News and Announcements
In eBay's never-ending quest to prevent buyers from being scammed on the auction site, the company once again introduced new initiatives to its Safeguarding Member ID (SMI) plan. EBay Senior Vice President of Global Trust & Safety, Rob Chesnut, says there are several planned adjustments, including masking bidder's IDs for Reserve or Buy It Now listings that start at over $200. Previously, masking was used on auction-style listings.
EBay also plans to make changes to the Best Offer history so it will no longer be fully displayed to viewers. Sellers will also be able to use Advanced Search to conduct full research on their current bidders for a 48-hour period after the bid is placed, and now when members use the Search by Bidder feature, they will be able to see all the details of that bidder's activity on items below the $200 threshold.
With the upcoming USPS rate change just around the corner, eBay announced that any Store subscribers needing to edit or change shipping information in their listings can apply for a re-list credit on their "multiple-quantity Good 'Til Cancelled Store Inventory." Under usual circumstances, once one sale has been made, these particular listings cannot be edited. To qualify for the credit, your listings must meet eBay's Store Inventory Re-listing Credit Offer criteria. See eBay Watch: Postal Rate Tips and Selling Resources for more USPS and eBay information.
E-Commerce Tools Round-Up
EBay recently added new features in its Turbo Lister that lets sellers view and edit their active and scheduled listings or re-list and sell similar items from within Turbo Lister. Additional time-saving options that have been incorporated into the popular selling tool include the ability to find and replace text within listings, and you can now use basic Windows shortcuts to copy and paste information between views. Sellers can now also export data from Turbo Lister to a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel.
Eye on the Little Guy: Widgetize your eBay Listings
While there is no denying that eBay search drives traffic to your own listings, one thing sellers often want to do is advertise their eBay items on other Web sites and blogs to draw even more traffic to their auctions and store inventory. It's not uncommon to surf the Web and see "click to view my eBay auctions" text links, or banner advertisements or even videos of items that people have up for grabs on the eBay auction block.
For those sellers wanting to add a little pizazz to the off-eBay advertising process, the eBay To Go widget [define] might be just what you need.
The eBay To Go (beta) allows sellers to showcase and promote specific eBay listings on their own blogs or Web site pages. To set up your own eBay widget you can visit the beta Web page and in a couple minutes you'll have the code you need to use it on other pages online.
First, choose a display type for the widget. Your choices are a single item (shows one auction item and information), multiple items (shows a slideshow of different listing images), or item search (shows multiple thumbnails based on the keyword search). After selecting a layout you will then enter in the auction numbers of those items you want shown. The third step is to provide additional search keywords that would be displayed in your widget if any listing numbers you entered are no longer available. Once you have provided this information, the code you need to insert the widget onto your own page is automatically generated for you. You can also choose to create code for use on a specific site, such as MySpace, Blogger, LiveJournal or other popular social network sites.
In a nutshell, it is a very simple four-step process that can help sellers advertise their eBay listings in a variety of places online, and outside of eBay. The end result is a very appealing and uncluttered display that you can use to showcase one or more of your own items that are for sale on eBay in any listing format.
Alternative Marketplace Community News
Pheebay is hosting a "Summer Solstice — Blue Moon St. Elsewhere" event that allows independent traders with their own Web site or auction site to advertise special deals and savings for buyers from June 21 to June 30. Interested sellers can visit PheeBay to find out how to participate.
Auction Web site PlunderHere has recently updated its site to include a host of new features and a few bug-fixes as well. Changes have been made to the HTML editor, the feedback page has been changed to display 60 days on the pages, RSS feeds are now available to sellers, as are global announcements that can be used to display messages across all your listings and on your Store front page as well.
LowBid launched two new contests, one for buyers and one for sellers. For the period of April 29 to May 27, the top Buyer during this time will receive a $50 VISA gift card. The top seller during this time will receive a $25 VISA gift card plus a $1 site credit for every 25 new items listed.
Research and Trends
Where you live and the market you are selling to can make a difference in what consumers are looking to buy on eBay. This week we take a look at several popular searches in three markets; ebay.com, ebay.ca and ebay.co.uk. These most popular searched for keywords are based on actual searches performed by eBay users as tracked by eBay Pulse. Here is a snapshot of several related eBay categories and the corresponding top three searches in each for May 3:
- ebay.com: Wii, xBox 360 and Apple iPod.
ebay.ca: Lululemon, Wii and xBox 360.
ebay.co.uk: Apple iPod, PS3 and PlayStation 3 .
- ebay.com > Antiques: furniture, victorian and art deco.
ebay.ca > Antiques: furniture, antique, and table.
ebay.co.uk: > Antiques: victorian, silver and art deco.
- ebay.com > Consumer Electronics: Macintosh, iPod and Marantz.
ebay.ca > Consumer Electronics: iPod, Bose and Rotel.
ebay.co.uk > Consumer Electronics: iPod, Bose and Linn.
Only on eBay...
Many people, even those who don't consider themselves car enthusiasts, will recognize a Dodge Charger when they see one. This week our favorite IT is the most famous Dodge Charger in television history — the 1969 Dodge R/T that was the highlight of the "Dukes of Hazzard" show.
John Schneider (Bo Duke) put his very own "Bo's General Lee" up on the auction block this week. Under the hood of this hot car are the autographs of all the living original cast members and crew. The car itself has also been seen on other shows and in films, including, of course, the last Dukes of Hazzard movie.
Currently, the infamous Bo's General Lee has bids up to $2.6 million, though a recent update to the auction page by Schneider indicates there has been some issues with fake bids.
Vanige Beal is a frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.
Have an interesting e-commerce tool, auction tip, auction or news item to submit for eBay Watch? Tell us about it!
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