouldn’t be missed, you can register here and the email notification is below.

ChannelAdvisor Catalyst Europe - 17th & 18th May 2011 - Riverbank Park Plaza Hotel - London - Register Now!

Don’t miss a special keynote presentation from Google at Catalyst Europe in May.

John Gillan and Jens Münch of Google UK will explore the convergence of the fast-growing and fast-evolving social, local and mobile (‘SoLoMo’) spaces and share deep insight around the significant opportunities this holds for online retailers.

Catalyst is Europe’s best opportunity to learn from and network with 300+ leaders in e-commerce. Speakers this year include eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Practicology, PhysioRoom.com, B&Q, Republic, ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo among many others.

John Gillian and Jens Münch of Google UK

Don’t miss out, book your place now!
We have a limited number of tickets available.

Are There Alternatives to eSellerPro?

March 18, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

I’ve been asked this question too many times to ignore it. As you would expect there is some general unrest amongst users of nearly all the systems I’ve come across, not just eSellerPro. And the larger the business using eSellerPro, because they take a percentage-of-sale, the more expensive it becomes and monthly bills of +£7,000 are not unheard of.

This article was originally published in March 2011 and it’s sorely been due an update for quite some time. This is the updated version for the end of 2013.

I’m looking forward to clearing up a few areas in the following sections and also aiming enlighten you to what the “2 year cycle” is that causes account churn. Also this should save me typing/having long conversations and have a resource to help anyone else that asks :)

Disclaimer

I feel it is important that I state, clearly and openly the following facts regarding myself and my interactions with eSellerPro. Read the full version in The Unofficial History of eSellerPro (that has changed too as they have one CEO leave [see here] and another non-marketplace oriented CEO arrive [see here] in late 2013).

I am a Former Employee of eSellerPro
I used to work there for almost three years. I am not a shareholder
I work with businesses that use eSellerPro
I’m not a Sales Rep
I do not get any “kick-backs” for writing about eSellerPro (maybe a mistake on their part as this is the updated version for 2013?)

The Underlying Questions

This might not be pretty reading for you but I feel its absolutely required to state these questions, because that’s what is really being asked. These questions can be boiled down to four main areas, these are:

I’ve been using eSellerPro for X months, its great, but I am not feeling the ‘all singing all dancing’ I was sold
I’m annoyed with little support and no development time I used to get and feel trapped
I am an eCommerce manager, I need to weigh up if my decision to use eSellerPro was the right one or not
I feel like a change, what do you suggest Matt?

These are all ugly questions and I’m sure there are others too, let’s dive, answer these and if you have any other questions the forums are here.

The Four Nasty Questions Answered

Below I do my best to answer these four underlying questions for you:

Q1: I’ve been using eSellerPro for X months, its great, but I am not feeling the ‘all singing all dancing’ I was sold

What you must remember is that you are buying access to what is an extremely complex system, that gives you lots of processes to make your business operation more efficient. Sometimes in its complexity is its beauty, but other times it can cause confusion and utter frustration. I whole heartedly feel for you.

It does not matter if we’re talking eSellerPro, ChannelAdvisor or any other platform here, the same applies. You are using a tool to make your operation more efficient, they all just differ in the depths of ability and each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Now for the smarter business owners they relieve themselves of the day-to-day tasks and move up so that they can deal with the important business things. This is called leverage, they use a tool to automate as much as possible and then go about setting themselves to work ON their business not IN their business, eSellerPro is just one of many tools that are available to aid this.

Q2: I’m annoyed with little support and no development time I used to get and feel trapped

Bluntly put, this is to be expected. eSellerPro has had multiple rounds of VC funding and things are going to be different.

The VC company is there to make money and of course there is bound to be a disparity between what the original ideology for what the tool should have become and what the VC company needs to do to make their money back (and a lot more, because remember they invested to make money, not in ideology or a utopia to make the the tool as best as it can be).

Think of it as a mother weaning her offspring, it hurts but everyone grows up. If you were expecting the same kind of attention you got in the early days, sorry those days are on their way out, if not gone by now. You’re probably feeling trapped for a good reason, the product is deep & wide, if you’ve got all the different business operations running through eSellerPro, such as accounting, inventory control, order management, couriers, supplier management and anything else this beast does. I’d feel trapped too.

eSellerPro is a monster system that was designed to cover every aspect of a multichannel business and now in hindsight an approach that I have openly admitted to being the wrong approach [see here].

Q3: I am an eCommerce manager, I need to weigh up if my decision to use eSellerPro was the right one or not

This one is tricky because it needs a good understanding of where you came from, what you are doing now and where you’re going.

However a generalisation is that if you business can cope with the barrier to entry for the eSellerPro product (Fees, training time, staff costs, need for systems etc…) then you’ve probably made the right choice until the monthly fees start to really become expensive.

Q4: I feel like a change, what do you suggest Matt?

I don’t bull-shit and know my stuff backwards (which is to be expected from someone who ran their own business for 3 years & has worked with two software providers over the past 10 years). So please don’t take this personally when I suggest the following:

It’s my opinion that instead of changing providers, you try and change first.

Regardless of the current provider you’re using, I’m suggesting that you try and change first. This is because the real cost of moving providers can be huge.

Lets say you have a team of 10, how many hours do you think it will take as a team to change providers? Now triple it. Us human’s are the worst estimators, if I say something is going to take an hour, that normally means three.

Because these software platforms are so deep, the cost of moving from one to the other can be immense. It would be fair better to attempt to take a fresh look at your situation, speak to a mentor or someone outside your business who you trust and see if there is a way you can work with the system rather than against it. Take a holiday, do something before you commit to changing your software, especially with something like eSellerPro because it is so deeply tied to your business..

The 2 year Churn

This is a natural process and it goes on all the time regardless of what arena you are in, its why you hear unconfirmed rumours that ChannelAdvisor sell 200 accounts each month, but equally loose 200 accounts per month globally. People frankly get bored and after a while get itchy and start looking at what looks like “greener grass”.

This is a human trait, the grass always looks greener on the other side, we get bored. I’ve known businesses jump from one platform to the next yearly and of one specifically that has used all the major ones at least once! I’m just pointing out, that if you are thinking this question, that you maybe wondering what the grass is like over the hedge and sadly the real answer, that few can honestly tell you, is that its probably just the same, just a different interface.

The Alternatives

I’ve answered some of the underlying questions you might be asking yourself right now, I’ve also hopefully done as much as I can in a single article to point out the following:

Being uncertain is a good thing, its only natural.
The grass might be greener somewhere else.
Think through moving providers extremely seriously and weigh up the true costs of moving providers.

Now onto the alternatives.

The critical piece of information that no sales representative of any company is going to tell you is that “this system you are looking at its not the perfect system for your current business“. Something has to give, namely you.

Thankfully there are several alternatives available across the globe, they all vary in depth of functionality & costs. The next comparable 2nd Generation software to eSellerPro is ChannelAdvisor.

ChannelAdvisor has the same kind of pricing structure as eSellerPro, a minimum amount to be paid, say £600 a month and a percentage of sale from 1 to 2%. If this percentage of your gross sales goes over the 1-2% amount, then you pay this instead. This is why with both of these companies can be insanely expensive for larger businesses with businesses paying them thousands of pounds every month (which might be one of the reasons why you’re reading this article right now, it’s getting silly you’re paying more but getting exactly the same level of service).

Yes there are others, ChannelGrabber, StoreFeeder, SellerExpress there are lots and lots of 2nd generation software providers. Sadly I’m getting bored with the offers of “come see XYZ” and they’re receiving back messages saying, “In less than 100 words, explain why your system is not the same as everyone else’s” for which I rarely get a reply or if I do it has something to do with price and not functionality or an entirely different way of working (that would be a 3rd Generation of multi channel software).

All 2nd Generation multi-channel software works in a similar method, either a flat-fee per month or a percentage of sale. The level of expertise in each software product varies and so does the functionality too.

An Obvious Alternative?

eSellerPro.

Yup that’s right, you may of picked up the hint from earlier that this was coming. The alternative that you have not been thinking is staying put and changing yourself to match the situation you are in. This goes for any provider, not just eSellerPro.

Think back to why you wanted to use eSellerPro in the first place, write down the reasons and now go back and achieve them. If you can whole heartedly say you’ve tried every option, then maybe its time you weigh-up the alternatives.

In Conclusion

I’ve answered the four underlying questions that are being asked. I know full well that saying certain things straight is not always the best way, however sometimes these things needs to be said and if you’re reading this, its too late :)

I sincerely hope that I have given you an insight into possibly what you are really asking when you say “Are there any alternatives to eSellerPro” and that there are options and an option you might not have been considering, changing yourself.

Matt

PS. If you’re sick-to-death of 2nd generation providers, say hello to the 3rd generation UnderstandingE.com/NOW

The Unofficial History of eSellerPro

March 16, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Introduction

This is the first of several articles I have lined up, the best place is to start is in the beginning and with the history of the eSellerPro.

In the next few minutes I will be sharing the previously untold history of eSellerPro, then in future articles moving into the top three reasons why I believe eSellerPro is better than comparable products such as ChannelAdvisor, then I will be taking a look at other parts of the software from an outsiders perspective and how it can be applied to your business.

Disclaimer

It may seem odd to be starting with a disclaimer, rather than at the end, however I feel it is important that I state, clearly and openly the following facts regarding myself and my interactions with eSellerPro.

1. I am a Former Employee of eSellerPro.
Starting as their third implementer to deploy the software to clients, I very quickly picked up the product from my past experiences as both a seller and managing similar clients previously at MarketWorks. In a relatively short space of time, I was the Implementations team leader and not only training new staff, managing the implementations team.

2. I am an Advocate of eSellerPro
Now this may seem contradictory, however the line is very clear, I left eSellerPro due to personal reasons, one of which was how the company was structured at the time. Since then funding has been sourced and the company has moved from a solely CTO led company, to now a board of directors, with an externally appointed CEO to lead the expanding team.

eSellerPro (as in the product itself) is in my mind, is brilliant. I have to say this as I enjoyed influencing the way it built up over the ~3 years I was part of the team. It was once interestingly described as “a core product with a customisation layer”, although it just so happens that the customisation layer is rather deep and can be quite complicated at times.

I have the upmost respect for team there and have no wishes to upset any carts. I was once amusingly asked if I was a “eSellerPro Pro”, today if asked, I’d reply with no, “Im Pro eSellerPro”. How’s that for a tongue tie?

3. I Use eSellerPro
I now work directly with My1stWish Ltd, they were actually the first business I implemented with eSellerPro. They use eSellerPro as their base software product and it is still used today to demonstrate how the eSellerPro system can be deployed to prospective clients.

4. I’m not a Sales Rep
I am not a sales rep and I am not receiving any commission. If you are seriously considering using eSellerPro and haven’t spoken to them yet, do so and ask for “Miles”.

The Unofficial eSellerPro History

I used to use Marketworks for my own business, after wrapping that up, I ended up working for them in implementations and as their UK support representative. This is how I know where eSellerPro started from and also why. I’ll explain in detail in the next few hundred words or so.

eSellerPro most interestingly started because of the failure of Marketworks.com & ChannelAdvisor to adapt to the UK Market properly. A Software developer was brought in by a customer of MarketWorks (I will now abbreviate to MW) to integrate their MW account and sales orders to Royal Mail, for invoices and large scale despatch. Remember this point, I’ll be referring to it later as I feel there might be a silly mistake about to be made all over again.

The Landscape in 2005-2007

At the time there were only two real contenders in the ‘Auction Management Software’ arena, MW and Channel Advisor. Yes there were others such as Afterbuy, Spoonfeeder, eBay’s own Selling Manager Pro (SMP) and the likes of Auctiva and similar. They were all pretty basic, it was only CA (ChannelAdvisor, I’m abbreviating that as well) and MW that could offer a eBay selling tool to a degree of complexity and offer (relatively, for their time) semi-decent websites.

Interestingly, the developer who was brought in by the MW customer, developed another application for processing MW orders into SAGE. This was quite interesting to MW as they saw the chance to secure more customers with this and I believe an agreement was made to deploy this to customers for a set monthly fee (as they did not have this, CA had it via TradeBox). I can only remember two customers who purchased this application, although I am sure there more.

The entry point into ‘Auction management Software’ must have been enough for the developer, Chris Farrelly to realise that this is potentially a market for a similar product to MW, although quite a good product for its time and ChannelAdvisor was in front a little, both were extremely US orientated and there could be the opportunity for a product to rival both, but home grown and UK centric.

A side note here, this that unbeknown to me until quite recently, because of MW and CA’s short sightedness in the UK, led to the development of another software product called 247 TopSeller which had to have been started in a 2-3 month window of that of eSellerPro being first developed.

I left MW a few months after, it was a team of 4/5 that turned into a team of 1, the then “EU Director” Mike Searle’s, after his unprecedented hatred and consistent rants about CA, their questionable and I add wholly unethical practices at the time (they have got better), actually left and joined CA. That marked the beginning of the end and not long after, Marketworks.com was bought by Channel Advisor on the 12^th September 2007 for an undisclosed sum (an unconfirmed rumour was it was a “fire sale”).

An Amazing Stint at eSellerPro

I was working for a Diamonds firm in London when I received a call from a chap called Matthew Dean, he knew too much about me (quite flatteringly actually), as he had been trying to track down the right individual to help him expand a company that he had invested in, which was called ‘eSellerPro’ and my name kept appearing.

I met Matthew several times before agreeing to terms, one thing I quite happily boast about seeing the eSellerPro product for the first time, is that I could either see that the product that could solve every issue that I had at Marketworks, both as a user and a supporting party or could, with my guidance, solve them better than anything that had been conceived before. And today it does.

From the day I first met Chris, to the day I left the team, it was one hell of a coding bender and quite a ride. I’ve heard phrases such as ‘working 18 hours so that you do not have to work 8 hours for someone else’, however this was different, Chris’s lust for development was and probably still is unprecedented by anything I have ever seen and will ever see again.

When I first started, eSellerPro did have an employee in the USA called Karen Newton, quite frankly she was not that well supported (probably my fault to be honest, I should have realised) that well and with what was nightmare of a customer, it was no real surprise that we were told that she was no longer working on US clients and they were to be handled by support (there were no true support representatives at the time, the queue was managed by implementers and developers directly).

The Past CEO

I believe it was around May 2009 that a CEO was brought in, a chap called Paul Ayres, it was quite a momentous occasion, as for the first time I personally saw a chance for the business to gain a commercial aspect (as you can imagine, a CTO led company is extremely development focused and could become frustrating after a long enough period of time).

This sadly did not actually last for long and we were told, rather unceremoniously in a meeting that Paul had departed the company. Why things didn’t work out with Paul I’m not 100% sure, maybe it was too early, maybe it was a clash of true interests. I understand that he is now working on a social networking product called ‘MyCube’ and wish him the best for his new venture.

The Investment

In September 2010, several months after I had departed, it was announced that eSellerPro had secured funding by Notion Capitol for £2 million pounds, a new board would be created and a CEO employed. Frankly this was the second best thing to happen to eSellerPro after Chris’s & the teams relentless work on the product.

Now I did not realise how major this sell out was until I looked at the submitted accounts. Business Finance is a personal weakness and I need to nail this for my pending MBA studies, so what better place to start with is companies that I know about first hand.

Before the investment (see here for press release), the share distribution looked something like this:

Pearce – 70
Barker – 50
Milton – 100
Newton – 50
Dean – 70
Terry – 52 (Ordinary B)
From a total of 1052 shares, this left 660.

However on checking the share make up after the sale, they looked quite differently.

Barker – 50
Milton – 0 (these were transfer on 11-06-2010)
Newton – 50
Dean – 70
Terry – 52 (Ordinary B)
Dean – 70
Notion Capital – 420 (Ordinary B)
Ben White – 15 (Ordinary B)
Ian Milbourn – 15 (Ordinary B)
Shares allocated for staff & other parties – 167 (Ordinary C)

From a total of 1052 shares, this leaves just 143.

With the shift in assets appear as quite a drop for Chris, however to have managed to retain a decent chunk of the coupled in with the likelihood of contractual benefits as part of the process; Chris has most likely done very well, especially if you consider the background of Notion Capital in technology based companies.

A side note here is that I personally don’t think Notion Capital really knew what they were buying, it is not a ‘Lemon’ by any means, however I personally do not believe it will be a quick flip that they have enjoyed with previous ventures like Brightpearl.

eSellerPro Lite

Unbeknown to most outside parties, there is a secondary product called ‘eSellePro Lite’, a web based version of eSellerPro developed for RoyalMail. I am not sure on the viability of this option, although in theory, it could be a direct like-for-like rival to CA as it is browser based.

The United States is an obvious place to expand to, I’m aware that an office is being sourced, although a friendly tip here to eSellerPro is to remember the history of eSellerPro and why it started. Making the same mistakes that originally spawned the idea would be a bit silly, especially on their home turf.

Now at the present day, eSellerPro has bulked out quite heavily head-count-wise, there are dedicated support representatives, the development team has literally tripled in size and the same can be said for the implementations team. A board is in place, with Chris, Ben White, Ian Milbourn and the CEO Keith Bird.

The End…

This concludes “The Unofficial History of eSellerPro”. I hope this has given you an insight to eSellerPro that you’d never been told of elsewhere and an understand of where it has come from and possibly where its going too.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section at the bottom of this article.

Updated Services List, Forthcoming Articles & Client History

March 10, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

I’ve been really quiet again on the article front this week again. I’ve not given up, quite the opposite. I’ve been beavering away in the background updating other content on the site (like Amazon & eSellerPro category pages) and that’s what this article is about, what is coming up and what I have completed in the past few days.

Also, I have a draft article on my MBA progression that is due for tomorrow morning (Friday 11th March), if you have any background on working with someone whom has an MBA, been through the process, employed, read about or have any information you may feel would be of use to me, please contact me today, as I’m at the OU in the evening.

Forth Coming Articles

This is not a complete list as there are a few that I wish to keep in my ‘back pocket’ for later use. However should give you an idea on the topics that are due to be released here in the forth coming days:

What is Fulfilment By Amazon & How much does FBA cost? (FBA Calculator included!)
Should I be using Amazon’s FBA (Fulfilment By Amazon)
Which eBay Shop Subscription Level should I be using? (Fees Calculator included!)
The untold truth about using 3rd party software such as Channel Advisor or eSellerPro
Is eSellerPro really worth +£2,000 plus fees?
Why choose Channel Advisor, aren’t they Web 1.5?
What is 247 TopSeller?
An Ex Employees/Insiders guide to eSellerPro
Get Ready, Get Set. Facebook Credits are going to change EVERYTHING
How To: Using eBay Shop Keywords to Leverage the Extra eBay Shop Pages

Client History!

This page is really is in its infancy currently. however it has been an interesting experience, remembering all the different companies I have worked with. The stark reality that there are so many and how different each of them were. The Client History page is not complete yet, however it visually shows the breadth of businesses I have had and still have the joy of working with.

New Service Offerings

I’ve been documenting what exactly I can offer potential clients and what I have been helping businesses for what is a very long time now with. Its been quite an interesting process as I am well-rounded-character and have experience in a lot of fields, that is a quality that makes me unique, however I do have key offerings, these are:

Business Mentoring & Consultation
The person you can turn to for advice, suggestions and solutions to your issues. If you want to work 4 hours per week we’ll work towards that, if you want to grow by X% then, we’ll do what is needed to achieve that goal.

Competitive Intelligence
A legal and ethical business practice, which allows executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organisation. Competitive Intelligence is the defining, gathering, analysing and distributing intelligence about a company, its products & services, its competitors and any aspect that affects the company in question.

In short, knowing your competition better than they know themselves.

Data Manipulation & API Integrations
I am an expert with MS Excel, can write VBA, iMacros, PHP and JavaScript by hand, however I know that there is no point in adding complexity, if the lowest skilled user cannot use it. That’s why I have for a long time used the term I coined ‘Matt Proof’.

From SOAP to CSV, XML to HTTP Post, if it needs to be altered, chopped, changed, manipulated, uploaded or abused to a much nicer format for use elsewhere, then there is an extremely high chance that I can aid you with this. I’ve included several examples on this on the Data Manipulation & API Integrations page.

If you are interested in any of these services, then contact me today.

No, No, No. Its Your Domain Name, Use It. ChannelAdvisor Not Advised?

February 15, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Channel Advisor Seller Buy4Less

Oh this made me giggle, while researching after posting the earlier article on a ChannelAdvisor customer called ‘Buy4less’ and ‘Wasting Your Most Important eBay Marketing Asset‘ I stumbled across this chestnut.

The Search Results

Click this link and let me explain the results you’re seeing.

You are seeing two things, the first is the use of the site: command, this is very useful for seeing how many pages have been indexed for a site, while not 100% accurate by Google’s own admission (see Matt Cutts from Google explain it in this YouTube video) its a great indicator and the second is a baw-drop by ChannelAdvisor for one of their featured retaliers. Let me explain.

Errr What Happended?

Now for the first link I gave, it shows lots of URL’s that have been indexed, great, but look again, the URL’s start ‘stores.channeladvisor.com/buy-for-less-online’ whats happened to the thier domain name ‘http://www.buyforlessonline.co.uk/‘?

I’ll tell you what’s going with it

NOUT, NADA, Sweet FA!

There is a single page for this domain indexed in Google, what they’ve done is use masking on the domain name instead of setting up a CNAME alias or similar to make the server treat the real domain name properly. So then everything starts from buyforlessonline.co.uk rather than some horrid domain path like ‘stores.channeladvisor.com/buy-for-less-online/’.

Knowing…

If you’re using a third party tool such as Channel Advisor, don’t settle for a crap website setup, make sure everything is in your ‘domain’ name, don’t be afraid to ask for the assistance outside for unbiased views & guidance, automaton tools are only one part of your businesses success.

Getting Out of Such a Mess

If you’ve managed to do this this, don’t panic. Ask your provider to create 301 redirects for every page they’ve got to the new domain paths. The new pages on the correct domain name are forwarded from the old domain, so you are not penalised for what would-to-Google the entire site disappearing an popping up elsewhere.

Curiosity

I wonder how much was taken on their website last year, I wonder if anyone noticed. I suspect ‘not a lot’ of revenue was taken this year on ‘that’ site. Pity, I quite liked the visual design.

How to Beat eBay DSR’s – Use Positive Psychology with the Customer

January 14, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

I was reading an excellent post by Chris Dawson on Tamebay regarding the flaw in the eBay iPhone & iPad Apps where sellers can be rated for shipping on items that have free shipping and by their[eBay’s] own design, sellers whom offer free shipping are exempt from being rated & automatically receive a 5 star rating on this aspect.

You can read the full article here eBay DSRs: Are you rated on dispatch or delivery time?. It reminded me of a simple tactic I used employ, which I’ll share with you in this article.

I’ve held off and releasing this article for a Friday, so you can ponder it, get to grips with the concept and let your orders back-up over potentially three days of orders and let rip this beauty on Tuesday, then watch the instantaneous results.

Knowing the Rules

Firstly knowing the rules and how to leverage them is just one part. By offering free shipping, you are immediately incur five stars for DSR rating for ‘Postage and packaging charges’ (although, from the Tamebay article, obviously eBay need to work on this a little for their Apps).

You can see the help page on eBay for the DSR’s here and I have quoted the interesting part:

If you provide free postage, buyers will see a note when they are rating your postage & packaging charges that a 5-star rating is appropriate

Not forgetting this exit too:

No detailed seller rating can be given for local pick up items

Did you know the latter one? I had forgotten, a neat exit point. Offering free shipping and offering pick ups for orders can be two variables worth experimenting with.

The Despatch Process

You most likely contact buyers them when they buy, pay (as for eBay the paying part is not always immediate) and when you ship their order.

Notifying a buyer you’ve received their order and their cash, that you value you them, the order is not in some black hole, have reassured the customer that you’re dealing with the order is great and is an important part of the despatch process, even eBay’s SMP (Selling Manager Pro) does this rather well.

You should do everything you can, to work out a process or employ software that makes the despatch process the most efficient possible, however my questions is, why leave yourself open to the lag of delivery?

Lets bend the perception of time in our favour, after all, we are the time keeper in this process. I’m suggesting while you may have a rapid despatch process, the latter part of the process can be tinkered with, in your favour.

Didn’t you mention positive psychology?

For this you need to use positive psychology with your customer. Let me spell this out in simple words as some might not get this:

Mark your orders as despatched the day AFTER you despatched the order.

Yes that’s right, instead of eagerly marking orders as despatched, flag them as despatched instead and here is the key, then the following morning, mark them off as being despatched.

The automatic despatch email will kick in and the customer will be notified that the order has been despatched.

Imagine your sat your desk and receive the email from company XYZ. The order you made yesterday has been despatched. Sweet. The paradox is later this afternoon it arrives. Has that not exceeded ones set expectations of tomorrow? Have we just warped time in the eyes of the customer?

Its all about how time is perceived

If you’re using a slower services say 2nd class or may be a 48hr courier rather than a 24hr courier as your default courier service (I am ignoring any courier rules you may have in operation, for where orders match criteria their courier service alters, eg an order over £20 goes to recorded and so on…) then by marking the orders shipped as a day late, then you’ve already won a day back from the slower courier service. Essentially the 48hr courier service is now a 24hr service.

Note: You should be offering more than one service, gaining sweet upgrades on courier services, people will choose these if its perecived to be faster.

Does it Work?

I know this works because I used to employ this tactic myself. Amusingly my partner just entered my office and asked what I was writing, I explained the article and she giggled. She remembered reading the feedback comments on eBay, where people were leaving comments like ‘I got my item before the despatch email A++++’.

This is also why I have saved this article till today (a Friday), because if you let Saturday, Sundays AND Mondays orders backup (processing them and actually despatching them of course) but marking them as despatched in your back-end system on Tuesday.

So customers receive notifications that their order has been despatched, but the likely-hood is, that their order is going to be with them that day. Quite a paradox.

Try it, for one day

First we reassure customers that we have their order and their money, this is the customers major concern, if they know the company has got their order and is processing it, they feel reassured. So for this I am assuming you have set up automatic notifications that let customers know that you have received their order (and payment if its separate, like on eBay for non immediate payment listings).

Flag your orders for that day and despatch them as normal, however do not despatch them until at least 9am the next day, as we have the weekend tomorrow(this article was posted on a Friday), you should have lots of orders to prove this with. Then on Tuesday, mark them as despatched, even though they left on Monday.

Say you used a 48hr courier service, we just switched it into a 24hr courier service, even better if you used a 24hr service, this shocks the customer because at 9:34 they get an email to say their order has been despatched and at around lunch time, the posty stuffs it through the door.

Deploying this in Real Life

An interesting point raised when running a draft copy across some peers, was in eBay’s Selling Manager Pro (SMP) it would be a waste of time adding the tracking number one day and the next having to go in and marking it as despatched separately. I checked this on one of the eBay seller accounts this morning who had SMP and saw while this is not totally correct, you can add a tracking number and just save it, although not marking it as despatched at the same time would be be rather silly. I think that was possibly his point :)

I have strong beliefs, one of the core ones is that to be manually doing any task that can be automated by either paid-for software or even free software, is categorically not the best use of ones time.

I did at first consider writing an iMacro to automate this task, that worked from a CSV file that would automate the input of tracking numbers and then marking them as despatched, I’d have this working in a few minutes. But there is no need, with eBay’s File Exchange you can do this using their despatch template at the bottom of this page.

For more advanced tools such as eSellerPro, Channel Advisor, 247 Top Seller or similar, most of these have flags in their sales order processing section which can be used to mark batches of orders.

It was also suggested (twice) that this may be of benefit to businesses that generally offer a poorer service or elect a cheaper, slower service. Yes, this would give such sellers an advantage, especially for media products were margins are extremely tight, using such a tactic as explained in this article would give a business the appearance of giving a higher service than they actually achieve, but keeping overheads to a minimum.

How much saving would you make, if you shipped everything you are currently sending via 24hr courier, to a 48hour courier, if it had no negative effect to customer satisfaction?

If you are already despatching orders within really good time frames, buy yourself an extra days grace and that that 4.7 DSR rating to 4.8 or 4.9. As I pointed out in an earlier article, the eBay Top Rated Seller status can be easily abused and you need every advantage you have to ensure you keep it, as it pretty much guarantees you 20% extra sales volume.

Your Feedback

Try it for two days and see if you see the difference in the responses from customers, it worked for me, it can work for you too, ‘Time Lord’.

18% Wasted – Your Most Important eBay Marketing Asset

October 18, 2010/by Matthew Ogborne

Channel Advisor Seller Buy4Less

Thats right here is the best way to waste 18% of your most valuable asset on eBay, the Listing Title. You make your listing titles on eBay look pretty by including ‘=’ and ‘-‘ symbols.

No idea what I’m taking about? See this item: 230526814009. Here is the listing title:

THOMAS TAKE ALONG === Thomas&The Jet – Die Cast === NEW

So lets count this up there is:

6 x ‘=’
1 x ‘-‘
3 x ‘ ‘

They’ve included these characters at the expense of the formatting and crammed ‘Thomas&The’ together to make it fit. That is 10 out 55 wasted, now thats not the best bit, wait for it, it gets better, brace yourself… Really silly question, where is the keyword ‘train’, it IS a train right ??

Lets get this straight, do not waste your most valuable marketing asset on eBay, the listing title. If it was not bad enough that you’re only given 55 characters to cram your description in, something like 80% of purchases are made by search and this search is now the ‘best match’ search which favours ‘top rated’ sellers and items with a few sales on, so your requirement to be as efficient as possible as describing your products has newer been so paramount.

About Buy4Less
Apparently they sold 3000 plus orders a day last Christmas, so crap titles can’t matter that much eh? Must have been the Amazon sales that bolstered this figure. You can read the ChannelAdvisor case study here.

The Facts: ChannelAdvisor’s Featured Retailer – LeSports

October 12, 2010/by Matthew Ogborne

ChannelAdvisor

One of the huge benefits of being a consultant, is that you can enter a business with a completely fresh look at it. Not influenced by any of the day-to-day operations, any historic issues or misconceptions created in the business by itself and can work from the cold numbers.

A few weeks back I was intrigued by the big Channel Advisor PR wheels moving and spotted one of their featured sellers ‘LeSports Ltd on YouTube.

The video is below features James, really nice chap, he explains what most e-commerce businesses have issues with, management of inventory across many channels and order processing; And that he is using CA to promote his products across new sites and that it saves him time. Great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxPB5nt2sQQ

BUT…

With this increase of automation, I wonder if they’ve failed to notice the extra cost at which it has taken to do this. Please do not get me wrong, automation is fantastic if done well, there are many tools that can aid a business in its day-to-day operations that will save hours & hours a day. But… this is where it could go wrong and the numbers need to be kept an eye on. So lets look at the numbers:

All figures are based upon data from Terapeak for the date range 01 Sept – 30 Sept 2010, the direct link to this search is here. Noting, a Terapeak account is required to view this.

Overview:

Total Sales	£28,632
Total Listings	2,811
Successful Listings	1,105
Total Bids	1,920
Items Offered	7,097
Items Sold	1,692
Bids per Listing	0.68
Sell-Through	39.31%
Sellers per Day	1

So for this month of September we have a gross sales value of £28,632. Now lets split this between GTC (Good Till Cancelled/30 Days) listings and auction based listings (10 days or less).

Bid Auctions:

Total Sales	£4,847
Total Listings	1,509
Successful Listings	348
Total Bids	576
Items Offered	1,509
Items Sold	348
Bids per Listing	0.38
Sell-Through	23.06%
Sellers per Day	1

So we can see here that for 1509 listings, £4847 was sold over 348 items. Lets crunch some numbers to see what this really means.

£4847 is 16.93% of their eBay sales (or 4/25ths), each sale has an average value of £4847/348 = £13.93, now here is the curious number, 23.06% of their listings sale. Now this is not distorted by multiple quantity listings because Terapeak says this ‘Total Listings = 1509, Items Offered = 1509’, so they’re all single item listings. This is an important factor as GTC listings normally have multiple quantities and skew this number heavily, to the point its almost worthless.

Now, this is where the numbers can lose their accuracy, so please allow some error of fees here as I am going to assume no discounts for seller fees and we are using averages.

There were 1509 listings at an average start price of £13.37, Terapeak also tell us clearly that there were no listing features used, so we can assume a straight auction fee. Now knowing this, lets crunch some more numbers:

1509 listings x 0.25 insertion fees* = £377.25
348 sales x (£1.22 Final Value Fee + £0.67 PayPal fee) = £657.72
Total = £1034.97

Some notes:
* I checked manually in eBay and also verified with http://ecal.altervista.org/en/fee_calculator/ebay.co.uk/index.php.

** This assumes no discounts and standard PayPal account and that all buyers paid via PayPal (probably true for 90% or more of sales) and that Channel Advisor fees of around 1-1.5% are not not included.

So for £4847 worth of sales, it cost around £1035 to actually sell the 348 items to customers, or 21.35%. This is of course excluding the item cost, packaging, staff time for the 222 questions (assuming 65% asked a question) they asked and the time taken to create the inventory record in the first place.

So… Using Using Auctions, is it Worth it?

Frankly, yes it is for them.

Why? 21% is far from the worst overhead I have seen, yes its pretty high, but there are a large number of sellers out there that are hitting 30-50%. I know for a fact at one time it was costing me 32% (the fee structure was different then). But its the ‘fact of knowing’ which is key here, if you know what your sale cost is, then you can work on it. Not knowing it is literally business suicide. I strongly suspect Jame’s know’s these numbers and is why he’s actually doing a great job.

If this dropped to say 15%-18% through optimising the time windows of sales and utilising the other four days of the week (the listings only end on a Sunday ,Monday & Tuesday) and testing outside of their normal ending windows of 7pm to 10pm, it would be tidy win for Jame’s.

Some Quick Numbers:

We’ve only focused on their auction style listings as these are the most expensive, here are some quick numbers on James’s ‘Fixed Price’ listings:

Total sales = £23.423 over 1223 listings of which 727 sold, for 1302 items, this is a positive percentage @ 106%, which means more items sold than that was listed as separate listings (I suspect due to multi level listings). With an ASP (Average Selling Price) of £17.99 the fees would come in 1302 * (0.20p insertion fee @ Basic level + 1.78 FVF + 0.81 PayPal) = £3632.58. Which is a very good 15.5% excluding any PayPal, Channel Advisor or eBay discounts.

Its a pity (or a positive) there is no ability to mine data on Amazon or the web to gain a true picture of LeSports. For anyone that is determined, using Terapeak to gain the last 365 days worth of data to get one set of data and a report for a tenner from companies house can easily do the maths…

eBay: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/LeSports
Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/shops/A3DKHE7UJOAC3O
Web: http://www.lesports.co.uk/