Getting an eBay store up and running is fairly easily done directly with eBay.com. However, if you really want to "punch it up a notch," make it look great and do all kinds of things that you may not have thought possible, you'll use Macromedia's Contribute for eBay.

Macromedia Contribute 3 is an easy to use tool intended to allow "average" users to create, edit and maintain content on their sites. The extended eBay functionality in Contribute for eBay takes Contribute 3 a step further and is specifically customized and geared for the creation and modification of eBay stores. Contribute for eBay is not a different version of Contribute 3. Rather, it is the core package together with something called the WA eBay StoreBuilder. Existing Contribute 3 owners can simply download the eBay module to add the functionality to the product.

Getting Started

Before getting started with Contribute for eBay, your first step should be to set up an eBay store. eBay offers the first month free and the setup is a painless experience. If you already own Contribute 3 (or are trying the trial) you can get the WA eBay Store Builder as a free download, there is also a bundled version that Macromedia also sells. Installation is a simple matter of clicking the next button the startup screen, there's little user intervention required.

The getting started documentation for eBay Store builder is superb. It's the first thing you see when your start the program after installation, and the left side bar has easily accessible help pointers as well. The start screen guides users through a 5-step process that will get you all the way to doing your first page and posting it to eBay. Sounds easy? Well it is, but don't relax just yet. There is still some thinking involved. You still need to have some idea as to how you want and need your store to look. There are some 800 different combinations available with this program that's where the wizards come into play to weave their magic.

Usage

The custom page wizard menu should be your first stop in your Contribute for eBay activities. The wizard starts you off with a choice of a number of different layout possibilities including:

You can customize your layout page further with 11 different included color schemes and four different styles. I found the choices to be overwhelming at first, but once I got used to the idea of choice and the different layouts it wasn't too bad. By selecting a "style" the program automatically selects an appropriate font as well as borders and other page elements (i.e. bullets) to match the same look and feel.

Customizing the custom pages goes a step further with the use of eBay Stores store tags. Contribute for eBay includes seven of these tags, which embed certain functions inside of your stores pages:

• Contribute for eBay : eBay Stores Store Tags options:
• Single Item Attribute
• Single Item Listing
• Multiple Item List
• Multiple Item Showcase
• Search Box
• User Feedback
• User ID

Custom headers of varying layout (Dual Promotion, Featured Item, Featured Categories, Item Listings and Blank Header) can also be easily added and editing with this program. The header feature is yet another great tool in the Contribute for eBay design arsenal that is an essential layout ingredient for cross promotion and proper site navigation.

Macromedia Contribute 3 for Ebay main help screen.

Editing the custom pages for text and images is straightforward point and click affair that will be easily picked up by average users. Being a Macromedia product it's simple to add a flash mechanism (Insert>Flash>From Website) so that you can embed rich media into eBay store as well.

Page management

Ebay stores, of course, allow users to manage their pages directly online. Rather than force Contribute for eBay users to go online through an external browser to manage their custom pages, the program allows for the remote management of the custom pages so you can edit, re-order, activate or de-activate them.

In our tests with Contribute for eBay over a 30-day period we encountered no bugs or connection issues when publishing custom pages to eBay stores. Simply put, the program works and it works well.

Contribute to your eBay earning power

Design has long been recognized as an important component of sales. Your customer will buy what you "sell" and that's exactly what the professional layouts included in Contribute for eBay are designed to do.

Yes, there are a lot of layouts and a lot of choices in this application and certainly it helps if you've got an idea about how you want to present your wares. Yet considering how easy it is to create the custom pages, it's no big deal to try out multiple layouts in a trial and error fashion to figure what looks and works best for your own store.

When you sit down and really think about it, the custom layouts are the great strength of this program and provide an almost unfair advantage to non-users of the program. Until Contribute for eBay becomes ubiquitous, most eBay stores that users are likely to visit will not have had the benefit of Contribute for eBay layouts applied to them. I'd call that a serious and significant competitive differentiator.

Considering how easy, accessible and favorably priced Contribute for eBay is, I'd say that it's a competitive advantage you can afford to have.

Macromedia Contribute 3 for eBay is available for Windows XP and Mac OS X. Pricing starts at $79 for upgrades and $149 for the full version.

Sean Michael Kerner is a contributor to eCommerce-Guide.com.