Ebay Secrets Blog

I’ve received some questions about whether sellers will now receive automatic, 5-star DSR’s for free shipping.

I’m pleased to tell you the answer is yes! And, this isn’t a test – effective Aug. 24, we began defaulting the shipping cost DSR to 5 stars when eBay can verify a buyer did not pay for shipping.

Sellers have been asking for this, and we are excited to bring it to them before the holiday season. Free shipping attracts buyers, and this important new protection for sellers will ensure that DSR scores for shipping cost will not receive a score of less than 5 if buyers choose free shipping.

Here’s all it takes:

1. The item must offer a free shipping option.
2. In order to get the automatic 5-star rating, the buyer must choose the free shipping option during payment.
3. Sellers should be sure to offer verifiable payment methods (i.e. PayPal, MoneyBookers, PayMate, ProPay) and use eBay checkout. Third-party checkouts will work, as long as they provide the full post back information to eBay, so that we can verify the buyer didn’t pay for shipping.

We’d be happy to answer your questions. Feel free to leave comments here on the Ink blog or via Twitter at @ebayinkblog and @ebay_andy.

Cheers!
Andy

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We all know that picking up, or delivering larger items on eBay can be a pain.  Shiply is a service which aims to make this process painless.  I caught with with Robert Matthams the CEO.

Shiply has been likened to eBay but moving stuff.  Everyday people list items they need to move on the site for free, and then get bids from over 16,000 transport companies who are already making similar journeys.  The end result is fewer empty lorries and more happy customers saving up to 75% on their deliveries.

We’ve also found there is a lot of interest from eBay users, with around 40% of all deliveries being eBay items, typically “local collect” goods.

Yes, Shiply now attracts a new quote request every 40 seconds on the site.

We do now have some competition in the UK, as we had expected when we launched.  Yes, our core market is large, bulky and heavy items or the “big and ugly” as it’s known in the industry.  These types of “difficult” items have historically always been expensive to move, but with Shiply, we’ve made the possibility of moving these larger items easier, cheaper and greener.  People are moving everything from small pieces of furniture, to cars, house removals and even super yachts!  To date, over 250,000 items have been listed to move.

Obviously we will continue to expand on our success here in the UK, but we also have other territories which we are entering into.  Shiply Germany for example launched last year and our Italian, French, Spanish & Dutch sites have now also gone live.

If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee!

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Over on sister-site, Amazon Strategies, we have a post about a new Amazon feature that surfaces the top products with lots of demand and little to no supply.

This is a little view into a very powerful strategic advantage that Amazon has over other players, eBay included, and illustrates why eBay is making a huge effort to 'Amazon-ify' the eBay experience.  I thought our eBay folks would find the topic of interest.

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Today, eBay's Todd Lutwak (looking quite tan, I might add!), announced today that in about nine months eBay will sunset eBay's third party checkout system.   ChannelAdvisor (and our customers) are the largest user of the Third party checkout (we use 3PXO as shorthand so I'll use that going forward to save time) system so I wanted to share a bit of background on the system as well as our plans in a world without 3PXO  and what it means for buyers and sellers.

Background on 3PXO  (or "Greetings loved ones, let's take a journey" – Snoop Dogg )

Prior to October, 2001, there was no checkout at all on eBay.  You would click buy now or win an auction and it was up to the buyer and seller to work out how to complete the transaction.  To fill that gap, innovative third party applications built checkouts that the seller could just email to the buyer and BAM the transaction was done.

In October, 2001, to much initial fanfare followed by massive outcrying of sellers, eBay rolled out a checkout system.  Sellers that were using third party systems were very upset about the system and eBay shortly thereafter allowed sellers to turn off the eBay system and instead plug in one of the third party checkouts- thus 3PXO was born.

Sidebar – this is funny, in searching around, I found that eBay still has the help files up from the initial launch of checkout live here - it's like a trip in a time machine.  

ChannelAdvisor and 3PXO, today and in the future

The initial reason that 3PXO was born and exists to this day is that eBay's checkout has significant gaps that in some cases can negatively impact the buyer and seller experience.  The biggest items:

• Tax/VAT calculation – many larger retailers need enterprise-level tax calculations as part of their business.
• Promotions – Sellers frequently want to offer specials such as 'buy two get one free', or free shipping on orders over $X, etc.
• Shipping and Handling – eBay has very limited Shipping and Handling options.  Also, eBay has a UPS exclusive that makes it impossible to use FedEx as a shipping carrier.
• Up-sells/recommendations – The eBay checkout does not have up-sells or recommendations or after-purchase bundle building/configuration.
• Payment option flexibility - By doing away with paper payment options, eBay has essentially gone Paypal exclusive – many sellers also have found that buyers like having the option to just pay with a credit card or for large B2B transactions, by invoice/PO.

We've been working with eBay to help them understand these feature gaps and they are committed to filling them before turning off the 3PXO functionality.  You can read more details about their plans here.

Today we announced our plans around this phase-out of 3PXO.  Today, sellers have two choices:

1. Stay with the ChannelAdvisor checkout through the holiday period
2. Move to eBay checkout with immediate payment today (if immediate payment is a huge issue for you, this is the best path if you don't have tax/fedex/promo/payment/other considerations)

In early 2011 as eBay rolls out their solutions to the gaps that exist, we'll be adding support for those and have more information on when we feel like they are solid and able to meet our customer's needs.

ChannelAdvisor will continue to provide advanced functionality around inventory management, channel optimization, etc. for customers.

Seller impact of the end of 3PXO 

If eBay is able to bridge all of the gaps in functionality, there shouldn't be much of an impact to sellers.  However, if, for example, eBay forces all sellers onto their UPS rate card, or does not implement improved shipping and handling features, or does not implement VAT/taxation features, the negatives for sellers could be:

• Maybe forced to leave the marketplace due to some showstopper (e.g. VAT tax capture and calc)
• Maybe forced to raise S+H fees if flexibility around promotions, FedEx/shipper, S+H rates, etc. are not allowed.
• Sellers already are not allowed to offer up-sells so that functionality is already gone

Buyer impact of the end of 3PXO 

These changes will be largely positive for buyers as they will have one unified checkout experience by mid-2011 and then when the eBay Cart/Basket is ready (reviewed yesterday here), everything will be one happy common buyer experience.

There is a small probability that if eBay can't execute on the long list of checkout features they need to add, that there could be some buyer impact (e.g. the higher fees for S+H mentioned above), but we'll have to wait to see how that plays out.

Conclusion – More Search (and cowbell!!!!), less cart/checkout

There's a long time between now and June of 2011 and we'll keep you posted as eBay rolls out the various fixes to their checkout.  Ultimately a common buying experience is the right path and we are very supportive of that path.  My only concern is that all of the effort going into checkout and cart right now is taking away from search, which is where I continue to believe eBay is falling further and further behind.  If you had to nail one of the two (search or checkout/cart), personally I'd pick search. Right now it looks like eBay is betting on and making the most movement on checkout/cart at the detriment of search.

More bluntly stated – Does it really move the needle if eBay has a perfect cart/checkout if buyers can't find the items they are looking for?

SeekingAlpha disclosure – I am long Google and Amazon. eBay is a strategic investor in ChannelAdvisor.

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After taking the summer mostly off from blogging, there's a lot going on in the land of eBay I wanted to update everyone about.  In this installment I wanted to take a deep dive into the much anticipated eBay Checkout (Basket) that is in a test in the UK. I'm going to write this a little backwards with the summary first and then a detailed tour last.

Thoughts about the Basket

We've spent a lot of time with the early experience Basket in the UK and while it's a good start, we've found several problems that indicate that it's very raw and buggy.  It's great to see eBay moving into the modern era with the checkout, but it lacks many of the benefits that normal carts offer:

• Since most likely items will be from different sellers, promotions around cart size to drive an increase in AOV
• Thus far there aren't any of the AOV expanding options you would expect from a modern cart such as up-sells and product recommendations
• The short-life of most eBay listings makes the occurrence of items in the cart going out of stock much more likely than any other site.
• eBay did an interesting implementation with auctions – it will be interesting to see how buyers react to it.
• The cart/basket is definitely more convenient than the single-path checkout, but my biggest question is eBay's priorities.

eBay seems to be spending a lot of engineering resources on the cart.  My biggest concern with the cart is not the functionality itself, but the priority.  In my opinion, the eBay search experience is so far behind the times and moving so slowly forward, eBay should take every available resource that is working on cart/basket and put it towards the search effort.

Until eBay gets search 'right', any other changes to the back-end of the process won't do much to accelerate GMV and help buyers.  In other words, if you can't find the products you are looking for, then what good is a multi-item cart?

In a future post, I'll give a concrete example of eBay's search challenge, before then let's take a brief tour of the eBay cart so you can see it in action for yourself.

Basket tour

Note in this section, I've scaled the screen shots down to preserve space – click on them to see the larger version.

The first time you notice something different is when you see a little basket in the upper right corner of the eBay homepage.

The other indication this isn't your normal eBay is on an item page instead of the "Buy it Now' button, you have an 'Add to Basket' button.

When you add the item to your basket, it is shown there with the other items and you are able to see all of the items in your basket and check out if you'd like to.

If you add an item to a cart and come back, say a day or two later, and the underlying item has sold,  you get the message you see below.  At that point, you have to remove it from the basket to be able to continue. Most of the items on eBay still have quantity=1, so it will be interesting to see how frequently this happens and if it ends up really turning off users that are more used to a cart metaphor that is more persistent (Amazon).

Another interesting situation that is happening frequently with the UK cart is that the seller either doesn't allow shipping outside the UK, or the seller hasn't setup their S+H properly and either the item won't add to the cart at all, or it won't calculate the shipping and handling properly.  In the following, you can see an example.

Auction items are automatically added to your cart and are ready to checkout as illustrated below (the first item was from an auction and the others are fixed-price 'add to basket' items),  When you've successfully added items to the cart, you initiate the checkout process by checking off the boxes of the items you want to include in the purchase as illustrated below:

 From there your items are totaled and you checkout in one single checkout vs. multiples.  The exception is if the seller is using third party checkout, then you go through two checkouts.

One last thing, as you add items to your basket the little icon shows that it is full.

As mentioned, the basket has several bugs including:

• Frequently when items are added to the cart, they don't actually go into the cart.
• Over a period of 24-48 hours, items drop out of the cart
• The cart's shipping and handling calculations can sometimes get 'off' and create an endless loop.

I'm sure eBay will resolve these, but with the 'basics' of the cart still not there, I don't think we'll have a global site-wide solution for some time to come.

What do you think?  Is eBay on the right path?

What are your thoughts on the eBay cart/basket?  Silver bullet or putting the cart before the horse?

SeekingAlpha disclosure – I am long Google and Amazon. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor where I am CEO.

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I got one of those forwarded emails this morning that caused me to actually read it.  Usually I dump those emails that are forwarded to thousands of people, but this one had a subject line that got my attention:  Philly requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license.

The link leads to an article in the Washington Examiner.  And yes its true.  Philly really is charging blogger $300 for a business license –even if they are only hobby bloggers.

The lady mentioned in the article should have read my book, How To Make Money Blogging From Home.  Even though the city is charging her $300 a year to blog, she noted in the article that she had only made $50 from her blog.

Both blogging on a topic and setting up niche WordPress blogs is a great way to make anything from a few extra bucks to actually making a living working from home.

And blogging is fun.  I just hope that the city fathers in Philly come to their senses and if not that other cities don’t try to fill their coffers by copying them.

Of course it could be something more nefarious. It is well known that governments hate bloggers as they are often the source of stories that embarrass governments and government workers when they uncover bad behavior, corruption or wasteful and silly spending.  There is an old saying: “If you want less of something then you should tax it.”  I wonder if maybe that is what’s really going on here?

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Don’t Count E-Commerce Out Yet
A new group of e-commerce companies such as Groupon, Etsy and FreshDirect are proving that e-commerce is still going strong. With avid consumers, they are a strong bet for investors in the IPO market. [via New York Times]

Debut of Facebook Places
Keeping in touch has become even easier with Facebook Places. The new feature allows you to share your location with friends via check-ins. Currently, the feature is only available to US users and can only be used through the Facebook iPhone application or by visiting touch.facebook.com on your mobile browser. [via PC World]

eBay and Half.com Help Students Purchase Cheaper Textbooks
Half.com has launched a new iPhone app allowing students to scan textbook barcodes and search through millions of listings for competitive prices. The new app is the first app to integrate barcode scanning technology implemented through RedLaser, which eBay purchased in June. [via TechCrunch]

Further News
+New eBay news feed keeps employees in the loop
+M-commerce reaches another milestone as customers in UK are more likely to make purchases through their mobile phones rather than traditional mail order catalogs
+MasterCard steps into the e-commerce industry with its upcoming purchase of DataCash Group

eBay Ink Weekend Roundup is a summary of news and updates around eBay, PayPal, Social Media, Technology and E-commerce. Let us know what interests you.

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When my husband and I first moved back to our Midwestern roots from a seven-year stint in Los Angeles, we knew tackling a serious renovation was in the cards. After settling on a foreclosed rundown shack of a home, we had our hearts set on transforming our new gem into a Scandinavian-inspired cabin. Along the way, however, we slowly realized that we were so focused on the remodeling, construction and mess of it all, we haven’t left much time, brain power or finances for the decor of the home (my favorite part!). Luckily, our friends at eBay have stepped in to help us pull together a show-stopping home with key accents that will work well with our existing furnishings.

When my husband and I first moved back to our Midwestern roots from a seven-year stint in Los Angeles, we knew tackling a serious renovation was in the cards. For one, real estate is an affordable investment in our sleepy Indiana town (much unlike that of our beach city in California!). And secondly? Well, we love all things home decor, design and DIY related, so the choice was an easy one.

After settling on a foreclosed rundown shack of a home, we had our hearts set on transforming our new gem into a Scandinavian-inspired cabin. That’s right — white, bright and rustic with a touch of modern and natural elements. And because I’m a blogger by trade, we decided we’d invite my readers along for the [rocky!] ride.

Along the way, however, we slowly realized that we were so focused on the remodeling, construction and mess of it all, we haven’t left much time, brain power or finances for the decor of the home (my favorite part!). Luckily, our friends at eBay have stepped in to help us pull together a show-stopping home with key accents that will work well with our existing furnishings.

Care to join us for the ride? We can guarantee tons of shopping, fun and eye candy—especially if you’re a fan of vintage furnishings with a touch of classic, modern flair. Over the next few months, I’ll be popping in to share my shopping progress (and you may even get to see a HaulVlog or two!).

In the mean time, feel free to track our daily renovation progress right here, and wish us luck! We’re certainly going to need it…

Erin Loechner publishes Design for Mankind, which was honored as one of the London Times’s top 50 design blogs in the world. She blogs for HGTV, and her work has been featured in Glamour, Lucky, Dwell, Readymade, Nylon, Print Magazine, Apartment Therapy and The Huffington Post, among others.

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An interesting post over on Hitwise Intelligence by Heather Dougherty earlier this month profiles how this Summer’s heat wave in the US has driven online sales of air conditioners. What I found most interesting was the eBay-focused data…

eBay experienced increases in the Air Conditioner category during the same week ending July 10, 2010 with a 46% increase in the volume of searches for ‘air conditioner’, ‘window air conditioner’ and ‘portable air conditioner’.

Going one step-further, we thought it would be compelling to see if similar trends were occurring on our other sites such as eBay Classifieds and Shopping.com. Sure enough, the trends are fairly consistent across the board. Digging even deeper, you can see that searches for air conditioners on eBay Classifieds peaked a week earlier than they did on eBay or Shopping. One could obviously attribute this to people wanting to shop locally before going onto eBay or other sites.

Searches for Air Conditioners – eBay Classifieds

Searches for Air Conditioners – Shopping.com

Searches for Air Conditioners – eBay.com

Not only that, the higher levels of search activity seem to follow higher levels of listings. Leading one to conclude that once again, online sellers are playing Nostradamus to consumer demand…

“[An] interesting trend is the ability of the eBay sellers to predict demand in terms of their inventory – in this case, the number of listings was the highest the week ending July 3, 2010, right before the peak, with a small decrease in the subsequent weeks of 2.3%* and 3.6%*. Watching the listings of eBay sellers could offer some predictive insight into the popularity of certain categories and products– like last year’s holiday hit, Zhu Zhu Pets.”

Cheers,
RBH

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The eBay Classifieds Summer Twitter Chats continue tonight at 8:30pm ET with “Money Mama” Lori Mackey (@LoriMackey), founder of Prosperity4Kids, discussing teaching children the value of money. Lori will provide tips on how families can make or save money on sites like eBay Classifieds.

As usual, there will be prizes given away during the chat. Tonight they’ll be giving away three Money Mama piggy banks – aimed at helping folks get started on teaching kids about finances.

Lori will be tweeting from her own account, @LoriMackey, along with @eBayClassifieds. You can join in the conversation too by using the hashtag #eBCchat. You can also visit the eBay Classifieds Twitter Chat site to find out more information.

Cheers!
RBH

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