Common Sense eCommerce

Google recently announced a ‘Pay Per Action’ option to tag along with their Adwords program. Basically it means you (the advertiser) only pays when the specified action is taken. That action could be a sale, a newsletter sign-up and so on.

Such ads will only be shown across Google’s Adsense content network, but nevertheless, it creates somewhat of an advertiser’s dream: Only pay for the advertising when you get the desired action! Now that’s Common Sense eCommerce.

Details on the program are sparse at this point (like we don’t know the costs), but the Google press release can be found here. It is also rolled out in limited beta which means ‘by invite’. You can apply to be part of their beta program here. (You must have an Adwords account).

In general, this sounds very good, but you know what they say about something that sounds too good to be true! I suspect for something like this to work for Google, the costs may be quite high.

That aside, I have seen two different colleagues reference this in light of eBay stores - Randy Smythe and Phil Dunn. With eBay seeming to want to discourage eBay stores, this would be a good way to get out on the web and do business off eBay. If Adwords isn’t working for you anymore, maybe give this a try.

Tags: Google Pay-Per-Action, Google Adwords, Google Adsense, Google Per-Per-Click

One buyer asked a odd 2 part question (1) he wanted to know if he could pick the item up and (2) he wanted our state license number.

The 2nd part was clearly none of his business especially considering that eBay doesn’t even require sellers to have a business licsense (both a blessing a curse in my opinion). Of course one does not say “None of your business” so I elegantly avoided the 2nd part of the question by answering just the first - that we are not set up for local pickup.

Then he replied and the reason for his question became obvious. He rephrased his question to ask if we were indeed required to charge sales tax for buyers in our state. Without explaining the implications of a licensed business NOT charging sales tax on eBay for resale goods, I just said yes we are required to charge sales tax.

I believe he might have been checking to make sure we were really a business. For actual businesses, we charge the customer sales tax and then we pay the state back for the sales tax we collected via our quarterly B & O tax filings. Perhaps there are eBay sellers who are not actual businesses charging sales tax and then pocketing it? Hmm.

Sales tax is the reason that we get relatively few eBay buyers in our state (our local sales tax rate is 8.8%). It’s going to be interesting to see what happens on eBay when internet sales tax is implemented!

Tags: eBay Sales Tax, State Sales Tax, Internet Sales Tax

I am continually amazed at how bad some eBay listings look. I’m not talking about graphics, photos, or general appearances. I am referring to the horrible wording I see in some listings. A couple of examples (sic):

Do to numerous non-paying bidders: If you have excessive negative feedback or under 10 feedback you must email prior to bidding on the auction. I will cancel any bid that does not meet required guidelines.

Or how about this one?

I no longer ship to Canada. If you are in CANADA, do NOT bid on my items.

Funny thing is, these examples are from two different power sellers. If you want people to buy from you and get return business from them, you cannot use offensive language like this. These sellers obviously have chips on their shoulder and there are probably good reasons behind the policies they have in place. But there is always a better way to word policies such as these.

The first example is problematic for a lot of reasons. Most notably is that it fails to define what ‘excessive negative feedback’ means. The word excessive is subjective and might leave someone wondering if 2 negatives is excessive.

The second example is bizarre considering the seller’s listings can ship to North and South America. But not Canada? Some sort of explanation might be in order here.

I would not want to buy from either of these sellers, would you? In either case, offensive sellers like these certainly make the job easier for good sellers! For every seller that says NO to something, there is a seller that makes money by saying YES.

Tags: Bad eBay Sellers, Offensive eBay Sellers, Bad eBay Listings, Offensive eBay Listings

A simple request, I wanted to find out about the 2430N printer. It’s an HP LaserJet printer and that’s a model number. Simple right? So I typed that into HP’s shopping website search box. A bunch of other printers come up - not the 2430N.

I thought Ok, maybe it’s discontinued. So I used the ‘browse through categories’ to find the printers in that series. I noticed that when I browsed a few levels I found the 2430N. Hmm.

Ah but it gets worse. I clicked the product and lo and behold there was my printer with all the specs I could possibly ask for. But as for the price: it said in red letters at the top; ‘See Store for Price’. And the see store for price was not linked to anything. Don’t you think if they wanted to sell printers they would have provided a link to the store entry or at least the store in general?

Instead it left me confused, wondering where to find their “store”, and what to do next. I was already at the site “shopping.hp.com”. Isn’t that the store? So I did what any buyer would do. Noted the model number and went elsewhere to shop around - and found it elsewhere by the way!

It’s always fun to look at large gangly companies and pick on their usability problems. In this way, we smaller ecommerce businesses can avoid those kinds of mistakes.

Two things to note as “don’t let this happen on my site”. First, their search did not work or did not work properly. That alone will drive buyers away. But there was no clear path for the buyer once the item was located or no clear call to action. That will really drive buyers away - it sure drove me away!

So learn from the 800 pound gorillas on the web: Make sure your website is useable from the shopper usability standpoint!

Tags: Web Usability, eCommerce Usability, eCommerce Website, eCommerce Shopping

This past week, a buyer won two listings. The listings were for the same item in different color patterns. It’s unusual for one person to buy two of these things so I was not the least bit surprised when buyer wrote in:

I only want the pink one, not the black & white one, can you cancel the black and white one?

I wrote back that we could cancel it, but that we would have to charge her the final value fee plus the listing fee, explaining that it was our cost of the transaction. It only amounted to only an extra $3 which she paid. I would not have not pushed the point over that amount, however I always attempt to recoup the costs on things like this.

In this post, I talked about the mindset of non paying eBay buyers as maybe actually being ‘retail buyers’. I think this example illustrates this mindset perfectly. This buyer simply picked up 2 different variants of the same item and then decided on one. Not unlike what a buyer would do in a typical retail store or online store.

This buyer was not an eBay newbie. She had several hundred feedback points and had been on eBay for a few years. This makes me think that eBay could do a lot more to give the buyers a ‘retail system’ if that’s what they want. I know eBay stores are supposed to do that, but eBay is doing a very poor job of promoting those stores. After all, remember that they had to ‘reset the balance of the marketplace’ last year to steer sellers back to core listings. Meanwhile eBay store owners are pretty much left to fend for themselves in getting shoppers to their stores.

All my listings have incentives for the shopper to go to the store, but eBay itself needs to do more to raise awareness of the store paradigm. If shoppers desire a ‘retail experience’ versus an ‘auction experience’, then shouldn’t eBay should do more to provide that?

Tags: eBay Retail, eBay Stores, eBay Shopping, eBay Selling

Over the past few months, eBay has been rolling out a new Sell Your Item (SYI) screen. They are phasing out the old form and according to a recent announcement, they will kill the old form completely sometime in May 2007.

The new form is actually easier because it gives you access to more of the listing components on one screen then the older form. It eliminates having to move back and forth between 5 screens as the old form required. This one is a two step process form.

The reality of volume eBay selling however, is that you probably will not use the form that much. If you sell in higher volume, you can use TurboLister or a variety of other offline products. With these kinds of products, you can prepare your listing locally (offline) and just bulk upload them. This saves time from the standpoint of waiting for screens to load which even on a high speed connection, can take time.

We use TurboLister for most all our listings now. I only use the SYI form when I have to make a revision to an existing listing. However, I do give the new form a thumbs-up from a usability standpoint. eBay has a page where you can read more about the new SYI form (link here).

Tags: eBay Sell Your Item, Sell Your Item Form, eBay Selling, SYI Form