Can anything put the wind back in eBay’s sails? The once-iconic auction site is making cosmetic changes to its fee structure and moving away from the auction model to emphasize more fixed-price listings. But it’s hard to get excited these days about eBay. It seems that the Web has moved on and eBay is stuck in still waters.
Don’t get me wrong. eBay is still a massive site and a cash machine. But once you reach 238 million visitors worldwide (comScore) and 26.4 billion pageviews a month, it’s hard to know where to go from there. Maybe that is why pageviews are actually down 15 percent year-over-year, and the stock is down 26 percent.
This is not about fixed price versus auctions. The main challenge eBay faces is that it is becoming easier and easier to find things to buy on the Web simply by searching for what you want on Google. During the early days of the Web, people needed a few big e-commerce sites they could trust and that could organize everything that was for sale online. That need was filled by Amazon and eBay.
But now people are comfortable trawling the Net for the best bargains, and eBay is no longerteh first place they go. Partly that is because eBay has done such a good job creating a semi-professional class of online sellers, that it is harder and harder to actually find bargains there. So online shoppers are going elsewhere.
Can eBay do anything to regain its lost momentum? Give them your suggestions in comments.
(Photo by Cindy Funk).
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eBay has lost the game when they started ignoring their sellers. eBay sellers are eBay’s customers, not the buyers.
From fee structure to international seller issues, there are so many topics that sellers are not happy any more.
Most of us moved away and started our own ecommerce businesses. eBay will still be around for a while, but with social shopping sites and innovative ecommerce sites coming in to the game, I don’t see a bright future for eBay.
Just my 2 cents.
Ahmet KIRTOK
What if they went to 0 fees for a period of time?
I can’t imagine the shareholders would ever allow this, but that could get some huge publicity and bring back some disgruntled sellers…
MATT - I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO CONTACT YOU AND UNABLE. WHAT IS GOING ON???? FROM JUDY
Ebay is a company but it is also a ‘brand’ for which has positioned it self as a helper to sell used junk.
That is why they came out with ebay express, to sell ‘new’ stuff, but ebay doesn’t have much mindshare in ‘new stuff’. It primarily has mindshare in ‘old stuff’.
Also contributing to decline is time, effort and energy put into skype which they overpaid for.
I like where you’re going with this brand concept. “Go to Amazon for new things, eBay or used things” is a pretty accurate reflection of consumer sentiment.
Erick, total page views are down because of improvements in eBay’s site and users being able to get more information with fewer clicks. Also, more applications are available (and more users using these applications) to make the service more efficient and not everything needs to be done through eBay’s website but can be done through 3rd party apps via their API. You can even see that how eBay has the “end time” displayed in the listings in real-time and users don’t have to refresh. These are just efficiencies in web technologies. The “page view” metric is on its way out as far as being the standard bar for site traffic like it used to be. More important metrics are unique users and time spend on a site.
Mike
That said, every single person in my family has either curtailed their eBay use, or completely stopped visiting the site.
Their reasons are all the same… tired of no longer finding deals, and instead finding new item retailers churning items at fixed prices.
Are these notes for eBay.com or eBay the company? Remember that page views are not necessarily an indicator of success for them as it is for many companies. You can engage in auctions in many ways outside the browser, plus their properties include PayPal, Skype, StubHub, and others. Every company has challenges, and eBay does seem to have lost some luster. But pageviews and uniques are one of several key metrics for this company.
eBay seems to struggle with its feedback system… From what I hear, sellers can’t leave negative feedback on buyers who don’t pay, etc.
Why doesn’t eBay just use a double-blind feedback system? In other words, you can’t see what someone rated you unless you rate them.
That right there would end the “you left me a negative, so I’m leaving you a negative” problem. There’s a suggest, eBay… hope you get it.
could you explain this out more , how would this work. What if i want to see someone else’s feedback from a previous auction. I won’t be able to leave feedback. Also if you just block out the participants of the auction then , i could use another account to view. .. maybe someone else knows how this may work
The feedback wouldn’t get posted or made visible until both parties left their feedback… then both ratings are visible to everyone.
Example;
User A leaves a feedback for User B. Nobody can see this yet (not even User B). User B leaves a feedback for User A. Now that both have inputted their feedback, everyone can see it.
Hope that helps.
This is exploitable.
If you are a bad seller, you can just never respond to bad feedback left for you by a disgruntled buyer, and thus hide your negative feedback indefinitely.
I think the ecommerce ecosystem has been undergoing a series of ‘Big Bang’ cycles over the last few years. As you mentioned at first it was all about consolidators like Amazon and eBay. Then gradually the traders on eBay started venturing out and creating micro selling platforms. This trend is bound to reverse. Ultra niche has a revenue ceiling (because there are only so many ultra niche buyers) so consolidation will happen. The problem with eBay is that it’s far too big an ecosystem and (I believe) a poorly managed one.
eBay and iPhone…..oh my God what’s happening here today?
http://vishtecho.blogspot.com/.....e-app.html
Great post.
I’ve used eBay for several years to sell motorcycles and other vehicles for the Harley-Davidson dealership I work for.
I’ve found that Craig’s list is easier, cheaper, and more efficient than eBay.
With great fanfare several years ago, eBay announced they would be expanding the eBay motors section.
Nothing positive. In reality, the experience just keeps getting worse. Fraudulent buyers/bidders are rampant. When a fraudulent bidder purchases something, eBay does next to nothing. We recently “sold” a Lexus to a fraudulent person in Pakistan. When I contacted ebay, they first blamed me for not requesting only Americans bid. But, Canadians like the US/Canadian dollar ratio, so this would be counterproductive for us.
They recently yanked a listing because I committed the sin of listing our company’s website.
The nickel and diming on the fees is bad, too. I’d rather pay a larger one time fee, and have the listing remain active for 30 days.
As for the auction format, most of our customers don’t understand it. They often think our opening bid is what we’d sell it for now, but when I add buy it nows, it doesn’t encourage offers.
Thanks.
I think eBay has two big problems that we might also see affect google:
1) they are a public company
2) they have made a lot of acquisitions
1 is a tough one because, they will continue to be pressed for quarter-to-quarter revenue and earnings growth. This leaves them with few levers to pull, and compels them to make choices about customers they wouldn’t make as a private company. A quarter isn’t enough to get something as big as eBay moving more to Web 2.0 and beyond.
2 is bad because it means complexity. Very few people actually understand or are good at integration of acquisitions. The more boundaries, the more management, the more meetings, and the more loss of time there is with customers and competitors. Just look at how Patrick described it above: eBay = PayPal, Skype, StubHub…not good. As eBay fights to satisfy the public markets each quarter, this complexity must be looming large inside…
For me, eBay filled an unmet market need; the ability to somewhat easily search and sometimes find “deals” for the products fitting my interest. The continued decline in real “deals” and the emergence of alternative sites to search product and price has lowered the perceived value of the eBay service.
eBay is still relevant and profitable, but it’s simply not a growth company anymore. They’ve served all the niches very well, done the legwork in expanding internationally with mixed results, and now find their main audience is very saturated. I think their best bet for growth and is to push PayPal mobile payments as hard as possible, and position themselves as the most secure mobile option. Security and trust is going to be the main competitive driver in cell phone payments.
Mr. Anonymous has a good idea for improving the whole feedback mess, but to me the real issue with eBay is that they have effectively cut out the small-time, average seller with their new fee structure. eBay became what they are by allowing the average internet user to sell stuff (or junk depending on your perspective) online. These sellers wouldn’t even dream of setting up their own site or making a living off of eBay. The guys who make a living selling on eBay are the types who have the drive and incentive to get their own sites.
eBay made all the average Joes walk the plank and trusted the ship to full-time eBay sellers. As the ship sinks, these guys will take all the life rafts and let Meg Whitman go down with the ship.
Whitman is no longer the CEO…she is now McCain adviser and apparently from McCain’s speech one of his top people when it comes to economy
I think professional sellers is part of the problem, less bargins. I tend to look for amateurs on CraigsList first.
One way to spark their next phase of growth would be to truly appeal to casual sellers. A majority of people I know that sell casually (say ~1 item/month) flock to Craigslist because they feel safer and less vulnerable to fraud. Ebay holds an advantage over CL in the size of their marketplace–more potential customers means you get a better price for your nicknack (my niche stuff always goes to eBay). Ebay can’t fully harness this until they make it a much more inviting place to sell for the average person.
PayPal’s byzantine requirements (they arbitrarily decided they wouldn’t accept a friend’s Visa, forcing her to use a bank account) and eBay’s vulnerability to fraud (same friend tried to sell an item 3 times…the 3rd and final winner was the first legitimate bidder) are shameful.
I’m not sure the data actually supports your conclusion here. Is the percentage of e-commerce to the top 20 players going up or down overall? Last I checked, the percentage of e-commerce to the top 20 players was going up, indicated that using Google to buy things in the “long tail” of e-commerce was not, in fact, taking share from the majors.
If true, then it would indicate that eBay’s problem is that it’s becoming much easier to buy things from Amazon, Zappos, and other large e-tailers.
If false, then you have better evidence for your theory.
Adam
Ebay is facilitating commerce in the long tail much like Google is. Google is indeed a direct competitor. That buyers are flocking to other major sites like Amazon and that they flock to “long-tail” Google are not mutually exclusive. I think both are happening, and Ebay is the victim.
Ebay vs. Google: Ebay is pretty much a deal search engine, but so is Google. Ebay is supposed to add value over Google in providing overall buying experience and supporting of sellers. Don’t think they are doing either very well. With Paypal and Amazon taking care of the check out process, it’s as convenient buying from the merchant’s website.
Ebay vs. Amazon: Different customer base. The marketplace model is just not what a lot of people want. For these people, I don’t think Ebay can do anything to shift their shopping budgets to Ebay.
How about becoming a merchant while still keeping their marketplace? Being a merchant allows them to have a well controlled user experience, therefore serving that “experience” need that seems to be validated by Amazon.
I understand what you are saying conceptually, but I don’t think the data actually supports this. It’s very category-specific, but I do not think you will actually find that the customers for Amazon or eBay are different - it’s the actual visit/product/occasion that is different. It’s the same customer base, and a share-of-retail issue.
Your merchant idea is one of my historical favorites, but eBay lacks the core competencies to be a retailers, as well as the operational elements involved. It would take years to build them, and the low margins are not something eBay has wanted to engage with historically.
Adam
Adam,
I agree with you that customers buy both from amazon and ebay and that you can see the difference in visit/product/occasion. But don’t you think that the group who spend 90%-10% on ebay-amazon are inherently different from the group who spend 90%-10% on amazon-ebay, even though both groups buy on both sites?
The difference is based on how they value each part of the buying process. The “amazon” buyers place a much higher value on the ease and thoughtlessness of the whole process, while the “ebay” buyers place more value on the “deal” they get and possibly the auction feel (even though I don’t understand why you would). While they buy at both sites, they are different people, and merely making the ebay auction experience a bit better will not be enough to shift their valuation of the buying experiences on Ebay and Amazon. As a marketplace, ebay could never match the experience that amazon can create as it has complete control of the end-to-end process including supply chain and merchandising.
Having said that, I agree that’s it’s very difficult to do both marketplace and retailing well. They are different models and require different expertise.
I still think theres a massive market out there which E-Bay is yet to caputre. India for one could be a huge market for them especially with indians penchant for good deals and a growing comfort with online purchases.
I hate eBay. Hope it will die with in a few years. They distroyed many good local auction sites by acquiring them.
I think they’ve been greedy early and have not recovered from that strategic mistake. Powersellers, the backbone of the retail proposition at eBay have become disenfranchised and deserted to other services (Amazon). They need to find a way to attract more ‘casual’ eBay sellers, with lo/no fee incentives, this will bring important WOM marketing benefits. Also, customer service needs to be reset. They need to re-build their customer care reputation and eBay email is the best way to do this.
As someone that has been using ebay since day 1 I am certain that my page clicks are down considerably. One user stated this is caused by site improvements and I’d have to agree. I no longer need to browse for hours on ebay, instead I use complex searches to whittle down my results - the first time, use the saved search feature and automated bidding tools so I don’t have to keep refreshing the pages at the last minute:)
My page views is probably 1/10 of what it had been, yet I probably buy/sell twice as much as I ever did.
eBay isn’t going anywhere
We’ve worked with eBay for years, helping automotive companies get their listings on eBay. It’s been clear to us for quite some time that all of the smart people have long left eBay. They are now run by a bunch of MBAs with really white teeth and good hair, but not much upstairs.
They continue to antagonize the sellers by restricting more and more of what can go on the site. Want to put a link to your dealership’s website on your listing? FAIL. You will likely get the listing pulled. Want to put your phone number on the listing? FAIL. If it is a Local Market listing, then eBay will yank the listing because you didn’t give the Callbright number that eBay provides. Want to leave bad feedback for a deadbeat bidder? FAIL. Want to talk a knowledgeable rep about problems with eBay? FAIL.
Like another poster says above, Craigslist has become a very popular place for dealers to post their inventory. eBay is too expensive and too clueless. eBay used to be a huge part of our business. Fortunately for us, it’s less than 50% as dealers now are moving to other avenues to market their inventory. And we’re happy to help them.
Maybe someday, the clue train will pull back into the station in Palo Alto, but for now the people running the place over there resemble a bunch of teenage kids trying to figure out how to fly a 747 mid-flight.
Your post hits the nail on the head.
All I can add is this…
Instead of good old-fashioned hands-on management and/or innovation, Ebay became quite Bush regime and dictatorial… making arbitrary rules and policing the boards, kicking anyone off the site who angered them. I think it was every 6 months or less it would be either raise listing fees in core, then in search, then paypal rates go up, then some more, lather, rinse, repeat…
They knew how to tap the sellers, but its like they were addicted to the easy fix and couldn’t turn it off. When enough became enough and people couldn’t afford to list anymore… or like me, cherry picked what they could list… they left.
When they needed to boost their numbers for investors, they simply ran a listing sale. It worked like a dream until people stopped being enthused about them too.
Ebay just thinks they’re all that… yeah, and they’re greedy too. Yeah, and like congress, they just won’t listen to their people.
I know what they shouldn’t do — go head to head with Amazon by becoming more of a retailer. That’s a suicide run.
eBay was founded on the notion of a level playing field for buyers and sellers (non-local classifieds). Perhaps they should go back to their roots and do more here.
Or if they are really all about the sellers, they should open up and help sellers succeed on and off ebay (amazon, google, etc.).
Ebay is best for things that are long tail, hard to find, customized. I never had luck with standard [a laptop, or a computer] products from them. My suggestion to them is to focus on long tail products, even services.
Good Luck!!
Subhankar Ray
Forget the powersellers and people trying to start a “get rich quick” business on Ebay. Ebay has turned into a crappy ecommerce store with a terrible interface. Imagine if you went to Amazon and searched for a book and got a page listing the item once for every copy that Amazon has in stock. Ebay needs to appeal to casual sellers, but unfortunately, that market will likely never be big enough to replace the one they’ve got, so the best they can do is fester in the cesspool that they’ve created until they die. It can’t come soon enough.
Ugh. I hate Ebay.
I have an idea! eBay should Partner up with WrapMail and offer eBay/WrapMail to all it’s Powersellers. Charging the Powersellers $5/month (per user) could yield some significant revenue: 1M Powersellers x $5 = $5M/month or $60M/year. Let’s assume eBay also has a 3rd party ad in the wraps which generates another revenue stream (ads to be approved and revenue shared with the Powersellers) that could be significant.
Let’s assume eBay keeps $25M/year of this revenue (and this number is extremely conservative as eBay could get a much larger user base and have added revenue through 3rd party ads) - with a P/E of 30 and assuming 90% fall directly to the bottom line it would mean $22.5M x 30 = $675 Market cap value.
Obviously this would also be interesting to WrapMail who is alone in the world with their Saas solution.
stop trying to promote your shitty service.. you should be ashamed of yourself. i would delete your post
You clearly should have disclosed your relation to WrapMail
The problem is the nickel and dime you as a seller and give you no support if someone doesn’t pay.
The one that got me to second guess selling is when they upgraded my personal PayPal account to a biz account to take another 2.9% of the sale after the fact. When I called them they said it was a PayPal thing and not eBay. Now that is some run-around.
eBay needs to train it’s sellers more about what acceptable shipping charges are, especially their American sellers. Selling an item for $5 and then charging $15 to ship it Internationally, especially from the US to Canada just won’t fly. Sure, shipping costs money, but a majority of the sellers are trying to recoup fees and get extra money by screwing the buyer on shipping. Also, eBay needs to force sellers to give more shipping options and more accurate shipping prices–if you say you’re willing to ship to the US, Canada, Australia and the UK then you should have a quote for each of those in your auction. At the very least, eBay should provide calculation widgets so buyers can get a more accurate quote.
eBay’s shipping calculator does a TERRIBLE job of determining accurate rates internationally. I have spent the time and effort to pre-pack and weigh samples of items that I have for sale to allow prospective bidders to get a fair and accurate rate. I typically will add a mere .95 to cover the cost of the packing materials (new, not reused) and the physical trip to the Post Office. I try to be very reasonable with my bidders (treat them like I would like to be treated). Lo and behold - the shipping calculator makes GROSS error in the rates. I cannot tell you how many times I have refunded excess postage to bidders because of the screwups. And trust me - I use a calibrated Pitney Bowes scale to determine the weights. I don’t do it as a business - but I have to say with all of the screwups, fees and inability to protect myself from shady bidders - it’s just getting more effort than it’s worth…
The challenges eBay has with how they have complicated the selling process as well as the fraud/inability to complete a transaction have been well covered here. I will add one other key thing:
Most people participating in eBay auctions do so on an individual anti-social kind of basis. Shopping is a very social experience. People often do it with their friends. Look at any teenage girl in a mall, it is very unlikely she is alone. She is with a group of her friends.
eBay would benefit from making their experience more social. Allow people to talk about auctions in groups, private, semi-public, etc.
eBay has to please buyers in order to please sellers. What do sellers really want? A specific fee structure? No. Certain kinds of support? No. What sellers really want is BUYERS. If eBay can’t bring people to your listings anymore, it’s over. If sellers could set up standalone stores and drive traffic to them, they wouldn’t need eBay in the first place. The reason eBay remains a compelling place to sell, despite all the problems, is that they have a ton of traffic. As long as they make sure that continues, sellers will thrive.
I think that with every becoming more and more decentralized in e-commerce, eBay should look at doing widgets, custom seller sites, or even a custom store front for certain product types.
Many good comments above, which is a very telling sign.
I would buy more stuff from an online company if trust, ease of use and integration were increased. Auction style is a pain. I have a need to buy some stuff, but paypal sucks and is untrustworthy. Ease of use and being able to buy with conditional options would help. Amazon will probably get the system I want, being that they are innovative.
I could list all the reasons, wants, etc, but just wait, someone will come up with it.
At the end of the day, eBay is an ecommerce company and thus should look to further expand into “front end” ecommerce offerings. While I know they have had less then stellar success offering an ecommerce platform (prostores), there is a lot of money for them in helping eBay sellers to become more “traditional” ecommerce companies.
In addition to this, eBay should look to get into the lucrative comparison shopping engine marketplace. Sure, one might say that it is saturated, but imagine a site where a consumer could go to find “ANY” product they could possibly want, with a combination of new products and used products at fix listings (from eBay and other merchants), in addition to auction style listings. With a more structure site architecture, eBay could then optimize product pages for the SE’s and get their traffic numbers rising (if you care about that).
eBay should also look at providing ecommerce companies with a platform to sell used/return goods on the merchants site, rather than eBay. As the popularity of ecommerce continues to grow (and the ecommerce companies grow themselves) there are going to be a lot of used/returned products they want to liquidate.
I started selling on eBay back in 1998. It was a lot of fun and relatively painless in terms of fees. The site was also very easy to use and navigate. Now - I find myself selling less and less. The biggest sore point is the avalanche of fees that literally nickel and dime any of the tiny margin I would make away. I have a lot of $10-20 items that just aren’t worth the effort anymore after the listing fees, picture fees, final value fees, Paypal fees, etc. Sadly, unless eBay takes a different stance with regards to the small sellers, it will evolve to a site of a small number (relatively speaking) of Power sellers who will migrate to self hosted sites after a year or two of growth. And forget about the small sellers - they will have been so maligned that thier numbers will dwindle. This will ultimately spell disaster for the bottom line and like so many other companies that lost sight of thier base - they will fade and morph until they become a footnote in history.
Ebay needs to go back to the promise of finding the fairest deal for a product, and take it across national borders.
Shipping cost hikes are killing eBay.
It’s no bargain if shipping for your catalog-return $8 t-shirt is $10 or $12. New it’s probably $18 with free shipping.
Is eBay going to pay me anything in return if I suggest them any thing which will bring them back on top?
Unlike most of the comments, it is not the sellers or policy against the sellers. eBay gives the sellers a lot of traffic and it has the right to take 10-15% of the final amount.
However, eBay has not done any innovation in their business model to attract more and more buyers. It is not a seller’s market, it is a buyer’s market and they decide where to go.
If I was eBay, I would have made a killing with the fixed price selling as well as it brings all the brands to the customers directly. Some innovation is required in all the auction sites or shopping portals to make the buyers prefer them over other.
a regular person can’t make money anymore on ebay. and they need to negotiate shipping discounts with carriers their sellers can take advantage of.
eBay is still a great company, eBay.com needs some serious attention.
They are a successful dot-com run like a behemoth corporation, they need to try to be nimble…
maybe that’s why they’re cutting **1500-3500 Jobs** in the next 6-12 months.
eBay’s listing fees are absolutely ridiculous! I understand final value fees, but the cost of even listing items is now too prohibitive. I want to be able to list a bunch of junk I have laying around the house on eBay and not have to pay a fortune in listing fees. I think they should focus on final value fees and make it very cheap to list items.
Let us not forget that eBay opened their API and data to third parties well before it became de rigeur, although this was the last bold move they made in that direction.
My suggestion would be for eBay to clean up their data. If I search for “ipod” in a category marked “iPod & MP3 Players”, I do not want to see more results for accessories than actual devices.
They have 2 options
1. Get rid of Buy it now altogether or move it to another site. Ebay is going the WRONG direction here and deviating from the original brand. There are plenty of online retailers and it sounds like they are just trying to be another “yahoo stores” another “me too” property.
Name another auction site, and it’s unique visits.
2. FIX fraud NOW. They need to do more, not sure what, to limit fraud on their site. You’ll never eliminate it entirely but i think more protection through paypal for both sides of the deal can help.
I used to buy from ebay all the time - scrapbook stuff (tons of it), painting and artwork…. but not so much any more. Since you asked, now that I think about it, here’s why:
> I don’t have patience any more for auctions (esp on longggg auctions)
> I can’t remember when they end and the auto reminder doesn’t work most of the time. I want to buy something now so I just go buy it = failure to buy b/c don’t want to wait
> I hate that users can’t put US and Euro prices (esp now that the dollar is half the Euro practically) and I know some sellers would be willing to sell at USD prices but list at Euro prices (and forcing me to buy in Euros) = failure to buy b/c want to pay in USD and it’s twice as much
> I hate their search = failure to find what I want
> And half the time the stupid login doesn’t work b/c I signed up to ebay like a million years ago and my password is only 4 characters so I get in this loop of “your password isn’t strong enough” and can’t login sometimes = failure to buy
> I hate having to log into Paypal to pay (just make it seamless for crying out loud) = failure to buy if I can’t remember my PP password
> I wouldn’t even consider selling something on ebay because it’s too complicated and gives me a headache. I can plop it into CL and be done with it. = failure to sell b/c too many rules and I don’t have time to learn them
> I associate ebay with used things. Most of the time I don’t want something used; I want something new and working. If I want something unique and artsy I got to Etsy.
> If I lose an auction, I get PO’d. Not a good shopping experience = failure to return b/c I might not win
> Shipping fees on some seller’s stuff is insanely high.
Whoever was the dope who made the decision that auctions that have fraudulent activity are pulled AKA “TKO detected” or something like that really pissed me off. I went from selling most of my used gear on ebay to elsewhere. Why didn’t they just pull the bids from fraudulent/hacked accounts? Why not give an easy “Press this shiny button” way to relist if necessary instead of starting from scratch? Ebay hasn’t cared about casual sellers in years.
Don’t get me started on the Ebay/Paypal double-dip into auctions, or the revised feedback system (read: broken).
More than anything it is margins. The ebay fee structure can cost you a ton of money while not providing any revenue. Their take is somewhere between 10-15% with paypal if you have a good sell through rate. A lot of big sellers described it as an inch deep and a mile wide, since selling volume of an item on ebay inevitably brings its price down quickly and substantially.
You just can’t compete online in most categories with a 15% gross take from ebay off the top of every transaction anymore. In apparel very few jobbers sell on ebay anymore, which means it is more profitable to sell items in bulk at 5-15% of retail again.
Ok Antje….you sound like you’re whining a bit. You hate ebay because you lose an auction sometimes? You want ebay to fix all auctions so that you win?
Losing happens on an AUCTION site. If you don’t want to lose, I have a great idea…bid more!
Anyway, ebay seems to make these consistent changes that are counter-intuitive to long-term growth. They really do need to take care of sellers to the best of their ability.
Fraud does need to be addressed–it is rampant.
Customer Support is non-existent. That org needs to be revamped big time, and they need to give a crap about what happens on their site.
Meg as an economic leader? Please. She is a pleasant person who was a good face for the company. That John McCain believes she can lead an economic recovery should tell you all you need to know about his campaign–and his sanity, lol.
EBay has failed by not combating fraud. Simple enough.
I have decent connection speed (DSL) but I haven’t been able to get an Ebay page to load quickly in what seems like forever. If this is true for others, my guess is that Ebay has lost those of us who used to spend time browsing. I just don’t bother ever trying anymore. I’m betting that browsers were a) mostly non-fraudulent and b) willing to pay more for something the “found”.
Now the site is full of shoppers looking for the best deal. And that’s not the same thing.
Fixed pricing is the wrong way to go. People who use Ebay want deals, and auctions can provide such deals. IMO they need to get back to their roots . . .
Couldn’t agree more. That’s the first thought I had. Why focus on fixed price commerce when practically all other ecommerce sites are based on that basic concept. What stood ebay apart was the auctions.
There’s a psychological difference between when a buyer participates in an auction and when they are just shopping for a good deal online. Auctions INVOLVE people on a level that no other form of ecommerce has. That has always been ebay’s strength. And now they’re thinking of focusing elsewhere? Duh!
To stay on top of e-bay, potential changes, etc. I went to google > news > bottom left ALERTS > typed in e-bay > chose Comprehensive. That is how this blog came to me.
Of blogs there are four types - legal, the e-conomist, Sellers and Buyers. From the buyer blogs there are instance after instance of buyers who came to e-bay and got caught up in the buyer frenzy of auction, only to find afterwards that a reputable store on e-bay carried the same item at a fixed price with a lowered shipping rate.
One of the latest is a Buyer who wanted an original movie poster for Indiana Jones.
E-bays old system has all the “yardsale” auctions coming up first in a search, then a space in their pages with Stores listed below.
The buyer saw the poster in the sales area and went after the first one he saw eventually winning the bid for 81.00 plus 27.00 shipping & handling. After winning, he realized that most stores on e-bay carried the same item for 15.00 with only 5.00 shipping & handling. This Buyers’ blog then goes on to promote e-bay stores.
In the new e-bay, the store inventory section which allows a seller to list items .05 for a 30 day listing will now change to .35 per listing. Then, when the item is searched will come up with all the other buy-it-now items of the same ilk whether yardsale or store; with the main difference being that those stores with the better DSR rating will have their listings show up first.
What Sellers now need to determine is whether the cost of their store plus the listing fee’s of all items sold in conjunction with actual sales warrant the creation of their own web site sans URL, with only a few items - leaders - on e-bay itself. On the invoice back to the buyer or within the sales flyer enclosed with packing or even a label on your packaging you should be placing your store name and your url back to your customer.
With e-bay already offering Sellers the option to give a discount towards final value fee for those customer’s showing up from elsewhere on the net, those Sellers with higher volume should have already purchased a URL from places like http://www.godaddy.com and then created a re-direct at that URL into their e-bay store.
After your store reaches 3,000 per month you should start searching for a reliable package store program with good gateways. The trick is to remove the redirect into e-bay.
Of course, I am just an old, fat, ugly woman without much of the education that many of you seem to have here, it seems to me that you have found what works - online sales. E-bay is a tool, much like many of the marketing programs you can find online. Many Sellers do not go to places online to freely Submit their URL to their store nor to purchase advertisement the way Sears or WallyWorld does.
In the long run - e-bay will end up like a MALL where items can be purchased at a fixed price. In the long run many other auction houses will open up - but those that will make it will be those that will specialize. Already, two online antique auction houses have come together; sports trading card places are doing the same thing.
Best of luck,
Lu
Native American Fabrics
http://www.nativeamericanfabrics.com
They should quit messing around with Kijiji and buy Craigslist
they have 25% of craigslist, and craigslist refuses to sell them anymore..
I for one am happy to see ebay reach a point where they need to think about their future. I stopped using them the day they forced us Australian users to make PayPal a forced payment option on our listings. Yes I know they own PayPal, but forcing us to use it is plain wrong. There are other (granted much smaller) auction sites to choose from, and I’m happy to support them.