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

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

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

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

Effective May 1, Amazon will no longer be showing customer information in their “SOLD SHIP NOW” email notices. This is to protect customer privacy and affects Amazon Marketplace Sellers and Amazon Webstores.

I’ve also noticed that they now mask the email address of the customer in the web based seller panel. If you want to contact the customer via the web panel, you have to go through their web based messaging system. Is Amazon removing access to the customers completely?

Granted, Amazon merchants don’t have the right to send customers unsolicited email. But as an Amazon seller, I do like to use my own templates and email service to notify the customer of the order status.

At Amazon in fact there are at least 3 opportunities to get in touch with the customer. 1 - To acknowledge the order was placed and thank them for the order (plant URL in signature). 2 - To notify the customer the order was shipped and give the tracking number (plant URL in signature again). 3 - Follow-up with the customer about 3 weeks after order to thank them again and ask for feedback (plant URL in signature again). A little soft marketing; now I wonder if I’ll still be able to do that?

The question that I can’t seem to get answered is if there will be any change to the Download Orders file. That is a CSV file that Amazon sellers can download and get their orders into Excel for easier processing. At the present time, the customer email addresses are in there. We’ll see if it’s there on May 1!

Tags: Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Webstore, Amazon Selling, Amazon Customers

While Amazon has never really mastered the online auction market as eBay has, they have mastered the fixed price market in a way that eBay obviously has not. eBay still does not appear to know exactly what they want to do with their stores even though they have been online since around 2001. Remember the ‘reset the marketplace’ debacle last year? And there is buzz that eBay is getting to ‘reset the marketplace’ yet again.

If you’re looking for an alternative to eBay stores, consider an Amazon Webstore. Like eBay stores, Amazon Webstores are ‘connected’ to Amazon, but you don’t get any traffic from Amazon. The ‘connection’ is a link from your Seller Marketplace store. That will get you indexed by the search engine spiders but not much else. That part is pretty similar to eBay stores where you get a built-in link on your user page to your store. Few people click on it, but the search engines will crawl it.

The big difference in the Amazon Webstores is that you use your own URL and it’s not a sub-domain off the main URL like eBay is. So for example, if your store is “FauxFloralArrangements”, it would look like this on eBay:

http://stores.ebay.com/fauxfloralarrangements

However it would look like this as an Amazon Webstore:

http://www.fauxfloralarrangements.com

(assuming of course, you have secured the domain name).

That’s a huge difference from the perspective of change management. If you decided to move on to another platform, all the links you’ve built with an eBay store will go away. But with the Amazon Webstore, you supply and keep the domain. That means you can take it with you if you decide you don’t want to be an Amazon Webstore any longer and your links will follow (unless you’ve done deep linking).

Some other factoids about Amazon Webstores. Amazon acts as the shopping cart for your transactions just as eBay does. Amazon charges 7% which covers the whole transaction. eBay charges 10% of the first 25 dollars and 7% after that. But then you must also add in the PayPal transaction for another 3 percent. Amazon basic monthly hosting fee is flat: $60.00. So it’s more on the monthly hosting side, but has cost savings on the transaction side.

Another plus side to Amazon Webstores is that you can use your Amazon affiliate account there. In other words, you can setup things in your Amazon Webstore that you are just promoting as an affiliate and they show right along with your other ‘inventory’.

A down side is that there is no apparent way to promote your Amazon Webstore from other Amazon venues like the Seller Marketplace. My rep tells me that may be planned for the future, but for now, you have to get your traffic by other means. But there are indeed other means - like Pay Per Action for example.

You can read about Amazon Webstores at their page (link here).

Tags: Amazon Webstore, eBay Store, Selling on Amazon, Selling on eBay

I have this drop ship site (call it site A) which used to be on the first page on Yahoo for its main keyword. It was in the top 5 sometimes as high as 3. Earlier this year, it took a tumble in the rankings. Not just a little slip, but a major tumble. It’s been fluctuating between the 50 and 65 spots - in other words, they did ‘the Donald’ on my site (for that keyword).I know the reason for the tumble was their January Algo update. But what I don’t know is how to get it back up to page 1. Site A for that keyword ranks #4 on MSN and is currently #12 on Google with an occasional bump to 9 or 10.

I have a theory about Yahoo ranking - completely unfounded, but rumors like this have been floating around for years so I may as well add to them. You have to spend money with Yahoo to rank well with Yahoo.

The competitor for Site A is now in #1 on Yahoo - they are a Yahoo store, my Site A is not hosted on Yahoo. Ahem. Site B (another drop ship site of mine) is not a Yahoo store, but I did plunk down the $300 per year to get it into the Yahoo Directory. It ranks better now than before January for its top keyword - #5 on Yahoo. Cough.

So there you have it folks - the unofficial Frank Ross theory of Yahoo’s Search Algo. Seriously, I suppose I should consider plunking down the $300 for a Yahoo directory listing for Site A. That may bump it up to the first page of Google and may help Yahoo see fit to raise it back to its former prominence.

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

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

Ah, those non paying bidders (NPB) on eBay. The ones that still think placing a bid is like window shopping. It seems the more we grow our listings on eBay, the more NPBs we get. In speaking with other sellers, I am under the impression that NPBs simply scale with your eBay business.

I have a theory about why NPBs persist on eBay. I think that many buyers may have a hard time with the commitment to pay on something that they wanted or thought they wanted.

What happens in a regular physical auction when you bid on something, win the auction, and then refuse to pay? In general, you are scolded and are probably blacklisted from that auction house. This is more or less the model eBay follows.

I suspect that many eBay buyers don’t get the auction connection and think of eBay in terms of retail. What happens when you’re in a store (say WalMart), put something in your cart, then get up to the checkout and decide you didn’t want the item — for whatever reason? It’s no big deal there; you simply give the item to the cashier and the cashier places it in a restock bin. Even online shopping systems work this way. If you order something online, you generally have the opportunity to remove it from your shopping cart prior to actually checking out.

eBay’s auction listings more or less fly in the face of this. In spite of eBay’s best efforts to inform them otherwise, I suspect that with many buyers it just doesn’t sink in that there is a real commitment to pay.

Tags: Non Paying Bidders, eBay Non Paying Bidders, eBay Buyers, Buying on eBay

Hmm. I did my research on product “x” and made my ’safe’ initial purchase from the supplier (one case of 6). Cost per item was $3.27; not a real mainstream item. It was mainly to pump up an order for some other things from the same supplier.

Typically, when I get something new in, I put them in the eBay store and send them to auction listings one by one. Each auction listing of course, has an invitational link to buy the item from the store where shipping is free.

The first auction listing was a failure. The item only sold for $3.76 - didn’t even make break even. I thought to myself - oh well, guess I won’t reorder those.

But wait! The next auction a week later sold for $10.87! Not only that, but within the last 12 hours of the auction, 2 were sold from the store at $12.95. What?

Well sometimes you just can’t tell by one listing and it’s always worth a second look. Sometimes eBay can be a very irregular market. By the way, nothing changed in the listing - only the week it was listed. Guess that product will make my ‘reorder list’ after all!

Tags: eBay Selling, Selling on eBay, Selling Products on eBay, eBay Listing Success

I had a few spare moments this morning (yes my spare time is counted in ‘moments’ nowadays), so I decided to play the shopper and test drive eBay Express. I browsed into the Kitchen category under ‘Home & Garden’ since that is one of my favorite selling categories. I wanted to see if any of my listings would come up.

A lot of people shop by brand name - this is no secret. eBay knows this and even provides a brand name browser within eBay Express. You can activate the brand name browser by checking “more choices” under ‘Brand’. I selected “Nordic Ware” a line that we sell. I was greeted by this message:

‘We were unable to run the search you entered. Please try again in a few minutes.’

Um. So I closed my browser waited a few minutes and then tried to go back into the Home & Garden category on eBay Express. I was then greeted with that same message for the entire Home & Garden category:

‘We were unable to run the search you entered. Please try again in a few minutes.’

I then tried the Consumer Electronics category, same thing! What? No Consumer Electronics! Not sure what gives here. It’s not like eBay Express was just rolled out yesterday - it’s been online since at least mid 2006.

We don’t really get very many eBay Express orders and this gives me a clue as to why. I don’t know whether I just caught it on an off-day, but it’s not very acceptable to have a broken search and browse feature. Clearly eBay Express needs some work!

Tags: eBay Express, eBay Express Bugs, eBay Express Problems, Search eBay Express,Browse eBay Express

If you have a website that sells products and uses a merchant account, did you know that your merchant account comes with limits? Bad things can happen when you exceed your limit. Did you know that your bank may freeze your funds under some conditions?

Here is an article that gives some insight into this seldom discussed part of merchant accounts. Establishing a limit on an account is part of the Merchant Bank’s risk management process. The criteria for actually freezing funds varies from bank to bank, but it’s generally based on a certain amount over that monthly limit and other risk management criteria. Generally what they’re looking for are sudden spikes that may signify fraud.

The month of December is particularly problematic for this because sales for products are generally much higher due to the holidays. The first step in avoiding any funds freeze disaster is to know what your monthly limit is.

If December sales look like they’re going to push you over that limit, don’t be afraid to contact your merchant bank and tell them your having a good month. They should record this information and in most cases, they’ll understand that sales tend to spike this time of year.

Tags: Online Merchant Accounts, Merchant Account Limits, Merchant Account Funds Freeze

There are lot of courses and information products you can buy online that supposedly show you “how to” do things with online businesses. “How to Start an eBay Business”, “How to Build an Affiliate Business Online”, “How to Start an Online Drop Ship Business”, and so on. I just made those titles up, so no offense to the authors if they really exist.

The problem with many of these information products or ‘courses’ is that they’re just no good. Many of them might have been good at one time, but were written many years ago and the information contained in them is no longer relevant. Others may be poorly written or worse, may be full of incorrect information.

Sometimes what was once correct information is no longer true. An example would be link exchanges. I blogged here that I think commodity style link exchanging is no longer a good idea. This view is supported by people in the SEO industry who are far more knowledgeable about this than me. Yet, you will still find eBooks that talk about mass link exchanging as though it’s the hottest thing since iPod.

Before you buy an online course or information product, check to see when it was written. If it’s more than a few years old, think twice. If it is older, find out if it gets updated. An older information product that gets updated periodically may still be useful.

Also check to see what the seller’s refund policy is. If they’re offering a ‘no questions asked’ return policy, check the fine print. How long do you have to return it? What are the conditions of return?

Do a little research up front to avoid spending your hard earned money on old or incorrect information.

Tags: Online Course Ripoff, Information Product Ripoff, Online Business Course, Online eBay Course