The Online Traders Web Alliance (OTWA), Friday announced the official launch of the OTWA Community Marketplace (OCM), an online auction and classified marketplace designed from the ground up as alternative marketplace with ease of use and simplicity as the guiding design premise.
The Online Traders Web Alliance (OTWA) quietly soft launched the Community Marketplace last month after its initial beta test proved the site was up to the challenge of high performance and reliability. Today, OTWA officially announced the hard launch of the community marketplace with 3 million banner ads strategically targeted throughout the Internet, Google AdWords for search and Adwords for content as the primary online advertising.
Additionally, OTWA is preparing to target offline advertising through the antiques and collectibles trade publications, collectors' magazines, and direct marketing.
The OTWA Marketplace becomes the fifth known entry into the auction/classified market this year. The other sites include SnappyBids.com, OnlineAuction.com, ClassifiedBuyers.com and the short-lived Wagglepop. It's unclear how much success OTWA will be with its marketplace, but it does have the advantage of being a reputable, established online presence since being founded in 1999.
According to Jim Wells Miller, OTWA's owner, during the first month of operation (the soft launch), OTWA's Community Marketplace had an overall sell-thru rate of approximately thirty four percent of all items listed. This was in part due to the premise that by charging a small fee, and including free image hosting, free gallery, free click to enlarge, free slideshow, and much more, sellers tend to list items of interest to buyers, rather than items they were unable to sell on eBay.
As of Friday, April 29, 2005, more than 1,100 items were listed in the auction section.
The backbone of the marketplace is OTWA's existing community member-base of 30,000 plus auction users contributes greatly to this early success, said Miller in a written release on Friday.
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| The Online Traders Web Alliance officially announced its Community Marketplace today. |
"Because of the community tie-in, the OTWA Community Marketplace is able to offer buyer rewards and promotions, as well as frequent seller incentives that create a fun marketplace experience, keeping it exciting for both buyers and sellers. Miller began with the community first premise. We are a community first and foremost; the marketplace is an additional feature of OTWA, and building on that premise enabled us to create a successful, fun and exciting marketplace alternative," he added.
The OCM is designed as a "fast, efficient, dump the bells and whistles, easy-to-learn, easy-to-use marketplace." Miller said sellers are actually encouraged to link to their website or storefront from within their listings, unlike other sites like eBay which prefer to keep all transactions within its own site.
"We are here to help the seller succeed, both on the OCM, and independently," said Miller.
He said one of the key elements that make the OCM stand out from other marketplaces is the long-standing success of OTWA itself, being the oldest, largest independent auction related community on the internet; the marketplace was the next logical step.
No David vs. Goliath Here
In an email on Monday, Miller told ECommerce-Guide OTWA's new marketplace isn't thought of as a direct challenge to auction behemoth eBay.
"It is true that eBay has a dominant stance, but we are not looking to compete with eBay. We want our users to take advantage of all opportunities to be successful. We've heard more and more sellers talk about diversifying, and we added the marketplace to offer them another option," he said.
When asked if OTWA was targeting disgruntled sellers on eBay, he said the goal was to encourage e-commerce, regardless of where it took place.
"We are actually targeting anyone who'd like to try something different, a little more casual, a little more fun. We want our members to be successful nomatter where they sell, and we think it's important to diversify. So, rather than say, 'it's bad over there, sell here,' we think 'sell everywhere,' and even more importantly, sell where you can promote your own business and build your own customer base.
Miller also explained the role the site's users played in development of the marketplace.
"OTWA members are extremely vocal in their likes and dislikes. We definitely had these users in mind when building the OCM. There are a few points that we used as guiding principals. One was simplicity. A person should be able to come to the OCM and list an
item within a few minutes," he said.
"There isn't a 4000 page rulebook. The OCM has the rules on one page. There isn't a 150-tier price plan, its 10 cents to list in auctions, 15 cents for classifieds. We looked at what buyers have been saying. Gallery and Image hosting are included in our listings. This makes viewing items easy and the pages all load fast. We consider things like this to be of more benefit to the buyer and the marketplace as a whole, so we don't charge our sellers extra," Miller added.
"I could make a longer list, but suffice it to say, member input was critical
in the choices for the OCM. We built everything with simplicity in mind," he said.
Devin Comiskey is the Managing Editor for ECommerce-Guide.com.
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