eBay open up SM Apps to all sellers
10/03/2010 at 08:46
eBay have just announced that Selling Manager Applications on eBay.com have been opened up to all sellers, and are no longer restricted to sellers scribed to Selling Manager or Selling Manager Pro.
The apps cover everything from merchandising (listing design, video, marketplace research) to accounting shipping and customer support. Many are free cut down versions of the full offering from the developer with some being paid for subscriptions to the full program.
Currently there are 40 applications available to choose from, but opening the services up to all sellers should make it more attractive to developers to invest the time in creating applications or porting them to the eBay platform. Opening the Apps to all sellers should mean that in the near future they’ll expand them internationally and we can take advantage of them in the UK.
Store Your Stuff! says
9:17 am on 10/03/2010
Have you ever thought of doing an article outlining all the apps that are available under SMA maybe with a little review of each? I know I’d find it interesting. Might be several days of work though
Chris Dawson says
9:25 am on March 10th, 2010
We did a small review of the original 17 apps at launch. Trouble is I don’t have a .com account so I can’t trial any of them through eBay and they keep adding new ones….
Jimbo says
9:50 am on 10/03/2010
I see the apps have ratings but no actual review (on .com), which is a shame.
vzaar Jamie says
2:25 pm on 10/03/2010
Some insight from an approved App if that helps?
1. eBay allows users to rate apps and in time you’ll be able to sort by ratings. They need to get the volume of ratings up before they turn this on is my understanding.
2. A site that reviews apps can be seen here.
http://ebayappreview.com/
It strikes me that its already out of date so perhaps a one off labour of love but perhaps helpful if you need to make an informed decision
3. Many of the other 3rd party apps that I have spoken with have been under whelmed by the volume of sign ups when they turned the apps programme on to Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro users. I think there were a number of reasons for this
- the price sensitivity of these types of sellers. If you use SMP but not a 3rd party listing tool, paying a few dollars here and a few dollars there for an app is going to eat into your margin.
- eBay under marketed what was essentially a pretty cool feature. We only saw the odd online placement and then dedicated emails to the SM/SMP user base. I’m surprised that they didn’t try to take the story further afield. In part it may be that the larger success of the Apple App store is a more compelling story to journalists.
- Billing. The billing structure at launch was complex (for seller and for app manager) and complicated. For example, a seller using vzaar, had to unsubscribe in order to then be able to upgrade to a higher package. A poor user experience all round. To eBay’s credit they felt this and have addressed this. It is now possible to upgrade between packages instantly.
4. Opening up the App Tab to all sellers is a great step and yesterday at vzaar we saw a record number of new sign ups. The floodgates opened. I’m pretty sure this is off the back of an email or two, so I’ll be interested to know when this tails away. We welcome the chance for all sellers to be exposed to our video application.
5. If this means we are one step closer to the App Tab going global then again great news! As one of the few non US apps in the programme, and one that is not site specific, it would be great to see our product exposed to an international market.
If people want to know more I’m happuy to address, where I can, any further questions on here.
Cheers
Jamie
John Pemberton says
2:10 pm on 16/03/2010
The back office product looks just the job to replace SMP (a frustrating and flawed tool in parts). Professional business needs professional tools – when are these coming to .co.uk?
northumbrian says
4:33 pm on 16/03/2010
Many of the other 3rd party apps that I have spoken with have been under whelmed by the volume of sign ups when they turned the apps programme on to Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro users.
Might this be because these apps are just simply not appealing or of use to most