Comments on: Guest Buying: buy it, love it, that’s it.

By: Guest Buying available to the UK : TameBay

Guest Buying available to the UK : TameBay — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:26:08 +0000

[...] Guest buying (buying without registering on eBay) is now available to on eBay UK. I loved this when it was introduced on .com, and I love it even more now. [...]

By: Josordoni

Josordoni — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:57:49 +0000

By: northumbrian

northumbrian — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:30:14 +0000

must be me then

big words confuse me

By: Josordoni

Josordoni — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:51:13 +0000

Seemed pretty straightforward to me ….. ??

By: northumbrian

northumbrian — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:49:06 +0000

Crikey Max
if third party developers are as complicated as your post
give me ebays check out every time

By: Max Leisten

Max Leisten — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:11:07 +0000

I am a big fan of the new guest buying — anything that drives more consumers to eBay and makes the experience easier will yield more sales for sellers and third-party developers. In fact, most of the accelerating changes we have seen (incl. Finding 2.0) are in MY opinion great steps forward and I hope (am pretty sure) that eBay will continue to overhaul the site with the buyer in mind. And, yes, that includes an easy checkout (a la eBay Express and PayPal Express Checkout).

I am the last to argue that a third-party checkout is the best buyer experience but the option to offer it to buyers (and its benefits) is a choice that large eBay sellers are making to take advantage of it. That choice is largely driven by functionality not available via the eBay checkout (for CA in particular that is our shipping logic), upsells (owned and managed by the seller) and a few others.

eBay is rolling out its multi-merchant cart on the core site as we speak and may decide in the future to make this mandatory for all transactions. My gripe is simply that changes such as Guest Buying must be made with sellers in mind, in particular sellers that have built significant automated businesses around this — interrupting these processes (especially during the all-important Q4) is a challenge that creates friction, and friction negatively impacts the buying (and selling experience).

By: Sue Bailey

Sue Bailey — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:14:07 +0000

“Most”, Max? I’d like to see Channel Advisor produce figures to support this.

Guest Buying should be about the easiest, quickest eBay experience possible, and third party checkouts as currently implemented rarely offer this. Frankly, I think the challenge is for CA and your competitors to produce a system that works for your sellers, but doesn’t force buyers through another checkout system.

By: Max Leisten

Max Leisten — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:00:51 +0000

The challenge with this feature is that it can not be supported by sellers using a third-party checkout, which of course includes most larger Powersellers on eBay.

Following the eBay Gift Card challenge (not supported in PayPal Express Checkout) there are a good number of mines that both sellers and buyers can run into this holiday season.

By: John

John — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:35:28 +0000

eBay’s put up a Q&A with screenshots here

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000592798&tstart=0&mod=1194388081115

By: Josordoni

Josordoni — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:07:06 +0000

I was getting all excited as I went through the list… oh, yes, got that, yes, that’s ok, oh… $2000….. check back to beginning…. oh drat. .com…..

By: Steve H

Steve H — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:56:35 +0000

Sounds like an excellent idea to me and on the plus side, Sue, they seem to be rolling out new ideas to international sites a lot quicker than they used to.

By: Sue Bailey

Sue Bailey — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:29:17 +0000

It is only .com for the moment, Lynne. I think I need a little logo or something for “stuff we don’t have on .co.uk but we ought to have”

By: Josordoni

Josordoni — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:20:35 +0000

I’m assuming this is .com only for the moment? I wonder if we will ever get it…