eBiz News: eBay Strategies, Blogging for Dollars

EBay strategies for 2007, shopping carts, social networks, blogs and Google Base grabbed headlines this week in e-commerce news.

Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor Corporation and author of eBay Strategies: 10 Proven Methods to Maximize Your eBay Business, published in 2004, yesterday offered his recommendations for the current year.

He is a "big fan" of eBay's Best Offer feature, despite criticism by some sellers that say buyers use it indiscriminately to net bargain prices for high-quality items.

Don't Take it Personally
"This can be a conversion increaser for you, but set rules, don't get emotional," said Wingo. For example, he says sellers should set an amount under which they will accept a "Best Offer," an amount that they will review and perhaps make an exception just to acquire a customer, a price point that they will reject but will offer the buyer a coupon or discount on other items and a point at which they will just ignore the pitch.

Wingo also urged eBayers to leverage blogs and user-guides, echoing the trend of social commerce, in which viral marketing and customer-centric content plays a role in the purchasing experience. He cited FashionPhile as a successful example of an e-biz that established itself as an authority, and therefore gained customer trust, using this strategy. However, he advised merchants "to later move this content to your own e-commerce site because you don't want to help eBay get better traffic than you're paying them for."

He also offered steps that can be taken to keep eBay fees in check. For example, he said you can save money by listing items at the right amount to fall under a lower fee tier. "If something is $50, you pay more to list that, so why not bump it down just a few cents to the lower level?" Another method is to eliminate the lower-priced items you sell. "Look at your product mix, the higher average selling price merchandise is benefited by the fee structure," he said. "Don't fight it."

Gallery? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Gallery
Another area to assess is listing upgrades. "You can scrub a lot of these. Is Gallery really that important? Do some testing and see if you really need it. We found that for items under $25 it doesn't hurt if you lose Gallery," said Wingo, adding as an aside that he finds it incredulous that eBay still charges for the image-display feature.

He said merchants can also cut listing fees by integrating eBay's check-out redirect with their e-commerce site for up-sell items, thereby avoiding listing fees for them. He points to ShoeMetro as a good example, as they offer shines and such at their e-commerce site, effectively using eBay as a customer acquisition resource for outside ancillary sales.

Additionally he said sellers should use PayPal, be adamant about getting credit for deadbeats, use credit cards for listing fees so you can earn "cash-back points" and business bonuses such as frequent flyer miles.

Another strategy he recommends is a concept he calls the "product waterfall." This involves moving slow-moving inventory to appropriate channels, depending on the status of your business. For instance, he says to move lagging items off eBay to your traditional Web shop, but alternatively, to use eBay to liquidate inventory from your e-commerce site if you're doing millions of dollars in annual sales. He strongly advises dropping slow-moving items immediately, rather than continuing to list them with the hope they'll sell.

Finally, Wingo said it's prudent for eBayers to prepare for Feedback 2.0, a new feature that allows customers to anonymously rate sellers in a detailed fashion on four criteria, by setting customer-expectations that can be met. "If you can ship in five days, tell them seven," he said, "so you get a great review instead of a mediocre one."

Blogging for Dollars
On the blogging front, the e-commerce portal uSuggest.com just launched a platform designed to turn blogs into bucks for both writers and e-tailers. The service gives bloggers the ability to tag and recommend products directly from their online journals, steering readers to online retailers.

Bloggers would then receive a commission from any sales generated through referrals, according to the company. Unlike affiliate marketing, which is retail-portal specific, uSuggest's "Suggesters" direct consumers to the site with the best price across their 500-vendor network.

USuggest.com, still in development, will be working with leading bloggers to install the platform on their sites. For more information on how to get listed visit www.usuggest.com.

It's Not All About MySpace Anymore
In other e-commerce news, the market share of Internet visits to the top 20 social networking Web sites grew by 11.5 percent from January to February 2007, to account for 6.5 percent of all Internet visits in February 2007, according to Hitwise, USA.

Web sites that showed the largest increases in market share of visits were Buzznet, up 148.4 percent, and iMeem, up 145.7 percent, from January to February 2007. Other fast- growing sites included Hoverspot (up 19.6 percent) and Bebo (up 17.8 percent). Category leaders MySpace and Facebook also grew from January to February, with visits increasing 10.2 and 9.1 percent respectively. MySpace was up a whopping 107.3 percent year-over-year.

"While MySpace is still by far the dominant social networking Web site, sites like Buzznet and iMeem are succeeding in building communities around music and other media," LeeAnn Prescott, director of research at Hitwise said in her blog posting. "The social networking category will continue to grow as new sites emerge with unique offerings."

And, good news for people wanting to market to an older demographic on MySpace — 60 percent of its members are now 25 and older, compared to 45 percent in 2004, according to Hitwise.

Base Camp
The Internet traffic research firm also listed the following categories as those "gaining traction" with Google Base for the week ending March 4: employment, 15.7 percent; real estate, 13 percent; auto classifieds, 11.9 percent; recipes, 7 percent; retail 4.6 percent and news 3.4 percent.

Finally, Rightway Gate, Inc. just released the latest version of its shopping cart software, SearchFit 7.0. Key upgrades include: Google Checkout, an account registration option, the ability for returning customers to automatically re-order items, an order exporting function to work with third-party accounting software and automated site-update features for common page elements and tasks.

Michelle Megna is managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.

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