eBay Watch: May Day Strike Slated, Free Video Service By Vangie Beal
March 12, 2008
Vzaar's Chief Operating Officer Dan Wilson is a co-founder of eBay UK and also author of
the best-selling book "Make Serious Money on eBay UK." He told ECommerce-Guide in a
recent interview that making the video service easy to use — and specificially for eBay transactions — were top priorities, helped by the fact that the company is run by veteran eBayers. "In our trial period
we had over 4,000 sellers using the service and their input and our experience
made Vzaar video foolproof," he said. "A seller's time is important and we created this
service to be a quick process and easy to use."
And, so it appears to be. It's a simple three clicks to embed your Vzaar video and no knowledge of HTML is required. To add video to your listings, you
only need to shoot the video using a cell phone, camcorder or the video
function on your digital camera, and then upload the video to the Vzaar Web
site. As an approved eBay video service, Vzaar automatically encodes the video
and brings up your listings and you choose which listing the video is
to be included in.
Cool Cut: Vzaar's free video service tailored to eBay.
While the video service has been used by many sellers for many different listings, Wilson
said that many sellers opt to create an "About Me" type of video to help
build trust with buyers and include it in most of their listings. Naturally, sellers are also using the Vzaar service for high-value items, for instance, to show customers a full view of a diamond ring.
There is also an opportunity for cross and up-selling using this
video service. One example cited by Wilson is a seller who listed a camera
and then
used the video service to promote accessories, bags and lenses and so on,
in the camera listing being viewed.
While watching live auctions on eBay in which the seller is using the Vzaar video
service, one thing I noticed right off is that, when compared to other similar
auction video services, Vzaar tends to keep the advertising low-key and presents
it in an unobtrusive way. As shown in the screenshot below, you can see that the
video player does have a company logo and links to the Vzaar Web site,
but it's contained in a small branding space and doesn't interfere with either the seller's information or
the video itself. It' really quite a discrete link, especially when compared to
other video service offerings, such as Auctiva, which places both text and button
image links under the embedded video on the eBay listings page.
Meanwhile, the basic Vzaar service is free, which is always a good deal. You get up to 30 videos per month (up to 1GB total storage space) and
each video can be two minutes long. A free account will store your videos for 90 days.
If you like the service, two additional plans are offered that may very
well be better suited to high-volume and Power Sellers. The Plus Service at $10
per month lets you store up to 300 videos in 1GB of storage space. The video
length is also two minutes in this plan, but you do get some enhanced features.
Shoppers can search listings by seller name or item ID, sellers can embed one video
in multiple listings with a single click and the videos are stored for 180
days.
The Pro Service runs at $20 per month and offers 300 videos and 2GB space,
and the video length is increased to three minutes. The enhanced features from
the Plus account are also included in the Pro service but your videos are stored
for a year.
For those new to selling on eBay with video, Vzaar also offers an extensive
FAQ section and plenty of tips on their Web site
to help the budding videographer create videos for their eBay listings.
Eye on the Little Guy: SilkFair's Full-Featured Shops
New Jersey-based SilkFair launched
its new online marketplace, offering an elegant and well-designed interface. Features include
seller must-haves such as video and a unique mapping system that tracks the origin of feedback.
Smooth Operator: SilkFair.com's chic new storefront.
Sellers can also take advantage of free stores, free
listing and a final sales charge of just three percent, plus they can also use their own
blog, forums and RSS feeds to help boost customer communication.
Once merchants set up their SilkFair storefront, they will have their own URL for
their Web store or they can forward their own domain name to their
online store. When listing products, sellers can post up to four different images
for each item, and up to two videos, which are automatically converted to Flash
and indexed for immediate viewing by potential customers. Another unique feature
being offered at SilkFair is a one-step shopping cart that will aggregate
purchases from multiple vendors, letting a buyer check out with one page and one
bill.
The new SilkFair shops offer lots of customization features and listing options, and also provide comprehensive search features for buyers. We'll definitely
be keeping an eye on SilkFair as an up-and-coming eBay alternative marketplace.
Vangie Beal is a seasoned eBay seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and managing editor of Webopedia.com.
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