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Making Sense of the Pending eBay UK Updates in May 2011

March 17, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

If you’ve not heard yet, you have now, there are some stellar changes coming up for eBay UK in the May 2011 update. You can read the full update here and in the next few minutes, I’ll be discussing what this means for you and your business.

As far as I see it there are two options

#1 You cry like a little girl

This option is normally chosen by merchants that are on the edge or so rammed up the whole idea of selling on eBay arse, that they get stuck, throw toys around and eventually burn out. Lets hope your competitors either do not twig there is an update at all or select this option.

If you would like to select this option go to the eBay community boards and start ranting how eBay ruined your life.

#2 You fully embrace the changes in advance

This is what smart merchants to. They analyse what the landscape is going to look like knowing what the updates are and work out how it affects them and how they can change to leverage this to their advantage.

If you would like to select this option, read on.

The Updates

I’m going to follow the structure in the update page from eBay, but give you the spin you need to turn this into plain English and see where its going to hurt and where there is potential and where work possibly needs to be done to ensure a smooth transition.

‘Value for Money’ Fee Updates

I’m just not seeing how the ‘Value for Money’ part is going to be interpreted by merchants, all I’m seeing is almost a universal hike in fees. Yes there are a few winners, but overall, expect to be paying more after this lands.

Fact: eBay UK will become more expensive that it is currently.

I would like to point out that eBay is amazing value for money, even at its higher closing rates the amount of exposure you gain to customers is immense and its never been so cheap to sell on eBay and the barrier to entry for new merchants is extremely low.

Remember I come from the era of SIF (Shop Inventory Format) where we paid 20p for 30 days/GTC and had no exposure, now you can pay a few pence or nothing (with an Anchor eBay shop) and gain access to the main listings and all its exposure as a normal listing. Bargain.

Summary of Fees Update

Insertion fees are staying the same, except for Anchor eBay Shop owners who go from 1p to free and Basic eBay shop fees are from 20p to 10p.
All the categories are going to a flat percentage final value fee.
If you see Technology products, you’re likely to be better off.
If you sell anything else, you’re paying more.

The ‘simplified final value fee’ is a bit of a hoax, yes it makes working out what you will end up paying easier, but I’d like to point out that sellers did not care before with the multi tiered final value fee approach, as they relied upon eBay to calculate the different levels of fees and it was absolutely no issue for the seller.

Lets be brutally honest, anchor shops are poorly marketed, so sellers who have them either have not worked out this or have more inventory that makes it more economical for them to upgrade. If you’re at this level then the 1p to free listings make little difference and again with the Basic to Featured shop upgrades, the lines are so close, you’re better off going for the featured shop as soon as your’re allowed to.

If you’re selling technology based products, then there is a fair chance you’re going to be much better off if you have a ASP of under £100, over this you’re going to be paying more, with a 200% increase on sales of £600 or more.

Parts sellers are going to have a mixed experience, again ASP’s come into play, if you’re sub £30 going to see a 1.9% saving, over this due to the ‘simplification’ you’re going to be loosing out to the tiered fee structure that was in place before the update.

CSA (Clothes Shoes & Accessories) sellers are worst hit, this to me personally sucks somewhat, as its CSA that has seen the largest growth for the past year and now eBay are ‘tapping it’. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, there are updates that if actioned properly and effectively will give us an advantage over slower moving clients (or those that ‘rant’, I’m just making a little point, remember option #1?).

PowerSellers: Focus on quality

I’ll be quite open, I read this part of the update as blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah. Again, taking my own advice, I am not inserting a rant about DSR’s, I’m just going to point out they are flawed as indicated in a previous article I wrote How to add icing to your competitors Christmas on eBay: Top Rated Seller Flawed?. Ultimately upping the standards of sellers has to be a good thing for the overall community.

eBay Express is Back!

Whoops, sorry its called ‘eBay Shopping Basket’, silly me :X

The New eBay Shopping Basket

If you’ve not heard or seen this, go to this page immediately, print it off and read it thoroughly, this is a critical update you need to know about.

In the update, its described by eBay as having these attributes:

Faster and easier shopping
Better value
Fewer fixed price unpaid items
Make payment simpler
Bigger orders

Let me translate these for you, the duplicates are not typo’s:

Buyers are (almost) forced to pay with immediate payment
You can offer them more stuff in more places and eBay will probably charge you for this later on
Buyers are (almost) forced to pay with immediate payments
Buyers are (almost) forced to pay with immediate payments
You can offer them more stuff in more places and eBay will probably charge you for this later on

Now we know eBay buyers are not the brightest of bunnies and quite scared creatures too. So it is a sensible suggestion by eBay that you re-think your postage strategy and start with a free option and then expedited options at sensible (lucratively cheap) values. You’ll also want to check on your postage discounts and ensure that you are using them where ever possible.

New Feature Bundles

Well almost, all that has been included is a sniff at the bundle feature that certain sellers are using in BETA currently. This is one feature that has been sorely been missing from eBay for a long time. Expect this to be rather similar to that automatically created by Amazon.

Item Specifics Updates

For CSA sellers, this is either going to be a huge task for sellers with large inventories and no back office tool, or a bit of a bind for more technologically advanced sellers. As I have a conflict of interests here (due to me publicly showing I work with My1stWish on LinkedIn yesterday), I’m just going to boast I have a tool that will tell me which records are affected and I’m not prepared to share it.

Being slightly more constructive for other CSA sellers you’ll need to check the table that shows the requirements in the May 2011 update, hopefully these should not be too painful and there are bulk editing tools such as this.

Electronics Category gets Amazon-Fied

Have you tried buying ‘tech products’ on eBay lately? Its a nightmare, Amazon is so much easier imo, eBay should be better by this time next year.

The requirement of EAN’s and matching existing records has been around for quite a while now, there are many reasons why I believe this is a good change overall, such as cutting down on the clutter on eBay and more transparent pricing for buyers.

Stellar Update – Variations!

An Example of Variations. Just note the sales volume to the right. Yes that really is 12,686 sold!

Rather excited about this one and you should be too. Multi variation listings have been around in the CSA category for ages now. There are again many reasons why you should be using these, the biggest is because they are common place now and make it easy for customers to select goods that are available in variations (such as colour or size), however there is a distinct benefit for best match search too (whoops did I say that?).

If you’ve never sold with variations before, then see this help page on eBay and also it would be a wise move to have a scan through the CSA category on eBay also and see how they are used by sellers in a category where its been a feature from when they were first implemented.

If you’re using a tool such as eSellerPro, 247TopSeller or ChannelAdvisor, dealing with multi level variations differs and I strongly suggest if this your first interaction with them, to start by manually listing an item as a variation in one of the clothing categories and then making the correct inventory structure (with the tool’s support team if needed) so you know how to prepare for this type of listing.

Its critical that you realise also that you cannot form a new multi variation listing from existing listings and you will loose the best match history on old items when moving from single items to variation styled listings. To be brutally honest, the sooner you move, the better.

Duplicate Listings Removal

Now this is a smart move by eBay and its going to catch out quite a few sellers that are perhaps bending the rules a little too far. To see how you are impacted, eBay have released a tool that identifies possible duplicates and allows you to download them as a spreadsheet.

I tried this today on a few eBay accounts, amusingly none were true duplicates, it just highlighted the lag in the tool we’re using to deal with some listings that were ended.

The wording around what is a duplicate is a little sketchy, because it does not account for fashion items where one week you may get a “black lace dress” and the next another “black lace dress” and chances are you’re going to describe it in almost the same manner. I only hope that eBay has been vague on purpose and are looking at the item specific attributes for a more informed view on whether an item is a duplicate or not.

On a side note, if we think about what eBay are possibly doing here, they are indexing key attributes for each listing and then comparing them for similarities and rejected some that are matching too closely. Now this by itself is quite simple, do this for millions of sellers, over possibly trillions of listings everyday, now that is truly amazing.

Global DSR Updates

This is quite a nice move by eBay as they are relaxing the standards for international sales and also giving sellers back the information they need to identify problem areas with international orders.

I have a saying that I previously shared, which is quite simple, but works very well for me:

A mistake or an error
=
An unexpected outcome, but none the less, an outcome. Knowing its a mistake or an error is critical!

Knowing, really is everything and this is a fantastic move. You can see the new global performance standards here.

Other Updates

There was an update to the Listing Analytics tool, some information about conditions for media items, buyer email spam was cut down with the removal of some duplicate emails from SMP, tracking numbers can now be taken for all couriers and also some category changes coming in April 2011.

In Summary

For me, the sole area for leverage as a merchant is to jump on the multi variations as soon as possible. Yes fees are going up, there are some other changes blah, blah, blah.

Variations are were your attention need to be, screw everything else in this update, go learn about variations immediately, they are going to change the dynamics of your almost ALL the categories you sell in.

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.

Skip Google & Microsoft, Will eBay Buy Twitter?

March 2, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

After reading an interesting article titled ‘Why Google Will Buy Twitter‘ where Douglas points out that it could be prime buying material for not only Google, but Microsoft too. But I’m wondering, what benefit could there be if eBay were to pick this up?

Google & Microsoft

Douglas rightly points out that Google Wave and Buzz are complete flops. Wave had its strategy wrong and Buzz was hammered due to privacy issues in the beginning. Where-as Balmer at Microsoft is really going for it with Bing and has pockets deep enough to pick up a few high profile businesses.

Capacity Issues

While Microsoft & Google might appear to be prime technology based companies to solve the whale issue (a big whale appears when its over capacity, annoyingly quite often too), eBay has immense practical knowledge itself with deploying its platform over some +35 countries, +80 million users and dealing with some insane amount of new listings each day.

There was a time when eBay was quite flaky, we used to dread Friday mornings and that was nearly always our morning off. Something was always being updated and something nearly always didn’t work that morning before 12. But thats long gone now.

So what could they do with Twitter?

Assuming that eBay can leverage their knowledge to solve the the whale issue, this does give them a standpoint that they’ve not had before. They have access to an huge audience of users that work on real-time data.

Maybe its a side entrance to Facebook, B2B users, a different way of communicating directly with buyers. I’m not sure why it feels right, but it does.

If…

If you were eBay, Google, Microsoft or someone else for that matter and knew that Twitter was up for grabs, what would you do with it?

The WOM Factor – Why ALL eBay Sellers are Not Equal

February 25, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

The Word of Mouth Factor

I’ve answered too many eBay’er questions over the years, its probably why I have such a tainted view on specifically eBay buyers, my personal ‘resounding’ conclusion is that they’re scared and really scared at that, almost to the point of paranoia.

In the next few minutes, we’ll be looking at the different types of buyers and a new system of gauging sellers, not feedback, but a derivative of feedback, which gives a clearer overall picture of the seller in proportion to their customers views and perception of the business. I’m calling this the WOM factor.

Multi-Channel

For multi-channel businesses, they’ll know that there are three different breads of customer and they vary enormously. These are:

#1 The Website Buyer

Website customers are the most relaxed of them all, you’ve woo’ed them with your marketing and reassured them with your subliminal security and reassurance factors. They’ll be happy with a couple of days shipping time and normal have already answered their questions before even buying from you.

#2 The Amazon Buyer

Its extremely rare to receive a question from a Amazon buyer and if you do its 99.9999999999999999999999999% of the time related to shipping or a broken item. Besides that, they’re quiet as a mouse.

#3 The Psycho eBay Buyer

I feel sorry most of all not for the sellers on eBay, but for the buyers. Mentally unhinged, these buyers are the stuff of customer services nightmares, they’re scatty and nuts, they’re lunatics and time wasters. But most of all they’re just scared.

They’re scared of being ripped off, they’re scared you’re going to steal their money and emigrate to Nigeria and then sell all their personal details to a chap in a mud hut who will spawn 10 versions of themselves as the victim.

Harsh, but that’s the kind of metal thought patterns that go through these paranoid buyers heads

Word of Mouth

This isn’t a new concept, infact its a very well documented concept, in short it simply says, that for a good experience a customer will tell two people and for a negative experience, they’ll tell 10 people.

Loss & Reward

This also sits well with the experiences of reward and loss. If I take your pet cat called “puddles” away from you right now, never to be given back, the sense of loss you will feel will be immense; However if I give you back a kitten called “Spot”, you’ll learn to love the little ball of fluff, but it will never replace puddles, who’s loss carries a far far greater sense of loss, than any gain can give.

Also word of mouth is extremely strong, companies are scared of the extremes that can occur with terms being coined such as ‘Brand Terrorists’, those customers that have been so pissed off by a business or brand, there is no stopping them ram-raiding the company or brand at any opportunity.

Inversely, when tribes are formed (Seth Godin’s input here) “Brand Sponsors” are created, those people that are just nuts for a product or service, the most immediate example I can think of are Apple fans. I’m an Apple product fan, but I’m to the level of what I would call excessive, that some of these Apple nut-mini-Steve-Jobs are.

Using “Word of Mouth” to Measure eBay Seller’s

Its not hard to see why either, if we use the rule of that one positive comment will create 2 positive word of mouth reviews and a negative or neutral comment -10 word of mouth reviews, then its not hard to do the maths on a random selection of sellers and understand that eBay’s growth is actually tainted by its underlying feedback system and also that all sellers are not actually equal.

The DATA – Random Sellers Feedback

These were taken completely at random, I picked four categories and picked a couple of sellers for each category from the top of the list (yes I’m aware this is weighted by the best match algorithm) and included their feedback for the past 12 months and neutrals are counted as negatives.

I have not included revised feedback, I could not decide whether these were positive or negative events, so have elected to ignore them completely. If I was forced to add them, I would class them as a negative event, as it was not a “perfect” transaction, perhaps I should look at this again in a few weeks and maybe I’ll attribute a +3 or +4 to these, but for now, I’m not sure.

PS: What do you think? Post in the comments below!

Random eBay Sellers Feedback Scores

ID	Positive	Negative	+Points	-Points	WOM Factor
jpe_enterprises	189	2	378	20	5.29
loco_gadgets	378	1	756	10	1.32
benthamltd	80791	1008	161582	10080	6.24
argos	259217	6181	518434	61810	11.92
xia090729	561	7	1122	70	6.24
glamorousoutlet	22585	530	45170	5300	11.73
bench_outlet	40274	530	80548	5300	6.58
bessy0302	2960	12	5920	120	2.03
online4babyltd	55870	614	111740	6140	5.49
babzeeonline	19549	217	39098	2170	5.55
tennis-deals-2008	4221	24	8442	240	2.84
poshtotz-store	5337	34	10674	340	3.19
little-devils-direct	773	10	1546	100	6.47
flyingplaneman	4765	68	9530	680	7.14
kmsdirectshops	14069	198	28138	1980	7.04
aqua_spot	894	7	1788	70	3.91
Totals	512433	9443	1024866	94430

Understanding the Data

I’m quickly adding that several of these sellers actually had either 100% or 99.9% feedback scores, this is only one factor that I am indicating in this article. While the vast majority of these sellers are above 99.0% feedback, Argos stands out for two reasons:

They have a feedback score of 98.7, the lowest of the group
They have the worst ratio 11.92% of WOMF

The second, is on face value an OK seller, they have a score of 99.1% currently, which is good enough and almost all retail stores in the physical world, would probably never be able to achieve this.

Glamorousoutlet are turning over a decent amount of items, with 22,585 feedback in the last year, this is probably around +32,000 orders, however they have incurred 530 negatives, or using the WOM Factor a negative score of 5300, giving them a WOM of 11.73 which when you look at Argos with their 98.4% feedback, is actually worse in proportion!

How to Calculate the WOM Factor

Calculating this is easy, you take your positive feedback for a set period of time and times it by 2, then you take the negative and neutral comments and times them by 10. Then divide the negatives by the positives and times by 100 to gain a more friendly number. In short the lower the better.

How to Calculate "The WOM Factor"

What Customers Really Think

Being able to gauge what your customers truly think of your business is stuff of marketeers wet-dreams. This new factor, I’m coining as the “WOM Factor” can be one tool in your arsenal to accurately gauge what your customers actually think of you.

To give you a measurable and a new dimension on what is just raw numbers. The WOM Factor gives you an indication of what is the actual effects and general response of your business on the outside world.

I wonder what the WOM Factor for Microsoft is?
I wonder what the WOM Factor of Apple is?
I wonder what the WOM Factor for the entire eco-system of eBay is?

Whats Your WOM Factor?

This leads to the pivotal question, whats your WOM Factor?

Success is Knowing You Made a Mistake. Knowing is Everything

February 4, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

This is possibly one of the shortest posts I will ever make, enjoy:

A mistake or an error
=
An unexpected outcome, but none the less, an outcome. Knowing its a mistake or an error is critical!

Knowing is everything, knowing that the outcome is a mistake, means you can try something different, not knowing means you carry on making the same mistake.

How To: Knowing the 10 eBay Shop/Store Design Mistakes

February 3, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Oh how these drive me nuts, please, please do not make the same mistakes. We can’t blame the shop owners featured in this article, they just don’t know better. You however cannot use this excuse after reading this article though!

Top 10 eBay Shop Mistakes

Here are top ten common mistakes sellers make when designing their eBay shop.

#1 The Giant Header

This award goes to http://stores.ebay.com/connies-bargains-galore

Check the header area out on this page!

Navigating the page to the line items means you need to scroll an entire page (yes an entire page I could not believe it) and more to get to them. Plus the header is on every page, so they’re all doomed pages.

Matt’s Tip: Keep your header to 250 pixels high as a maximum, anymore than this leaves the buyer having to think what to do next and we all know that’s a bad idea.

#2 The logo is not a Link

This award goes to a previous winner, http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Camisera-Clothing

Oh how this drives me nuts, the logo in the top header should always be a link, I covered this off in an earlier article, you can see the full details My #1 Pet Hate of Poor WebSite Design

Top left logo = Link to Homepage

Never forget this. Its basic common manners on the net. Making user the think again is a bad, bad idea.

#3 No categories

Awarded to: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/phatpocket

102,169 that is over one hundred thousand items and no categorisation?

Even adding categories by Author Name (which they have, see the listings) would help.

You can have up to 300 categories, three levels deep, there is really no excuse for this.

#4 No Description

Awarded to: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/AZCARPARTSUK

Take a look here http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/_sl.html?_an=1 and note that these are anchor stores, each paying £350 a month to be in this list. Now how many have no description?

Even though this store uses a custom header, you can still fill out the shop description area, because this description is not only used in the header, the shop search page (which we just saw), but also in the meta description.

#5 CAPS LOCK

Awarded to: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/YES-4-CAR-PARTS

Using caps lock is widely regarded as SHOUTING, also using caps lock for all the text, does not make the text clearer to the reader, it actually helps the person typing the text.

Never used excessive amounts of caps text in a description, title, or in the case the categories because its VISUALLY VERY ANNOYING.

PS. I am ignoring the image in the header that is in the header, they appear to have forgotten to re-register their domain name

#6 Paying for a design but forgetting how it will look

Awarded to: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/megabooksuk

Never fork out cash for a design without seeing how it will look with your information in it.

I’m guessing that if this seller had realised that they have no categories and that they were not using any gallery images at all for their listings, they might have ended up with a different design and layout.

It all looks a bit bare.

#7 Forgetting the rest of the Shop

Awarded to: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/The-Superdry-Store

This one is brilliant and had already earned a ribbing in six articles, you can view them here: http://lastdropofink.co.uk/?s=superdry

So what’s wrong? They have a stunning homepage, but kinda have forgotten about the rest of the eBay shop, no categories, no real header, no left navigation, just a stark white page. This is the best case of ‘homepage blindness’ I have seen in years.

#8 Not doing anything

Awarded to: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/all-your-music

Well, lets be fair here, they did open an eBay shop, 1/10, but have left it as that. No categories, pretty sure that the default design, no description, no logo, no nothing.

Quite sad really.

#9 Main logo, not a home link

Awarded to: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/RSJ-Motor-Factors-Ltd

Nice design, although was a contender for #10 spot, however as I was typing I spotted the issue. I recently included this in an article My #1 Pet Hate of Poor WebSite Design.

They’ve forgotten to realise that the default user action to go back to the homepage is to click the icon in the top left, the logo part where RSJ is written, sadly this entire header contains no a single link, so the browser is left flapping with no-where-to-go.

#10 No custom pages

Awarded to: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/WHATEVER-LAPTOPS

I’m not knocking this store to much, the owner has completed a great job, added a logo, changed the header, added a shop description (not shown on this layout, but it is there), has really nice categories, two feature boxes along the top, nice product images, decent titles.

But has not picked up that there are up to 15 ebay shop custom pages to be abused.

Not making the Common Mistakes

For those eager readers, yes the lack of header logo link is here twice, it drives me bonkers, don’t do it! Its like a door to a house, but with no handles.

I know its really hard, there is normally a lot going on in a small sized business, its not surprising I was able to find all these issues in a few pages. But at least you now know what the most common mistakes are and to avoid them.

I have been working two other articles on the eBay shop, these are linked to below, the first article is already live, the second is due in the next 2-3 working days:

How to: SEO for eBay – 10 Minutes Per Day

February 1, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Just because you pay eBay a fee for your eBay shop, insertion of a listing and a final value fee when items sell, unfortunately this does not mean that eBay unleash a team of experts to promote your business.

In many ways you’re left to your own devices and as long as you convert buyers now and then, it kind of keeps everyone relatively happy. But why should you be happy with mediocre?

I'd like to eat the entire cake, but I can only take one slice at a time

Cumulative effect

Once you’re in the game (see my earlier post on “getting in the game“) its only a matter of “practice to make perfect” and it does not need to consume hours each day. Just a few minutes here and there and the combination of lots of little things, make one monster!

Take this article for example, I conceived this while eating lunch on the back of a napkin, nothing major, a few notes, then prepared the layout, back filled it and this morning added some images and annotations. It is putting everything together, the idea, the notes, the layout, the back filling, the visual candy. The cumulative effect of this is the final product, this article.

Breaking it down

I was once asked this question:

How do you eat an elephant?

I paused for a few moments and honestly thought *k, that is a an enormous beast, I’m going to need a slab of garlic butter to go with that steak. While day dreaming on it for a few seconds, I was given then answer:

With a spoon

Yep a spoon. I got the point instantly. I’m hoping you do too.

See even elephants need spoonful sized mouthfulls too. Yummy. (Look at the people in the car, the dent on the roof and I'm pretty sure he's got his pinkie out too, rofl)

Only 10 minutes, set the calendar right NOW

Before you continue with this article, open outlook, Google calendar or write on your diary for the next two weeks, a 10 minute block at the same time each day, to look at and make these changes.

If you drink tea or coffee, all we’re saying is that we are going to have a quick 10 minute break, with a cuppa at a set time each day. With this done, lets dive in.

The areas of eBay to focus upon

We’re going to focus on a few key areas and then make the tasks really simple to do. These areas are:

Research
Listings
The eBay Shop
Reviews & Guides
Outside of eBay

Research

If you are just starting the ball rolling, your first few mini sessions should be focusing upon looking at your competitors and understanding how they are better than you and how you can learn from this to ultimately sell more.

Firstly we need to identify who the real competitors are, do not use gut-feel for this, use facts. Go to Terapeak/ and sign up for the ‘advantage’ account, its $25 or £16, it’ll be the best £16 you have ever spent.

Searching by category and keyword searches to find the real competitors, compile these into an excel list based upon value of turn over and make a point of reviewing each of these, noting the points you like about them and equally the points you dislike.

Oh and do not forget eBay Pulse, somewhat limited, but can help with identifying top keywords and top sellers.

Once you have found your list of true competitors, check this list once per week to see how they are doing. Then once per month, go back and review the list and see if any new competitors have arrived and track those too.

I know companies that know more about their competitors than they do about themselves. A healthy paranoia is good, although some to border on excessive.

eBay Listings

To focus on this effectively, we are going to break this down into further sections, these are:

Listing Titles
Listing Descriptions
Additional Text

Listing Titles

Even the most seasoned sellers can improve their titles, using the research in part one, you should already know top keywords for your categories. If you only do 20 titles in the 10 minute session, in a week you would have done 100, two weeks, 200 and in a month, a staggering 800 titles. Get started now!!!!

Listing Descriptions

I’m pretty sure every single description every written could be improved in some way. Again do not panic, we’re not after the entire elephant, we’re just after a tasty spoon full. You may have already learned through research that others may be creating clearer, more friendly descriptions that what you have.

One by one, with some time. That’s all it takes.

Additional Text

I’ve added this as an extra section, because we’ve covered the main two sections, title and description, however what about the rest of the auction contents?

I’ll give you some idea on the degree of scale I was recently given from a client, there had two lines, totalling no more than than 40 words for the description. The other 1454 words were terms and conditions and other useless scary junk.

Make all other content so simple, you’re mother could read it with her glasses off. Shipping, simple, terms, simple, anything else, simple. Customers are paranoid creatures, do not scare them. Caress them with nice information. Kinda like I am doing to you now :D

The eBay Shop

Again, this needs to be broken down in to spoon sized chunks so that it can be tackled in just 10 minute chunks.

eBay Shop URL
eBay Shop Pages
eBay About Me Page
eBay Shop Description
eBay Shop Categories
SEO Keywords

eBay Shop URL

The first task when looking at the eBay shop is to look at the URL. If we are dealing with an extremely well known & established eBay shop, then do not alter it.

However, if you are just starting out or have only a small following, then choosing a eBay shop name, making a URL that includes a nice keyword right name is strongly advised.

Edit your eBay shop name (thus URL):
http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?StoreMgmtEditDetails

eBay Shop Pages

I have an entire article dedicated to this. You can view it here:
How To: Using eBay Shop Keywords to Leverage the Extra eBay Shop Pages
(This may not be live at the time of publishing this article)

Edit your eBay shop custom pages:
http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?StoreManageCustomPages

eBay About Me Page

I have this noted to dedicate an entire article to this page, however in short the eBay about me page is a very handy page, as it gives you an extra icon next to your eBay ID. Its the ideal pace to promote your business and is the only page you are allowed to include a link to an off-eBay store on.

Edit your eBay About Me page:
http://cgi3.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?AboutMeLogin

eBay Shop Description

The eBay shop description can appear in more than one section. The first section you need to be aware of is that its used in the meta description tag for the eBay shop, also on some eBay shop templates its also used in the header area.

You’re allowed up to 300 characters for the description. I’d suggest the first 40-50 are human readable and then the majority are a list of the brands or other unique attributes and then are ended with another human readable sentence of 10-15 words. This way it reads well for both humans (primary goal) and search engines (secondary goal).

Edit your eBay shop description:
http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?StoreMgmtEditDetails

eBay Shop Categories

You can have up to 300 categories, down three levels. Named what ever you want with in reason, up to 30 characters each. The added bonus is, that you can set separate keywords for these categories too!

Edit your eBay shop categories:
http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?StoreCategoryMgmt

SEO Keywords

You can give each of your shop categories up to two primary keywords and six secondary keywords, plus you can specify your own keyword sets for the homepage as well.

If you are dealing with a wrath of categories you created in the earlier step, just plod your way through them, Just think in a few weeks, they’ll all be super hot, loaded keywords words and the task will be complete for a short while. Because you’ll want to be coming back to look at these again later to improve them further!

Tip! Refuse the urge spam the keywords. Think or even better, research what people are searching for an how that matches your category and match the keywords you use to the products you have in that given category.

Edit your eBay shop keywords:
http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?StoreMgmtViewCustomKeywords

Reviews & Guides

These are stellar places to pick up well targeted browsing buyers. The last time I had a stab at the reviews, I got an account to the top 100 reviewers on eBay UK. It took a lot of work and I did have a team to help me achieve this. But it can be done.

Take a look at http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/ You can review almost anything within reason. I’m not going to cover why you should be doing this in great detail here as again I have this already noted for a future article. But in short, it will help you be seen as the ‘Authority’ in your given area.

Tip: Stuck for an idea? Pick three items and say why you like one more than the others, now go!

To create your first review:
http://cgi3.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CreateProductGuide

Outside of eBay

Its all about tipping the scales in your favour

I’m not going to be lame and suggest Facebook, Twitter as you already know this. What I am going to suggest is that you start your own blog, so you can talk about your items with your own community.

In short ‘blogging’ only requires some time, you have 10 minutes each day, thats all that is needed. Articles do not need to be huge like this one is, short and sweet works well too. Just be honest and show your passion.

If you’re worried about costs, do not be, here are two free options and they’re both great:

Forum posting and generally just talking about your business and products will attract people. The more you talk, the more people will follow, its quite simple.

One crucial point I feel I need to make is that you should categorically should not use paid search such as Adwords or similar to promote your eBay shop. If you are at this level, then focus your attention on a creating your own web store outside of eBay.

Again the 10 minute rule applies here too, get in and get going and by the end of the month you could have created at least 20 blog posts!

Summary

I have shown you that all you need is 10 minutes with a cuppa to make a difference. We’re not after eating the entire elephant, or a VW with two people in it for that matter, but we can have a scoop of it each day and finally reach our ultimate goal. Now go get started!

Take Action
Now that you’ve read this article, grab your calendar and put down a 10 minute window to make one small change, you’ll be amazed at the effect of this after just a week.

Argos is Kicking eBuyer’s Butt on eBay

January 25, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Here is some irony for you, eBuyer the on-line technology retailer is getting its arse kicked by a catalogue store on eBay. I’ll be quite open when I say I am taking the piss a bit in this article, but on a serious side, I’d have expected a lot more from a solely eCommerce based company like eBuyer.

The thing is I really do quite like eBuyer, they are a natural second behind Amazon for technology purchases (eBay comes in third). eBuyer has to be one of the best examples of a company that has fantastic data, a great brand, but seems to think some-how that does not count for eBay.

Non Fluffy Version

This is actually the first version that you’re viewing now, I did create a second copy that was reworded in many areas, but I felt this version had more bite so kept it. Let me know if you think I was wrong to choose this version and that I should have released the ‘fluffy’ version instead.

Argos

Lets put this in perspective, firstly we have Argos, traditionally a high street retailer that leveraged the huge power of catalogues and in-the-home shopping. The Internet was probably somewhat of a second thought to them, but they’re doing a fine job now.

eBuyer

And then we have eBuyer a Rotherham garage start up whom had £250K pocket change (WTF?) and started an eCommerce giant which we know as eBuyer. Naturally you would be expecting that a leading on-line, technology led company such as this to be creaming anything eCommerce wise.

How wrong are we!

There is a saying for this, its called the ‘Face Palm’, as defined by Wikipedia:

A facepalm is an expression referring to the physical gesture of striking one’s own face in a display of exasperation. In Internet discussions, the term is used as an expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, disgust or general woe.

Argos Rocks eBay!

Argos is the dark horse here, they have really got their stuff together. Lets take a look at one of their listings. A screen shot is below and you can view the item in the flesh here.

Click Image Above for Full Size version

Its blatantly obvious they have customer services issues but its also clear that they give a hoot and are following up comments and must be working hard in the background.

I like the Argos eBay outlet for many reasons, here are just a few:

Consistent branding across all channels
Not the best eBay shop, but it looks like Argos and they have done an awful lot more than some
Semi decent picture (in the listing)
Their listing templates are well laid out (*coff*, need shipping on the right lads!)
Descriptions are about the best you’re going to get from a company of this nature
We have integrated reviews! (monster unique selling point)
OooO I just spotted social links, that’s naughty the official line clarified with eBay only a few days ago that this was still a very grey area on the links policy and this was not allowed.
A categories menu with extra links
A featured listings gallery

I could go on and on, but in short I quite like the operation being portrayed. Yes they need some refinement but its doing them good for now. 8/10 for the lads over there at Argos. Wooohooo!

Brewery, Piss Up, FAIL?

Lets take a look at one of eBuyer’s listings, don’t get too excited though, there is very little to gawk at.

Click the Image for a Larger Version

Errr ok, credit is due for having three images and a better description than Argos. But where is the rest of it?

What about the shipping prices?
No images in the listing area?
What about the other products from Tenda?
What about the the 32 reviews FIVE STAR they have for this item on their website?
Where are the exit points?
How much is shipping?
Am I saving anything?
Is it new?
Is it used?
I’m an idiot TELL ME in PLAIN ENGLISH what this is about
Lead me, I am a sheep
That’s some horrible fine print bullets, can I buy this item, am I eligible?
What about the 14 forum comments for this item?
What about the consistent branding?
What about everything someone forgot to put in the listing?

The Irony Is….

That for the past 30 days, Argos are only just beating eBuyer for sales on eBay by a mere £160K. Argos have almost done £1.2M and eBuyer have done £1.04M for 30 days Dec 21st 2010 to Jan 19 2011.

But when you look at the average selling prices (ASP), Argos is shifting way more kit than eBuyer (about three times), as eBuyer has an ASP of £115 and Argos has an ASP of just £37.

Imagine If…

The technology company actually got its act together and focused on its listings and presence on eBay properly and stopped doing silly things like this video and focused on leveraging the sales channel to its full potential. All the things that an eCommerce should know and should be putting into practice and seem to have forgotten.

If you are eBuyer & are reading this:

Read this article, its in plain English Dear eBuyer.com, You Could Be Doing So Much Better on eBay UK. Here is How! I hope it helps, because I would be embarrassed to be having my arse kicked by an off-line, catalogue pusher.

If you’re not eBuyer & are reading this:

I sincerely hope that that your business is not presented so poorly, there is so much to be learnt from Argos and the question is:

Do you agree that Argos is kicking eBuyer’s butt?

Comment form is below!

A Previously Unreleased eBay Shop Exposure Tip

January 24, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

This one is little amusing and I only know of a few people have done this and I was the one told them that it even existed.

The Background

While running my own eBay business and few years back, paying out +£200 for an eBay shop was a large expense, back then it was nothing like today’s eBay shops, I had to be ‘authorised’ by someone in in eBay USA and it took several weeks to be set live, none of this flop £350 on the desk and off you go stuff.

Neither did the store have the kind of listing exposure that you probably enjoy now. We used to have something called ‘Store Inventory format’ or SIF for short. Also in short, it was expensive and equally crap.

Without the exposure and added costs, you were truly left to your own devices to promote your store and its listings, which lead me to explore the threshold that makes one store appear in a category in the eBay shops directory.

The eBay Shop Directory

There is a eBay shop directory (Matt hears *gasps* from the readers, no there really is a eBay shop directory) on eBay that follows the eBay category structure, you can see it here and a screen shot is below:

Taking a closer look we have these features:

A search box
A set of categories to the left, that look a lot like the normal eBay categories
Images of the Anchor stores
Several featured shops

You can see a similar layout in the screen shot below, this is shown after clicking into a sub category on the left. You’ll also notice that no basic shops are shown in these results.

Pay Close Attention

Now pay special attention to the left bar, as I hinted above, this is a copy of the eBay category structure. What I found that the threshold was really low, you just need 5 listings in a given category to provoke the store to show up in the eBay shop categorisation.

So if you’re paying out what is now £350 for an anchor eBay shop (even £50 for the featured eBay shop subscription level is a lot to some), this tactic could gain you extra visitors to the shop and your listings.

Not Spam

I know exactly what one reader (yes that’s you Mr David M!!! I told you I would mention your name this week) of this blog will be thinking when he reads this article, spam.

No, I am not suggesting you spam eBay with random miss-categorised items. I am suggesting that you selectively tailor a selection of items to each category to optimise your search results, while adding variety to the passing buyers.

Possible Example

For example if you sold batteries and mainly computer related items, you’ll naturally be shown in the computing categories, however you could make 5 different battery packs for a specific toy and list it in the toys category #234 or similar.

Check this eBay category structure link, the numbers to the right of the categories similar to (123456) are the item counts for that given category, this tells you which category you should be looking to make packs for.

If you’re anchor level, you should see the most benefit, as the added logo helps convert and the listing fees are dead cheap, even at the ‘Feature eBay shop’ level where the listings are 5p a pop, for 25pence, you can be exposed to an entirely new section of eBay.

Do Not Leave a Comment!

Don’t want to comment on this article? You’re not the only one I can tell ya!

I love receiving emails from my readers, several blatantly say they do not comment because they do not want reveal their names to the outside world, because they do not want others knowing they read this blog, its quite amusing and quite a paradox too.

Mail me directly: [email protected]

My1stWish Smashes +100,000 eBay Feedback

January 20, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

Its not everyday someone can say they topped one thousand feedback comments on any platform, let alone one hundred times more.

I still remember getting my first score of 10, then 100 feedbacks and then another new star for 1,000 feedbacks, never did I believe back then that I’d personally top 14,000 feedback on single account on eBay, but be involved with companies that did this for breakfast.

One such company that I have had the delight of working with since its creation a few years ago was My1stWish and I’m happy to report that they recently topped the scale by achieving the level of over 100,000 positive comments on eBay.

The moment it happened was caught for wall mounting:

About My1StWish

If you’ve never heard of My1stWish, then you’ve never been in the eBay clothes, shoes & accessories category on eBay UK. My1stWish are a brilliant example of a small business that grew from a bedroom to a turnover of several million pounds in only a few years. Covering eBay, Amazon, websites and International markets to aid their expansion.

Coming Soon…

There is more to follow along the lines of this topic, may be tomorrow? You’ll have to wait and see. Stroke the lantern Aladdin :D

Exploring ‘eBay Connect’ – What If?

January 17, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

After posting the original idea ‘Sign-In With eBay Connect, A Rival for Facebook Connect?‘ last Friday, I spent most of the weekend thinking on how this could be put into practice and what the implications could be.

Graphical Representations of what eBay Connect buttons could look like

If you’ve not read the article yet, take a quick read here and get yourself up to speed, the basic idea is to leverage your eBay account to interact with other websites, I really do not want any more website accounts and in this article I will be exploring how far this could go and spin offs that could happen.

I feel obliged to make it completely clear, this article is purely hypothetical, there is no real service called ‘eBay Connect’, however if you are reading this and there is such a service, this idea obviously rocked.

So what could eBay connect do that other connection services cannot do?

That was a question spinning around my head for the weekend, how could this be different to the other connection services out there. I came up with the following feature set, although I’d welcome more suggestions from you, the comments box is at the bottom, ironically now with a Facebook Connect button on it :X

The eBay Connect feature list:

Sign into any website with your eBay account
Populate shipping forms with pre-saved data from eBay
Use PayPal to pay for an order
Use a Credit Card (ironically, also through PayPal) to pay for an order
Receive order status updates in your MyeBay
Ask & Receive questions in MyeBay (MyMessages now becomes a CRM system)
Leave feedback for the transaction for the external website on eBay

Now I really cannot wait and I am going to jump straight to item #8. This one truly breaks the boundaries as I am suggesting taking the eBay feedback system and making it available for outside parties.

We’ve seen numerous rating systems appear over the past few years, some a better than others, but they basically offer the same service. Such examples are:

Ekomi
Bizrate
Epinions
PriceGrabber
ResellerRatings
Shopzilla
Yahoo
Shopsafe
Ciao
Dooyoo
Kelkoo
ReviewCentre
Shopsafe

However this time, we’re joining the original feedback system, eBay feedback with the rest of the Internet via ‘eBay Connect’.

First Connecting Businesses to eBay

I came to the conclusion that there was is only two scenarios that need to be dealt with when it came to actually setting up such a services for a business, these were:

A business that currently sells on eBay
A business that does not currently sell on eBay

A business that currently sells on eBay

For such a business, then we would need the business to join their website(s) to their eBay account, thus their feedback will be directly linked to the website and eBay. Purchases made on either platform can be rated and other features enabled.

A business that does not currently sell on eBay

Then simply register and verify a new eBay account and link them up to gain access to the features and functions that are indicated in this article.

Once Connected

Then feedback can be left for transactions that are processed through both eBay and the external sites. Obviously eBay would be mad to just join the feedback system, if they nailed down payment methods, processes (orders, returns, disputes etc) and messages, then this could easily be evolved into a paid for service with some quality service offerings.

Exploring the options

The number of eBay accounts are in the realms of millions, may be more worldwide, I think that you may have just grasped the sheer scale of the potential for this idea, not only am I suggesting with pimp the eBay feedback system allowing for businesses to be rated on external transactions, but for additional value add services to be added to the mix to make such a ‘eBay Connect’ service very attractive.

I’m going to quickly explore the numbered options we started with in the next few sections, these are:

Sign into any website with your eBay account

Fundamental to this entire offering, the promise that by using your eBay account to connect with a 3rd party website will make your transaction, trouble free and as simple as it should be, with no more forms to complete and a payment method you trust.

Populate shipping forms with pre-saved data from eBay

This personally annoys me, even when dealing with an order of an item I really want from a new website, it tarnishes the deal and has been an evil of necessity. Its why I love Amazon so much, two clicks (not one, it takes TWO clicks!), done. eBay connect removes this.

Use PayPal to pay for an order

What a no-brainer, I don’t know the figures, but I bet its extremely high the number of eBay accounts that have PayPal, paying using PayPal is obvious and gives the eBay Connect service a bonus revenue source.

Use a Credit Card (ironically, also through PayPal) to pay for an order

Even in the bullet point for this, I added ‘ironically’ to it, yep, by not restricting payments to just PayPal, an extra scoop of revenue could be taken from the order. I have not even contemplated the full revenue model for such a concept as I am describing here for ‘eBay Connect’, but as you are starting to realise, like I have, this baby has more cash pots that a bent cashier at Fort Knocks.

Receive order status updates in your MyeBay

Emulating what Amazon did to marketplace sellers, take control of notifications in a single place. But why stop there? Create the order as a real order in MyeBay and let it follow the same order track as other eBay orders?

Ask & Receive questions in MyeBay (MyMessages now becomes a CRM system)

Now here is another superb idea, link the communications up beyond standard notifications to the MyMessages section on eBay and take control of the entire process in a fully integrated Customer Relationship Management system.

Make it an API Sir!

eBay’s API (Application Programming Interface) is possibly the worlds most documented and complete API there is, making the ‘eBay Connect’ system accessible via an comprehensive API is a natural step and would accelerate the adoption of such a service.

In Conclusion

The epic scale of such a service called ‘eBay Connect’ is far reaching and breaks the boundaries that are set by limiting eBay to just eBay. By unleashing such a beast to the entire eCommerce world would be shattering and maybe for Web 3.0 (to me anyway) ‘eBay Connect’ means the simplification of all the junk we made in Web 2.0.

What do you think?

Would you use eBay connect if it meant one login and one system to track your orders from multiple websites?

Sign-In With eBay Connect, A Rival for Facebook Connect?

January 14, 2011/by Matthew Ogborne

It only just occurred to me while reading the comment in the article ‘How to Make Your Shopping Cart Suck Less‘ that I really do not want another web account with another company, literally it has to be the quote of the year:

“I need more website accounts like I need an asshole on my forehead”

Facebook have Facebook connect, that enables buyers to join with popular websites, twitter has a similar service called ‘Sign in with Twitter‘ and I’m sure there are others that I’m neglecting to mention (comments section at the bottom please!).

Such services are super neat for me, I am all over the web every day, as I am guessing you are, who really needs that extra account anyway and I’ll normally connect using my Facebook or Twitter accounts in preference of filling another web form.

There are extensions for Magento to do this and almost all major shopping cart systems, damn, I need to get this for this WordPress site too. Its on my list!

An Example of Facebook Connect in action

eBay Connect?

Graphical Representations of what eBay Connect buttons could look like

Even in 2008, eBay was boasting over 14 million active users, imagine the raw potential here for such a service, its fair to say that most people have a email address, a Facebook account, possibly a twitter account and definitely an eBay account.

So link them up, imaging being able to pay for your goods, one sign in, eBay already has your details, yes a confirmation for the password for PayPal, but how slick would that be?

Your Feedback

Have I stumbled upon a golden idea or a flop because its fatally flawed for XYZ reasons? What do you think? Would you use it if it existed?