eBay eXpress to Replace Stores in Search?

I'm surprised I hadn't heard about this earlier, but check out this auctionbytes article: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m04/i30/s03

This is some scary stuff for a lot of bigger eBay sellers. Even with the store fees increase, we've continued to see much higher success in Stores for some product lines than in core. In fact, we have an entire lot of liquidation designer fabric that is selling fairly consistantly with NO core promotion or any other promotion.

Larger Stores sellers should start thinking of backup plans now. Knowing eBay, if they are going to make this change, they will be doing it in around 6 months, with only about a month warning. Read More...

Google Checkout's Effect on Hits and Sales

Over the next few weeks, I'll be looking more deeply at how Google checkout effects sales. There has been a ton of speculation lately, and, frankly, I thought Google checkout was a complete flop. However, it seems that they are growing slowly but surely, especially after they used some Microsoft-like tactics to force checkout upon us.

Below I've pasted in an image of Google's relatively recent promotions of their checkout. You'll see that the Google OneBox shows "results available through Google Checkout" rather than the "see more products" message it used to have. You'll also see to the right that some Paid Search Ads have a really eye catching icon underneath them.





I'm willing to bet that these changes to Google will be driving a significant amount of additional hits to Google Checkout sellers. Hopefully in the coming weeks my experiments will prove it! Read More...

Don't Forget about eBay's 20 Cent Listing Day Tomorrow (April 24th)

Ebay's running a listing promotion, and there are a few thing to keep in mind:

1. Remember that Gallery fees still cost their normal rate. Don't forget to put that in you cost calculations.
2. Listing promotions are great days to test new product lines and current store items on eBay core to see what kind of response you'll get from core auction/BIN format.
3. The final value fees on Core are less. Try out some of your hot core products to reduce fees.

Good Luck! Read More...

Converting a Sale on your E-commerce Website

I've been taking a hard look lately at what actually makes people convert into a sale once they are placed on a product page on your website, and I've identified two very important things:

1. Your website needs to be fast. If it takes more than 5 seconds to load your product page from a referral, you'll probably lose the customer. 3 seconds or less seems to be optimal. This is especially true if you are paying for traffic from search engines or shopping comparison sites. If your site is slow, potential customers know they can just hit back and try the next result.

2. Adding to cart needs to be in plain view (without scrolling!). This realization actually has roots in our own mistakes. If your buyer has to scroll to the bottom of your description to add to cart, they probably won't make it. Again, this is espeically true of paid traffic. The ideal situation seems to be a button under the picture and a text link above and below the description. Read More...

Reducing Your PayPal Fees with Merchant Rates

I'm always surprised at how many of our clients don't know how to take advantage of PayPal's Merchant Rates, so I will spell it out in a bit more detail and provide some strategies to reduce your overall transaction fees.

Firstly, let's go over PayPal Merchant Rates. Rule #1: You must APPLY with PayPal to take advantage of the reduced rates! I can't tell you how many of our customers assume they don't qualify for the reduced rates because they haven't seen it automatically change. The requirement is only 3k per month and you only have to qualify once!

Here's the rate table for reference:

$3,000.01 USD-$10,000.00 USD
2.5% + $0.30 USD
$10,000.01 USD-$100,000.00 USD
2.2% + $0.30 USD
> $100,000.00 USD
1.9% + $0.30 USD

To Apply for your merchant rates, you only need to have done 3,000 in sales in the previous calendar month. Once you get your new rates, you don't necessarily even have to maintain the volume. One PayPal's site, they threaten to downgrade you if you drop below, but we have yet to hear reports of someone being downgraded.

Finding the application for merchant rates is always a fun little scavenger hunt. The easiest way I've found is to sign into PayPal, click on the "Fees" link at the bottom of any page, click on the link under Premier/Business account that says "1.9% to 2.9% + $0.30 USD," and then click on the link near the bottom that reads "Merchant Rate Criteria." There is an application link on that page.

Added Tip for Sellers who use DropShipping

Use your PayPal debit card to make your purchases from the dropshipper. The 1.5% cashback you'll get every time will reduce your effective transaction fees for each sale. Read More...