Common Sense eCommerce

Morale must be pretty low at Yahoo! these days. Takeover bids, job cuts, and desperate measures - like pairing with Google for ad serving - make it seem like dark days for the internet pioneer company. Very few people are talking about Yahoo! stores in this deal. Yahoo! Stores are a well oiled ecommerce engine that few other companies can match. Google has nothing like them and neither does Microsoft. Microsoft sort of tried that a few years ago with their Microsoft Online Small Business Services but it went nowhere.

Yahoo! Stores provide a sizeable chunk of the niche ecommerce market - everything from foam earplugs to fishing tackle to piano sheet music to wedding favors. It would seem that this would provide value to Microsoft if they do indeed end up acquiring Yahoo! As far as I know, Yahoo! is the single largest eCommerce hosting provider and that’s got to count for something. If MS does take over will they recognize that as value or will they shutter it like they did with their Online Small Business Services?

For Yahoo, clock ticks down to Microsoft deadline

The 9th Annual Ecommerce Summit is taking place in New Orleans, April 22 through April 25. It has a lot of interesting looking session centering on things like navigating eBay changes using social networks in an ecommerce business. Also, there are panels on subjects like Product Sourcing and Yahoo Stores.

Cost is $299 minus travel and lodging so if you live in the south and have the time, check it out!

Ecommerce Summit 2008

I had always thought of Yahoo! as a major playa in the internet search marketing area. How odd they are fighting for survival right now. Attempting to deflect Microsoft’s takeover, which is becoming increasingly hostile, Yahoo! has taken to a Google partnership for ad serving - on a ‘test’ basis. How ironic that just a few short years ago, the shoe was on the other foot. Google, when Adwords was still in its infancy was serving up Yahoo ads (then known as Overture).

I am no industry analyst, but I see this as weak move on Yahoo’s part. Didn’t Yahoo! just spend a bunch of money and effort on upgrading their own advertising platform? Panama? Hmmm, seems like Yahoo! is chalking up the ‘throw-aways’ lately. Does anyone remember Yahoo 360? How they hyped that up and then just tossed it asunder?

Now there are rumors bubbling about Yahoo! buying AOL. Talk about throw-aways! Is AOL anything other that a relic of a different era with perhaps a mixed brand reputation? These seem like the actions of a desperate company and it’s sad to see Yahoo! in this light. At any rate, it’s an interesting story to watch unfold.

Yahoo to test use of Google’s search ad service

Yahoo Is Close to Combining With AOL

Have you heard that when calling certain companies?  Does it seem like you hear it every time you call? Such is the case with Monster Commerce.  I have called them many times over the past few years and each and every time I hear the message (aka excuse) “We are experiencing longer than normal hold times”.

Today I called. It said that message as usual and my call was answered in less than 2 minutes.  So Monster Commerce, do you really mean it? I guess not. I think they just have the message there to cover themselves when there are long hold times.

Later I had to call GoDaddy.Com for a related reason.  There was no announcement to the effect of ‘longer than usual hold times’ and it took over 10 minutes to get the call answered.  That by the way was not a toll free number. GoDaddy, since you are making the customer pay for the call don’t you think you should warn them of longer than usual hold times or give them an estimate of how long they’ll be on hold?

F minus on Business practices for both!

CompUSA - memba them? Well they’re still around, sort of. CompUSA was once one of the top electronics retailers in the US but fell on hard times. Last March, they announced the shuttering of stores in many states (including Washington where I live). Then late last year, they announced they were just calling it quits.

However, Systemax (the parent company of TigerDirect) didn’t want to let that name go to waste. They must have believed there was some value left in the brand because soon after that towel was tossed in, they announced they were buying the name, 16 of the retail stores and of course, the eCommerce website of CompUSA. The eCommerce part of CompUSA has always been a seperate entity than the physical storefronts.

You can read the announcement here. Just today I checked to see if the CompUSA website was still there and this is what it looks like.

So it appears Systemax will keep the brand as is rather than overlay TigerDirect on top of it. Will customers continue to buy there? That remains to be seen but in the world of eCommerce, if there is power in a brand, it would be worth hanging on to.

Tags: CompUSA, Systemax, TigerDirect, CompUSA Closure

MonsterCommerce is a long standing, mature provider of shopping cart software. They have been especially popular for home-based businesses using a Drop Ship model. In late 2005, they were acquired by Network Solutions. Now it appears they may be actually winding down their name. In fact, the MonsterCommerce.Com URL redirects to a Networks Solutions page which only mentions MonsterCommerce in footnotes.

This is news that has been bubbling for quite some time. If you have a MonsterCommerce website, you probably already know that Version 4x is being supplanted by Version 7x. As the jump in version numbers indicates, this is not a minor update. In fact, it’s not an update at all but a full migration to a different platform.

I’m a bit unclear on this but it appears that the 7x platform doesn’t carry the MonsterCommerce name any longer and everything will be referred to as Network Solutions. This isn’t surprising considering the big fish / little fish nature of such mergers and acquisitions. I will look into this further and try to get more clarification.

This change is actually long overdue as MonsterCommerce really has an older shopping cart platform with lots of back-end things that need fixing. There are far too many things to discuss here, but most notably is the PCI/CISP compliance for payment processing. If you’re a current MonsterCommerce web store subscriber, you should take some time to read up on the upcoming changes at this forum link (you must log into the forum to read these forum threads).

The migrations will occur sometime in the spring and summer time frame. Network Solutions/MonsterCommerce is giving its current merchants a 30 day window on migration. In other words, the site will be migrated to the new platform in test mode for 30 days before being made live. This will give site owners the opportunity to preview the new site before allowing it to roll over.

If you are considering MonsterCommerce as a shopping cart platform for your home-based business, this would be a good time to wait things out. There are big changes coming with this provider! The times are a changing at MonsterCommerce. New platform for this mature shopping cart provider is in the works.

What is the optimal sized thumbnail? Answer is “it depends”. Don’t you just love that answer? For one thing, it depends on what you’re thumbnailing. If it’s just a caption or something, a small one might do. But if you’re selling products of some kind, larger ones might be in order.

It used to be that online merchants made their thumbnails small to fit as many as possible on a page and while avoiding slowing down the page load process. That was back in the day when a lot of people had dial up internet service. Fewer people have dial-up now and broadband internet is the norm. So page loads aren’t really the issue they once were.

If you’re selling products online, the picture is the one thing that will go a long ways toward making the sale. And the thumbnail view is the visitor’s first glimpse of the product photo. Doesn’t that mean it should show off as much as possible about the product? Shouldn’t it grab the eye? Which looks the best?

Might be hard to tell unless you line them up with other products, but the smallest one doesn’t do much for the product don’t you agree?

Tags: Web Thumbnails, Product Thumbnails, Thumbnail Photos, Thumbnail Sizes

I love audio! I’m not referring to music (although I like that too) but rather audio files that I can listen to providing me with some sort of insight, enlightenment, or otherwise educational information. I like them because I listen to them while I am engaged in activities where I can’t read a book or do anything else (such as waiting in a long line or driving somewhere). It’s a way to have some information of my choosing played to me, rather than a spoon fed, pre-determined mass media audio.

Naturally that brings me to Audible.Com quite often. Audible is THE seller of audio books and they are partnered with various large eCommerce media companies like Amazon and Apple. Recently I bought a copy of Joe Vitale’s “The Key” on Audio and it was a real wrestling match getting it onto my iPod Nano. While Audible supports the Nano, the process of downloading to my iPod is usually fraught with errors and crashes. I have some technical expertise and can usually get the audio file going on my iPod but I feel for a non technical user of Audible. In their fervor to enforce DRM, Audible has created a process that is difficult and problematic - a long ways from seamless.

Audible is the eBay of the spoken audio world and it would be nice if they had some competition. I for one, am growing weary of these ‘wrestling matches’ with Audible downloads!

Tags: Audible.com, Audio Books, Audible Issues, Audible Downloads

I saw this bit on the NY Times blog about Amazon Sales Tax in New York State. As we all know, internet sales tax is about to be levied one way or another. That piece is about New York State sales in general, but it reflects a larger problem with Amazon and sales tax.

Their shopping cart charges me sales tax because I live in Washington State where presumably Amazon has a physical presence. Ok fine, I understand that. When I sell something to someone who is having it shipped in Washington State I have to charge them sales tax.

When I was a merchant on Amazon I had to eat the sales tax because Amazon’s seller account system did not calculate it. It just didn’t have a sales tax feature. This was a recently as November of last year. I asked about this numerous times and each time I got the same answer in various forms: ‘We expect the seller to absorb the sales tax’.

This might work for things like media where the dollar value is less than $20 but I was selling things in the 50, 100 and 200 dollar range. At 8.9%, there wasn’t enough margin to ‘absorb’ the sales tax. So what did I do? I canceled the orders that were going to ship to Washington locations. Bad practice and I was never really comfortable with it, but I simply couldn’t afford to absorb the extra 10 or 15 dollars for sales tax that I couldn’t collect.

The idea with online merchants and sales tax is the merchant collects the tax, then pays it back to the state at certain intervals (sometimes quarterly). Technically that’s a wash although it really isn’t when you consider the administrative work involved in reconciling the state tax (which I outsource to my accountant). But it’s certaintly no a wash if you have to absorb it. Amazon needs to face the sales tax music sooner or later!

Tags: Amazon Sales Tax, Internet Sales Tax, Online Sales Tax, eCommerce Sales Tax

Every year we go through this: eBay announces fee changes, sellers get mad, threaten in the online forums to quit. A week or so later, life returns to normal. But is that the case this time?

This article from CNN Money, discusses a few of the eBay alternatives and it seems they are suddenly picking up new sellers by the droves. Specifically they mention OnlineAuction.Com and eCrater.Com which picked up 7,500 and 1,400 new sellers respectively in the week after eBay made its announcements.

Perhaps the competitors are smelling blood here? Even Overstock.com which had nearly thrown in the towel on their auction business has put it back on their front page and placed it more prominently.

There’s a balance in there somewhere. The big question is: How many sellers will have to leave eBay to affect that balance to the tipping point? That’s the point where the lack of sellers degrades the buying experience and therefore the buyers begin to look elsewhere.

The buyers won’t necessarily follow the sellers off eBay except for those sellers that have established strong bonds with their customers (hint: that’s the way to do it, take your customers with you!). It won’t be until the buyer traffic drops significantly that eBay will begin to notice the pinch in the bottom line. I don’t know what effect those sellers who left in the last two weeks will have on eBay if any. For the 7,500 that went to OnlineAuction.Com, I’m betting 7,500 more sellers will join eBay.

eBay, eBay Sellers, eBay Markeplace

There’s been a lot of hoopla about the huge eBay announcements this week.  It wasn’t just a fee increase this time; rather it was a multi-legged beast.  The eBay forums are ablaze with angry sellers and talks of rebellious eBay boycotts.  There are 3 primary issues which seem to be contentious.

1 - Fee Structure Changing.  This time around, the fee change is on the back end.  They reduced the listing fees, but raised the FV fees.

2 - FeedBack changes.  Sellers will only be able to leave positive feedback about buyers; buyers will still have all the feedback options.

3 - Search Results Changes. The default search results will change from “ending soonest” to “best match”.  Best Match is based on a variety of seller performance criteria.

When you really look at these 3 things in combination, you can see that eBay is merely moving toward a more normalized eCommerce model. Here is why I say that:

1 - Fee Structure Changing.  Most online selling portals charge heavier fees on the sale itself. Amazon and UBid are both examples of that. While there are costs to list, they are minimal compared to the chunk that comes out from the final sale (Amazon’s is 8 to 15 percent depending on the category).

2 - FeedBack changes.  eBay is (or rather was) just about the only place where sellers could leave meaningful feedback for the buyers.  It was an oddity in that regard.  In most eCommerce arrangements, the buyer has the voice and the seller can only respond via follow up comments or something similar.

3 - Search Results Changes.  The real world of online search does not operate on “ending soonest”. It rewards websites that are stable, provide good reliable service/product/content and have a good standing among other sites. Each is a proprietary model where only their engineers know all the details. This eBay change merely reflects that model.

So eBay’s massive shift this year is merely following a cycle of moving toward standard eCommerce.  They toyed with that when they introduced the eBay stores, but this is a much more core, fundamental shift.
Tags: eBay, eBay Fees, eBay FeedBack, eBay Best Match

The big buzz in eCommerce this week is the Microsoft proposed acquisition of Yahoo! If you haven’t read about it, you’ve not been reading the news, but here is the story. 

How to acquire a company that doesn’t want to be acquired? Make them an offer they can’t refuse and wave the money in the front of the investor’s faces so the board can’t say no. In reality, this deal seems to make a lot of sense given the fact that Yahoo’s future is somewhat uncertain as a media company. Microsoft, not happy with their long standing 3rd place status in the search engine media market will benefit. So it looks like a win win.

Here is a MarketWatch article that sounds the alarm about the culture difference between Microsoft and Yahoo! Indeed, Microsoft is not a media company like Yahoo!, rather, they’re a software company with a media division. The article draws up the example of the AOL / Time Warner merger a number of years ago. That turned out to be a culture clash of gargantuous proportions. I’m not sure the MS/Yahoo will be quite that bad, but it’s something to consider.

And then there’s that pesky issue of the Brand. Will Microsoft keep the Yahoo! name? Will they drop that annoying “!” at the end?

Tags: yahoo, microsoft, Yahoo Microsoft, Microsoft Yahoo Acquisition

If you’ve noticed, this blog has been in hiatus for awhile.  Not dead, just hiatus. You need them every so often.

I was blogging an awful lot about eBay and you probably won’t see that as much anymore. You see, over the last few months, I have reformed my home based business to exclude eBay. While some eBay sellers were ramping up for the holidays end of last year, I was busy winding down my eBay business.  Why?

Well the short answer is: too much work for too little money. I don’t mind doing a lot of work, but I want to see some return on my work.  And it doesn’t have to be an immediate return either. I was a Powerseller on eBay for more than 3 years and just decided my time is more valuable than what the eBay returns were giving me. 

I will still observe eBay and perhaps post an occasional blurb about it, but this blog will drift back to its original purpose: Common Sense ECommerce.

Funny how Paypal is now.  The other day, I noticed that the “add tracking” button had disappeared on all my listing.  I called support and recieved some lame explanation about some ‘changeover’.  I asked how I was supposed to notify the customers.  They said “Send the notice manually”. Yeah, right. Like I have time for that. 

So I tweaked my Dazzle software from Endicia to send the notices out. That took some tweaking because they were pretty ugly by default.  So never mind Paypal.  Besides, things are showing up rather haphazardly lately.  Today 11/4 still did not show a transaction from 11/2 although it showed some from today. Called PayPal support again.  Same lame explanation.

The new Paypal!  Very Exciting!

Where I live, there are two grocery chains - Fred Meyer and Quality Food Centers (QFC). Actually there are several more, but what ties these two together is that they are both owned by the parent company Kroger. That wasn’t always the case; QFC was purchased by Kroger in the late 1990’s.But it’s interesting to note that the two stores have two different card programs. QFC uses the standard grocery card program where they have two sets of prices on many things: a regular price and a member price (member being a person with a card).

Fred Meyer, on the other hand, uses a rebate program. There is a card, but it doesn’t immediately save you anything on the groceries. The prices are the same whether you have card or not. The rebate program is quarterly and the more you spend the more points you earn that quarter. At the end of the quarter, you get mailed dollar value coupons (coupons good for purchase on anything) along with % off coupons (coupons geared toward a department such as apparel). How much dollar value you get depends on how much you spent. It’s scalable!

Interestingly, Fred Meyer’s normal price on standard item such as a certain brand of paper towel and a certain brand of aluminum foil is less than QFC. Where do you think I shop?

The rebate style incentive gets customers to return, the first kind that QFC uses doesn’t. QFC must rely on other things to get customers to return.

What does this have to do with eCommerce? Well I have always felt customer loyalty is not created by showing a lower price and/or bragging about your low prices (WalMart already does that ad nausem). You know; have something like list price stricken out and having another (much lower) price alongside it marked “our price”. I think customers will appreciate a fair price even more if there is an incentive there. After all, what’s in it for me is one of the questions retailers must ask on behalf of their customers.

Tags: Customer Rebates, Customer Incentives, Customer Loyalty, Customer Relations

I’ve been exploring the consignment selling aspect of eBay (called ‘Trading Assisant on eBay) for some time now and can’t say that I’ve very successful at it. This is really no surprise, but it seems the thing that people MOST want to get rid of is furniture.When people contact me about helping to get rid of their stuff, almost without fail one or more pieces of furniture is going to be on the list. Part of the consignment process dictates that the Trading Assistant takes temporary possession of the merchandise. This is common practice across all consignment models that I know of.

So furniture presents a problem for this, at least for me. My eBay business is one that I largely work myself and since I am not Hercules, I can’t haul sofas, love-seats, desks and so on by myself. I can sometimes arrange for help, but even then, my 50 plus body doesn’t like hauling furniture. So my only choice is to hire someone to do it for me. This eats into what I can make on the deal.

In addition, there is the storage issue. I have rented storage for the purpose of my eBay business, but one furniture load can easily fill it up. So if you are planning to be part of the eBay consignment gig, make sure you have a way to deal with furniture!

Tags: eBay Consignment, Trading Assistant, Trading Assistant Challenges, eBay Consignment Challenges

Ever since I did a partial sign-up for Doba I have been getting spam from them. I never finished the sign up; it was a little experiment to see how far I could get before they asked for a credit card (which I never gave them). Supposedly they have this 7 day trial offer (ooooo boy, a whole 7 days!) and I was trying to see it if was legit or not.I’ve read a lot of complaints about this company and I have to wonder. I see them everywhere — Doba here, Doba there. They must spend a fortune on Google adwords! I have them in my Squidoo Lens too in the places where I cannot edit them. Part of the sign up process had me putting in my email address. In fact, email and password is the very first step along the way. If you read the fine print below the sign up, here is what it says:

Doba will not disclose your email address to third parties. We use email only as a means of communicating with you.

Means of communicating is exactly what they use it for: illegitimately! Here is a snap shot of my Gmail spam box.

All Doba! And Gmail knows Doba is spam; it puts all their emails in the Spam folder straight away. These are not phish emails either; they really do originate from Doba. If you open one of the emails , the only thing in the email body is a hyperlinked image to their signup page. There is no way to ‘unsubscribe’ from their emails. Isn’t that a violation of the Can Spam law?

Am I going to do business with a company that has to resort to illegal spam? Don’t think so. And read what some eBay sellers have to say in the Doba Review forum (link here). Not very favorable and lots of truth in those guides. If you want to do real dropshipping, and make money from it (rather than loose money), you’ll need to work with real wholesalers directly in a niche. Not a middleman. Check out the WorldWide Brands Video Center. Look at Top 5 sourcing Tips, then Tip #2.

Tags: Doba Spam, Doba Scam, Doba Drop Ship, Doba Email

Such is the case with some eBay shoppers. Each week we get the questions on auction items “I need 2 of these for a gift, what’s your best price” blah blah.We respond by telling them to visit our eBay store where there are plenty more with free shipping including. And of course we include the listing number of the store listing so they’ll have no trouble finding it.

Yet we seldom hear anything from these shoppers again. It’s as though they have a natural aversion to going to an eBay store. They come to eBay to wheel and deal, and compete for a good price. There will always be that group of folks who just won’t bite on the eBay store thing.

And of course eBay doesn’t make things any easier with their whopping store fees forcing sellers to hike their prices to make a profit. Oh and it never hurts to point to out we sell them cheaper on our website (heh).

A few weeks ago, I starting noticing this little text ad nugget appearing at the bottom of each of my listings.

I remember being a little miffed at the time, but shrugged it off. Then I read Sydney Johnston’s newsletter where she says:

When you pay your eBay listing fees, what you are buying is advertising space on eBay’s giant site.”

I got to thinking, how true! And how unethical on the part of eBay. When you consider that we pay for listings on eBay (and oh how the listing fees have gone up over the years) the space inside the auction listing should be ours. At the very least, we should have a choice whether or not to display eBay advertisements. There’s no telling how much extra revenue this little ad brings to eBay. But the bottom line is that we’ve already paid for that space and we should have some control.

Aside from that, it’s not even relevant advertising. All the ones I’ve seen go to a Credit Bureau ad. Unless I’m selling something credit-related, this has no business on my auction listing. Now, I thought eBay was going to try to ‘improve the buyer experience’ this year. Isn’t that what they said? Hmmm. Dishing up junk ads is not improving, but it’s deteriorating the buyer experience if all they’re going to show is credit bureau ads.

As if that’s not bad enough, the text ad links do not initiate a new browser session. That means if the buyer clicks on it, he or she’s gone! Gone away from my listing which presumably they were intersted in to begin with.

This is one of those little things that is bad news for sellers. It’s not like we need any more things to complain about is it? Now, the ads are tied to the counters. Sydney points out that a way around is not to use the eBay counters. This might be a good reason to go with an auction management system like Vendio where counters are provided.

However, what will they do next? Build ads into the main eBay listing CSS?

Tags: eBay Credit Ads, eBay Experian Ads, eBay Listing Ads, eBay Counter Ads

eBay has a feature where you can add certain users to the “banned bidder list”. It’s self explanatory. Needless to say there has to be a pretty good reason to add a user to that list.Recently, we had user ask if he could be removed from our ban list so he could bid on an item. Hmmm. After doing some research, we found the reason he was on the list was that he decided not to pay after the auction closed because he thought the shipping was too high ($24 to send a cookware item to Thailand is not high).

At any rate, we did not reinstate him. We had to eat the fees on that listing he didn’t pay for and there was no reason to believe he would behave any differently if we let him back in the bidding game. The eBay banned bidder list serves a valuable purpose and serves as a safeguard against eBay ‘window shoppers’ who buy and don’t pay. In addition, eBay users like this can be the ones dragging down the new 5 star feedback system. Sometimes, you just have to fire the customer.

Tags: Banned eBay Buyers, eBay Feedback System, eBay Ban List, eBay Window Shoppers