5 ways to get repeat customers

February 27, 2011

Acquiring customers costs money, whether that’s eBay fees or a vast marketing budget for your national TV ad campaign. It’s a lot cheaper for most of us to sell again to the customers we’ve already got…. after all, we’ve already got ‘em, they… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Selling Tips | 42 Comments 

Google search algorithm change dumps low quality content

February 25, 2011

Google has made a major change to their search engine algorithm in an attempt to surface quality content and reduce rankings for low-quality sites. Currently the change has only rolled in the US, but Google expect to roll out the changes to the rest… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Ecommerce, SEO | 23 Comments 

Planned downtime for PayPal in March

February 25, 2011

PayPal are in the middle of moving to a new data centre and some merchants will be unable to process transactions during the move. The outage will last approximately an hour beginning on the 18th March at 9am GMT (2am PDT). The migration won’t… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, Paypal | 1 Comment 

Mobile buying comes to eBay India

February 25, 2011

eBay India have launched their first Mobile Web Solution. Although it’s still in Beta, it demonstates that not only is mobile ultra important to eBay but that usage of mobile solutions for web browsing is spreading to all quarters of the… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, eBay.in, Mobile | Comments Off 

Free listings for private sellers 26th-27th Feb

February 25, 2011

eBay have yet another free listing weekend for Private registered sellers. Auction style listings will be free regardless of start price for the 26th and 27th February. Again Business Sellers and PowerSellers aren’t eligible for the promotion and… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under CLD, eBay | 5 Comments 

If eBay offered an ecommerce website package, would you use it?

February 25, 2011

There’s been some speculation – largely due to eBay’s involvement with Magento – that they may offer a more comprehensive ecommerce package than just your eBay Shop/Store. If eBay were to offer stand-alone ecommerce websites, would you use one?… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under eBay, Ecommerce, Web Design | 77 Comments 

Have you been added to a Facebook group without your knowledge?

February 24, 2011

This is a bit off-topic for TameBay, but here we go. Facebook has a very, very annoying new feature (or if it’s not new, I’ve never seen it before) which I’m almost loathe to blog about because I’d rather no one knew it. There’s a new kind of… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Social Media | 11 Comments 

Justin Bieber’s lock of hair on eBay

February 24, 2011

Teen heart throb Justin Bieber has recently cut off his baby hair and now sports a new choppy hair cut. He appeared on the “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” day time talk show and gave her a lock of his hair as a belated birthday present and it’s now up on… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 3 Comments 

Bulk edit and Selling Manager Pro updates

February 24, 2011

The old version of the Bulk Edit form is due to be retired on the 8th March. Many sellers will already be using the new version where many attributes can be edited in-line. If you want to try out the new version before it’s mandatory there’s a link… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, eBay.co.uk | 2 Comments 

uShip and Shiply settle IP Infringement claims

February 24, 2011

uShip, the company that connects connects people and businesses with couriers who specialise in moving hard-to-ship items, claimed trademark and copyright infringement by Shiply, another company which matches people with goods to move and transport… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 2 Comments 

Highlights from today’s Q&A with Patrick Munden

February 23, 2011

Today Patrick Munden, eBay UK’s head of seller communications took questions from members of the Online Business Forum. Unsurprisingly there were plenty of comments, questions and suggestions around Best Match, feedback, DSRs, achieving Top Rated… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, eBay.co.uk, Featured, Selling Tips | 33 Comments 

SIIA wins first EU settlement in anti-piracy case

February 23, 2011

SIIA, (The Software & Information Industry Association) have just won their first European anti-piracy case with a five figure settlement sum. A German seller was alleged to have breached German copyright and trademark law by purchasing several… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 6 Comments 

How to get your invoices paid faster

February 23, 2011

I was in a meeting today where Beth Deavila, HP UK Officejet Brand Manager was discussing printers. There was much talk of how businesses today need colour printing, what features could support small businesses and how modern high end inkjet… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 17 Comments 

Product bundles and checkout discounts coming to eBay

February 22, 2011

In a thread on the UK discussion boards, eBay have revealed two new features which will be available to sellers later this year. Flexible discounts for buyers Currently on eBay the only discounts you can give are on the postage costs. eBay are… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, eBay.co.uk | 7 Comments 

Shopping basket to replace eBay checkout

February 22, 2011

eBay have announced that the Shopping Basket which is currently in Beta is to be rolled out across the site. They say that recent tests suggest shopping basket will be popular with buyers, and that they expect it to result in larger orders and fewer… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, eBay.co.uk, Selling Tips | 24 Comments 

eBay.fr match classified categories to auctions

February 22, 2011

eBay France have had what appears to be an astoundingly simple idea – to make the categories for classified ads the same as the categories for auctions and fixed price listings. The current structure of the categories of Classifieds eBay is still… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, eBay.fr | 2 Comments 

Alibaba’s CEO resigns over fraudulent suppliers

February 21, 2011

David Wu, the CEO of Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba.com, has resigned after an investigation into fraudulent merchants operating on the site. The investigation found that in 2009 and 2010, 2,326 (around 1%) of Alibaba’s ID-verified China Gold… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Marketing, News | 19 Comments 

Malformed URLs in eBay My Messages

February 21, 2011

There’s an annoying glitch in eBay My Messages. Sometimes when you click the Yellow Button to respond to a message and on occasion when you click other links within the email it returns a “Server can not be found” message in your browser. The… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, eBay.co.uk | 3 Comments 

Do you surcharge for UK deliveries?

February 21, 2011

It used to be a constant complaint on eBay that sellers couldn’t either surcharge or block buyers from certain parts of the UK. Many sellers would specify surcharges in their listing descriptions but buyers either wouldn’t read that far or would… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 23 Comments 

Tesco Direct advertising on eBay search result pages

February 20, 2011

I spent much of the weekend trying to find the rumoured Tesco Direct ads for toys on eBay UK’s homepage. I didn’t find it – though I did get Tesco.com groceries. I found something much worse. The banner ad there to the left shows up on search… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under News | 32 Comments 

Etsy reaches first billion page view month

February 20, 2011

Handmade goods marketplace Etsy had its first billion page view month in January 2011, according to figures just announced by the company. An impressive 1,062,455,691 page views were recorded on the site in January. $33.5 million worth of goods… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Ecommerce, Marketplaces | 1 Comment 

How not to sell a lipstick

February 20, 2011

I’ve been hanging around eBay UK’s home page for once (trying to catch the ad for Tesco Direct that is annoying people on Seller Central), and spotted an ad for Max Factor Lip Finity – which appears to promise that it won’t vanish with my first cup… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under eBay.co.uk, Ecommerce, Facebook, Marketing | Comments Off 

Why eBay adding FedEx option isn’t enough

February 20, 2011

eBay.com have added FedEx shipping services to the list of supported couriers. Now you can choose FedEx Express and FedEx Ground from the pull down menu of shipping services when you list your item when you list your items on eBay.com. Whilst… Read more

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under eBay, eBay.com | 3 Comments 

eBay and PayPal Developer programs merged

February 20, 2011

eBay has announced that its own developer program is to merge with PayPal’s (or be “absorbed by PayPal’s”, as Auctionbytes has it). The current head of engineering at PayPal, Matthew Mengerink, is to head up the new business; he writes: we have… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under eBay, Ecommerce, Paypal | 1 Comment 

Open Thread : If you ruled the eBay world…

February 19, 2011

So it seems we’re generally unimpressed about eBay UK’s head of seller communications appearing on the Online Business Forum. In fact, as of time of writing this, there are more comments on the TameBay post than on the OBF thread, and most of them… Read more

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under eBay, Featured | 53 Comments