The Multi-Venue E-commerce Strategy

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Christmas in August!
2007-08-14 00:15:00
Can you smell the sweet smell of fresh snow and evergreens? of store bought wrapping paper and freshly cooked ham? If not, we'll set you straight!It's that time of year again to start thinking red and green (especially green, if you get me). While the summer sales doldrums are starting to wear off, this is the best time to plan out your Christmas season strategy. I've outlined a few suggestions for you:Clean up your listings.Examine your best selling products and make sure you have clear pictures portraying your products at their best. Check your sales copy and make sure your descriptions are short, to the point, impactual, and include all the necessary information. Make sure your text is selling your product. Sales copy is often overlooked on a listing. If you're unfamiliar with writing sales copy, now is a good time to head over to amazon.com and purchase a highly rated book on it. Optimize your workflow.Clean up your workplace. One thing that will make you more efficient ...
More About: August

Shipping Box and Weight Requirements for UPS, USPS, Fedex
2007-08-08 23:17:00
Just a quick note I had to share:I found a page buried in the eBay help files that has ALL of the shipping weight and dimension requirements clearly and concisely on one page. The file lists each service level for USPS, UPS, and Fedex. Take a look:http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/ship ping-options.htmlI can't tell you how much of my time and our clients' time has been wasted digging through the courier sites trying to find this information when needed. Hope this helps!
More About: Weight , Shipping

Shipping Box and Weight Requirements for UPS, USPS, Fedex
2007-08-08 23:17:00
Just a quick note I had to share:I found a page buried in the eBay help files that has ALL of the shipping weight and dimension requirements clearly and concisely on one page. The file lists each service level for USPS, UPS, and Fedex. Take a look:http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/ship ping-options.htmlI can't tell you how much of my time and our clients' time has been wasted digging through the courier sites trying to find this information when needed. Hope this helps!
More About: Weight , Shipping , Weigh

Paypal to Raise Website Payments Pro Transaction Rates
2007-07-24 20:50:00
On Septmeber 1, 2007, Paypal will raise their fees for their Credit Card transaction processing service Paypal Website Payments Pro. This will not effect regular Paypal rates.Auctionbytes reported the change:"...monthly service fees for Website Payments Pro and Virtual Terminal will increase from $20 to $30 per month. Tran saction prices will remain at $0.30 per captured transaction, but a $0.30 fee will now also be assessed on all successful authorizations that have not been captured within 29 days. In addition, Virtual Terminal transactions will cost between 2.4% and 3.1% depending on processing volume. Currently, those fees are set at 2.2% - 2.9%."Is it time to evaluate switching? It depends on what your margins and dollar value of products are. In my opinion, Website payments pro is the best way to go for integrations with your system for Credit card processing on both your website and eBay. The hidden fees that most other CC processors charge rack up very fast, and their rat...
More About: Rates , Ansa

Paypal to Raise Website Payments Pro Transaction Rates
2007-07-24 20:50:00
On Septmeber 1, 2007, Paypal will raise their fees for their Credit Card transaction processing service Paypal Website Payments Pro. This will not effect regular Paypal rates.Auctionbytes reported the change:"...monthly service fees for Website Payments Pro and Virtual Terminal will increase from $20 to $30 per month. Transaction prices will remain at $0.30 per captured transaction, but a $0.30 fee will now also be assessed on all successful authorizations that have not been captured within 29 days. In addition, Virtual Terminal transactions will cost between 2.4% and 3.1% depending on processing volume. Currently, those fees are set at 2.2% - 2.9%."Is it time to evaluate switching? It depends on what your margins and dollar value of products are. In my opinion, Website payments pro is the best way to go for integrations with your system for Credit card processing on both your website and eBay. The hidden fees that most other CC processors charge rack up very fast, and their rat...
More About: Rates

Amazon to Use Harry Potter to Bring in Traffic
2007-07-18 15:54:00
I've been hearing rumors that Amazon will be selling the new HP7 at or below cost to attract traffic to the site. This is probably bad news if you planned on selling a lot of HP, but it's great news for the rest of us!HP7 at or below cost is going to bring a tremendous amount of traffic to Amazon, some of which will be trickling down to us third party sellers. I'd highly recommend that you get yourself set up with Amazon if you are not already. If you're already selling a few products on the River, then now is a great time to optimize your account and add the rest of your inventory in.I searched for a minute for the release date but couldn't seem to find it. If anyone knows, please post it as a comment. Thanks!P.S. Laris Merchants: If you're not already set up with Amazon, give us a call so we can get you up and running.
More About: Harry Potter , Traffic , Potter , Harry

Amazon to Use Harry Potter to Bring in Traffic
2007-07-18 15:54:00
I've been hearing rumors that Amazon will be selling the new HP7 at or below cost to attract traffic to the site. This is probably bad news if you planned on selling a lot of HP, but it's great news for the rest of us!HP7 at or below cost is going to bring a tremendous amount of traffic to Amazon, some of which will be trickling down to us third party sellers. I'd highly recommend that you get yourself set up with Amazon if you are not already. If you're already selling a few products on the River, then now is a great time to optimize your account and add the rest of your inventory in.I searched for a minute for the release date but couldn't seem to find it. If anyone knows, please post it as a comment. Thanks!P.S. Laris Merchants: If you're not already set up with Amazon, give us a call so we can get you up and running.
More About: Harry Potter , Traffic , Potter , Harry

What Every Seller Should Know about Third Party Shipping Insurance
2007-07-11 02:53:00
Do you only insure packages that your buyers have chosen insurance on? I've found that most sellers do, and spend hours per month on customer service and wondering whether or not to eat the cost of a lost of damaged shipment.There's a better way, and it's called third party insurance!I'd bet many of you have heard of it but have not given it much thought. Imagine never losing any sleep over problem packages. Better yet, imagine 100% satisfaction when you instantly refund a buyer who receives his package in smithereens.Here's the strategy:Sign up with a company like U-PIC or DSI to insure all of your packages each month. Right off the bat you'll have considerable savings on shipping insurance (usually about 50-70% off) from what you're paying now.Continue to offer optional insurance at the regular carrier rates. You could even lower them slightly if your management software allows for this (hint: Laris customers should set up their custom rates).The result:Your customers ...
More About: Party , Insurance , Seller , Shipping , Third Party

What Every Seller Should Know about Third Party Shipping Insurance
2007-07-11 02:53:00
Do you only insure packages that your buyers have chosen insurance on? I've found that most sellers do, and spend hours per month on customer service and wondering whether or not to eat the cost of a lost of damaged shipment.There's a better way, and it's called third party insurance!I'd bet many of you have heard of it but have not given it much thought. Imagine never losing any sleep over problem packages. Better yet, imagine 100% satisfaction when you instantly refund a buyer who receives his package in smithereens.Here's the strategy:Sign up with a company like U-PIC or DSI to insure all of your packages each month. Right off the bat you'll have considerable savings on shipping insurance (usually about 50-70% off) from what you're paying now.Continue to offer optional insurance at the regular carrier rates. You could even lower them slightly if your management software allows for this (hint: Laris customers should set up their custom rates).The result:Your customers ...
More About: Party , Insurance , Seller , Shipping , Third Party

Noteworthy Ebay Developments: Facebook apps, New Homepage, Google vs. eBay
2007-06-13 19:03:00
A lot of news is coming out around the EBay Live trade show. Here's a few things I took away of interest:1. EBay is working on a new homepage. The prototype looks like a much more web2.0 experience, and I think they're on the right track with this one. Hopefully they'll be incorporating some of their new community focus into it. I'd really love to see eBay wiki more involved. You can check out their new prototype here: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200706111436 382.html2. Since Facebook announced developer tools, eBay and some other third party software providers are already beginning to make apps for it. They are fairly simple listing displays and searches thus far. I'll cover them in more detail when I find one that's actually interesting. Expect this to be an area of rapid growth, though.3. Paypal announced some interesting new tool to assess the riskiness of dealing with payments. Not too much info provided yet, but it might have a large impact on how payments are dealt ...
More About: Google , Ebay , Homepage , Wort

Noteworthy Ebay Developments: Facebook apps, New Homepage, Google vs. eBay
2007-06-13 19:03:00
A lot of news is coming out around the EBay Live trade show. Here's a few things I took away of interest:1. EBay is working on a new homepage. The prototype looks like a much more web2.0 experience, and I think they're on the right track with this one. Hopefully they'll be incorporating some of their new community focus into it. I'd really love to see eBay wiki more involved. You can check out their new prototype here: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200706111436 382.html2. Since Facebook announced developer tools, eBay and some other third party software providers are already beginning to make apps for it. They are fairly simple listing displays and searches thus far. I'll cover them in more detail when I find one that's actually interesting. Expect this to be an area of rapid growth, though.3. Paypal announced some interesting new tool to assess the riskiness of dealing with payments. Not too much info provided yet, but it might have a large impact on how payments are dealt ...
More About: Google , Ebay , Homepage

Google Holds Party to Protest EBay's Ban on Google Checkout
2007-06-13 00:14:00
Head over to cnet for an interesting article on google's latest action to protest eBay's ban of Google checkout; they're throwing a party!Ebay still claims that a year of operation is not long enough to prove the payment service is trustworthy. For once, I actually see where eBay is coming from (a little). EBay has had an increasingly negative brand connotation with fraud. If they allowed sellers to use google checkout, and checkout screwed up a bunch of payments, it would reflect highly negatively to those many buyers. Many buyers would not understand that eBay really had nothing to do with it.With all the bad press lately that Google Checkout is getting in the UK—decling credit cards, double charging, and not allowing withdrawls—there might be some validity to eBay's claims.Eventually, I hope eBay caves. I'm not a huge fan of Google Checkout, but I do think it's going to be increasingly necessary. See my post on Google Checkout's Effect on Hits and Sales for more info.
More About: Party , Protest , Holds

Google Holds Party to Protest EBay's Ban on Google Checkout
2007-06-13 00:14:00
Head over to cnet for an interesting article on google's latest action to protest eBay's ban of Google checkout; they're throwing a party!Ebay still claims that a year of operation is not long enough to prove the payment service is trustworthy. For once, I actually see where eBay is coming from (a little). EBay has had an increasingly negative brand connotation with fraud. If they allowed sellers to use google checkout, and checkout screwed up a bunch of payments, it would reflect highly negatively to those many buyers. Many buyers would not understand that eBay really had nothing to do with it.With all the bad press lately that Google Checkout is getting in the UK—decling credit cards, double charging, and not allowing withdrawls—there might be some validity to eBay's claims.Eventually, I hope eBay caves. I'm not a huge fan of Google Checkout, but I do think it's going to be increasingly necessary. See my post on Google Checkout's Effect on Hits and Sales for more info.
More About: Party , Protest , Holds

Wize.com Releases New Widget
2007-06-05 17:41:00
Need another way to make some cash on your website or blog? Wize.com has a new widget that shows popular products in a category and ranks them based on aggregated user ratings from the web. I think it's worth checking out at: wize.com/typepad. Look all the way to the right for a widget preview.Wize.com is a new CSE (Comparison Shopping Engine) distinguished by its "WizeRank." Wize aggregates user ratings from across the web to provide a ranking for products. I was playing with the site a little this morning, and I really think they have something good going here.Hopefully, they will be coming out a way for businesses to upload their products directly. Surfing their site, it didn't look like they have that yet. If any of the Wize.com folks are reading this, let us know if that's in the works!
More About: Widget

Wize.com Releases New Widget
2007-06-05 17:41:00
Need another way to make some cash on your website or blog? Wize.com has a new widget that shows popular products in a category and ranks them based on aggregated user ratings from the web. I think it's worth checking out at: wize.com/typepad. Look all the way to the right for a widget preview.Wize.com is a new CSE (Comparison Shopping Engine) distinguished by its "WizeRank." Wize aggregates user ratings from across the web to provide a ranking for products. I was playing with the site a little this morning, and I really think they have something good going here.Hopefully, they will be coming out a way for businesses to upload their products directly. Surfing their site, it didn't look like they have that yet. If any of the Wize.com folks are reading this, let us know if that's in the works!
More About: Widget

Some E-commerce Statistics You Might Enjoy
2007-05-30 07:54:00
Firstly, I do realise that it's 2am EST, but genius never rests!In all seriousness—my never ending research, and a touch of insomnia, led me to an interesting goverment website. If you haven't seen this already, head over to http://www.census.gov/eos/www/ebusiness61 4.htm for some interesting statistics on how the e-commerce market is growing.We are in encouraging times! While the brick and mortar retail industry is trudging along at 4-5% growth anually, barely beating the rise of inflation, e-tailing is growing an average of 25% year over year since 2000.Check out their latest summary of 2005 to see where your particular online industry lies.
More About: Enjoy , Statistics , Commerce , E-Commerce , Some

Some E-commerce Statistics You Might Enjoy
2007-05-30 07:54:00
Firstly, I do realise that it's 2am EST, but genius never rests!In all seriousness—my never ending research, and a touch of insomnia, led me to an interesting goverment website. If you haven't seen this already, head over to http://www.census.gov/eos/www/ebusiness61 4.htm for some interesting statistics on how the e-commerce market is growing.We are in encouraging times! While the brick and mortar retail industry is trudging along at 4-5% growth anually, barely beating the rise of inflation, e-tailing is growing an average of 25% year over year since 2000.Check out their latest summary of 2005 to see where your particular online industry lies.
More About: Enjoy , Statistics , Commerce , E-Commerce

What Everyone Ought to Know about Google Analytics
2007-05-18 23:41:00
The new Google Analytics is out, and I must say, it's very nice. We can finally see the full referring url without having to apply some kind of hack to the tracker code!Track everything about your visitors including location, browser, referrer, frequency, and a whole lot more. GA also has some pretty advanced paid search (a.k.a. SEM - Search Engine Marketing) conversion tracking and analysis. Unless you're running a million$/year paid search campaign, you've got all you need.If you don't already have Google Analytics on your website, I suggest you set it up asap. Instead of reading me blab about how great it is, you should head over to google.com/analytics and check it out for yourself.Note to our Laris Merchants: If you have not yet set up google analytics on your site, please give us a call for help getting started.Side Note: I'm not sure when "SEM" (Search Engine Marketing) became a popular term, but I see many of the experts referring to it as such now. To relieve confus...

What Everyone Ought to Know about Google Analytics
2007-05-18 23:41:00
The new Google Anal ytics is out, and I must say, it's very nice. We can finally see the full referring url without having to apply some kind of hack to the tracker code!Track everything about your visitors including location, browser, referrer, frequency, and a whole lot more. GA also has some pretty advanced paid search (a.k.a. SEM - Search Engine Marketing) conversion tracking and analysis. Unless you're running a million$/year paid search campaign, you've got all you need.If you don't already have Google Analytics on your website, I suggest you set it up asap. Instead of reading me blab about how great it is, you should head over to google.com/analytics and check it out for yourself.Note to our Laris Merchants: If you have not yet set up google analytics on your site, please give us a call for help getting started.Side Note: I'm not sure when "SEM" (Search Engine Marketing) became a popular term, but I see many of the experts referring to it as such now. To relieve confus...

Some New Shopping Comparison Site Technologies
2007-05-17 03:22:00
I haven't touched upon shopping comparison sites in a little while, because we've actually only been seeing marginal success from them in our own projects. However, there are a few new developements I thought I should note.Shopzilla has a brand new homepage. From an idealistic marketing standpoint, it's amazing. I think they may have taken web 2.0 design and conversion techniques a little too far to where it's no longer pleasing to be on the site, though. I think what really bothers me (and others on the Sell Center Team), is that the whole thing seems to be off-center.In other CSE world news, MPire has released a new set of widgets that display eBay and Amazon listings. The widgets compare prices, show trends, AND allow you to make referral money. The CEO is apparently boasting that their widgets convert an average of 5% more than Google Adsense. They're actually pretty neat and definitely worth taking a look at.
More About: Shopping , Site , Technologies , Comparison , Some

EBay Allows Embedded Video Again
2007-05-13 22:17:00
Just a quick note: eBay announced that embedded video is again allowed in eBay listings so long as its hosted on one of its approved sites. While I have not personally tested video in listings, some of our clients claim great success.
More About: Video , Ebay , Embedded , Allo

EBay buying Stumble Upon for $75 Million?
2007-05-10 20:42:00
If you read the WSJ, you should have seen an article yesterday about eBay's rumored acquisition of Stumble Upon for $75 million. Scot Wingo from Channeladvisor actually has a very interesting post about it on his blog at ebaystrategies.blogs.com.I'd like to add another theory into the mix. EBay has been spending a lot of time and money trying to bring back the "fun" of eBay for buyers. At the expense of their reputation with sellers, they have been making a strategic move back to the Core auction format.With Stumble integrated into the eBay system, eBay enthusiasts could vote for their favorite eBay listings. Then using the eBay toolbar, you could "Stumble" upon cool eBay listings, bringing back some of that "fun" (and more press about Jesus-shaped cheeses) that eBay is trying so desperately to reacquire.It's just a theory, but it seems to fit with eBay's current disposition. Any other eBay theorists have any ideas?
More About: Buying , Ebay , Million

EBay Feedback 2.0
2007-05-08 07:21:00
Well it seems that everyone is talking about feedback 2.0, so it looks like I'll have to post something to keep up.I'm not really sure what all of the fuss is about. It seems like a fairly good system, almost CSE (Comparison Shopping Engine)-like.Here's what *I* think you should take away from the change:1. Ebay is trying to build more trust through a model that online shoppers should be already familiar with - stars and ratings based on a scale. Unfortunately, I think they only took a baby step. This might have been a worthwhile change in 2003. At least they're moving in the right direction.2. Customer service is now more important than ever in the highly competitive sectors of eBay. Sellers who dropship products that come from large dropshippers will gain an edge with high customer service and great FB2.0 ratings.3. Sellers who have a niche following and plenty of repeat buyers should stop fussing about FB2.0 and keep running their business the way they are running it.From som...
More About: Feedback

A Nice Upgrade to Our Office, Cheap!
2007-05-05 09:12:00
This is a little off topic, but we just switched over to a $20,000 phone system running through a $15,000 router, and you know how much it cost us? $0.00. Ah, the beauty of technology!Some of our techys have been experimenting with an open source VOIP PBX system called trixbox (trixbox.org), which is basically an automated bundle of Asterisk, FreePBX, Linux, Apache, MySQL, and a bunch of other things. If that's a foreign language, I'll translate: we built a fully function corporate phone system out of old computer parts and open source free software.We also built a router to handle all of the new VOIP network traffic using spare parts and an open source firewall, pfSense (pfSense.org).To top it all off, we cut our monthly phone bill by 75% using a VOIP provider named Vitelity (vitelity.com).There were a few kinks, however, that could not have been solved save for our resident networking and Linux expert. Make sure you have an expert handy if you ever consider replacing your trad...
More About: Office , Cheap , Nice

Some New Technologies from eBay
2007-05-01 16:37:00
It seems like a few of Max Mancini's initiatives are finally showing up around the eBay site. Or, if it's not him, another division of eBay might actually be doing something useful! Below I've posted some of my favorite new eBay innovations...eBay To Go (togo.ebay.com) is a new gadget that you can drop into your blog or myspace page. There are three different kinds - single item, multiple item, and search. I pasted one of the gadgets below as an example.eBay Wiki (www.ebaywiki.com) is a new compendium of user created articles about eBay and selling on eBay. As a wiki, the articles are also edited/updated by the user community to allow the knowledge to evolve.You may also want to check out Project San Dimas (http://projectsandimas.com/), a new desktop eBay program. Apparently they are targeting the hard core eBay buyers who want to browse eBay quickly and easily, keep track of their favorite stores, keep in touch with other buyers, and other features geared for the expert user.
More About: Ebay , Technologies , Some , Logi

eBay eXpress to Replace Stores in Search?
2007-04-30 16:35:00
I'm surprised I hadn't heard about this earlier, but check out this auctionbytes article: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m 04/i30/s03This is some scary stuff for a lot of bigger eBay sellers. Even with the store fees increase, we've continued to see much higher success in Stores for some product lines than in core. In fact, we have an entire lot of liquidation designer fabric that is selling fairly consistantly with NO core promotion or any other promotion.Larger Stores sellers should start thinking of backup plans now. Knowing eBay, if they are going to make this change, they will be doing it in around 6 months, with only about a month warning.
More About: Search , Ebay , Express

Google Checkout's Effect on Hits and Sales
2007-04-24 19:31:00
Over the next few weeks, I'll be looking more deeply at how Google checkout effects sales. There has been a ton of speculation lately, and, frankly, I thought Google checkout was a complete flop. However, it seems that they are growing slowly but surely, especially after they used some Microsoft-like tactics to force checkout upon us.Below I've pasted in an image of Google's relatively recent promotions of their checkout. You'll see that the Google OneBox shows "results available through Google Checkout" rather than the "see more products" message it used to have. You'll also see to the right that some Paid Search Ads have a really eye catching icon underneath them.I'm willing to bet that these changes to Google will be driving a significant amount of additional hits to Google Checkout sellers. Hopefully in the coming weeks my experiments will prove it!
More About: Sales , Effect , Hits

Don't Forget about eBay's 20 Cent Listing Day Tomorrow (April 24th)
2007-04-23 21:30:00
Ebay's running a listing promotion, and there are a few thing to keep in mind:1. Remember that Gallery fees still cost their normal rate. Don't forget to put that in you cost calculations.2. Listing promotions are great days to test new product lines and current store items on eBay core to see what kind of response you'll get from core auction/BIN format.3. The final value fees on Core are less. Try out some of your hot core products to reduce fees.Good Luck!
More About: April , Cent , Tomorrow , Morrow

Converting a Sale on your E-commerce Website
2007-04-12 03:28:00
I've been taking a hard look lately at what actually makes people convert into a sale once they are placed on a product page on your website, and I've identified two very important things:1. Your website needs to be fast. If it takes more than 5 seconds to load your product page from a referral, you'll probably lose the customer. 3 seconds or less seems to be optimal. This is especially true if you are paying for traffic from search engines or shopping comparison sites. If your site is slow, potential customers know they can just hit back and try the next result.2. Adding to cart needs to be in plain view (without scrolling!). This realization actually has roots in our own mistakes. If your buyer has to scroll to the bottom of your description to add to cart, they probably won't make it. Again, this is espeically true of paid traffic. The ideal situation seems to be a button under the picture and a text link above and below the description.
More About: Website , Sale , Commerce , E-Commerce , Vert

Reducing Your PayPal Fees with Merchant Rates
2007-04-03 01:11:00
I'm always surprised at how many of our clients don't know how to take advantage of PayPal's Merchant Rates , so I will spell it out in a bit more detail and provide some strategies to reduce your overall transaction fees.Firstly, let's go over PayPal Merchant Rates. Rule #1: You must APPLY with PayPal to take advantage of the reduced rates! I can't tell you how many of our customers assume they don't qualify for the reduced rates because they haven't seen it automatically change. The requirement is only 3k per month and you only have to qualify once!Here's the rate table for reference:$3,000.01 USD-$10,000.00 USD2.5% + $0.30 USD$10,000.01 USD-$100,000.00 USD2.2% + $0.30 USD> $100,000.00 USD1.9% + $0.30 USDTo Apply for your merchant rates, you only need to have done 3,000 in sales in the previous calendar month. Once you get your new rates, you don't necessarily even have to maintain the volume. One PayPal's site, they threaten to downgrade you if you drop below, but w...
More About: Paypal , Fees , Chan