Tamebay » Checkout

How to pay with PayPal without a PayPal account

Chris Dawson — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:32:27 +0000

I don’t often open a new eBay account, I’ve got more than enough to last me a life time, both business seller accounts and personal eBay accounts, but this week I had need of just one more. It’s always interesting to see things from a new eBay user’s perspective and as a buyer it’s a pretty simple process.

One thing that I’ve not seen before although I’ve been vaguely aware of is that you can choose to pay with PayPal before opening a PayPal account. You can simply opt to pay for your eBay purchase by credit or debit card and it’ll be processed by PayPal and your purchase completed.

I like this, anything making it simple for new buyers to complete their purchase is good news and throwing up obstacles at checkout is one sure fire way to increase the likelihood of an abandoned shopping cart. Giving new buyers a quick and simple way to pay makes perfect sense.

What payment options do you offer on your own website? These days even if PayPal is all you use there’s no excuse for not opening up a business account with PayPal and accepting cards with PayPal website payments, and for small retailers it’s free bar the normal PayPal fees. Choice is key, give customers easy options to pay and your abandoned shopping carts should decrease.

“See price at checkout” merchandising test on eBay.com

Chris Dawson — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:31:23 +0000

eBay seem to be taking steps to help some sellers in a test on eBay.com to get around pricing requirements by sellers. Instead of showing buyers the actual price they can buy an item at they’re teasing them with a crossed out “Regular Price” with a message saying that the price they’ll pay will be revealed at checkout.

The reasoning for this according to the eBay help link is “Sellers have the right to set their own prices independently, but some manufacturers place restrictions on how those prices may be displayed or communicated to others. Because the seller’s price on this item is below the manufacturer’s “minimum advertised price” the manufacturer may not allow the seller to show you the seller’s lower price until you take further action, such as clicking on a drop down menu, placing the item in your cart, or proceeding to checkout. The steps required depend on the terms of the manufacturer’s minimum advertised price policy. Taking these steps allows eBay to show you the seller’s great price consistent with eBay’s goal of always bringing consumers like you the lowest possible prices on the widest selection of products”.

eBay go on to reassure buyers that “You should know that by taking these steps, you won’t be required to purchase the product. You can always simply remove the item from your cart or not proceed with checkout if you decide not to buy the item“, or in other words click to buy the item and then if you don’t like the price you can back out of the sale before you confirm your purchase.

The disadvantage for the seller is that it appears in eBay search at the full price, not the discounted price. Even worse it’s ranking in search results again appears to be based on the headline rate and not the actual cost to the buyer. This disadvantages the seller, although I guess it’s better than not being allowed to list the item at all.

If this was a feature open to you would you use it? As a buyer would you be happy being shown a price that the item was less than, but have to click through to the shopping basket or buy it now confirmation page to see the actual price you’re going to pay?

eBay Checkout problems prevent PayPal payments

Chris Dawson — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:25:14 +0000

If you’re trying to buy something on eBay at the moment you may be unable to pay for it. Apparently some users are unable to complete payments with PayPal and there are some errors and slowness when users are going through checkout with other payment methods.

eBay are aware of the problem and working on it, but if you’ve got a few more unpaid items than usual this evening that’s the reason why. If your items are immediate payment then you may miss out on a few sales but hopefully things will be fixed and back to normal soon.

Gift Aid added to donate at checkout on eBay

Chris Dawson — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:18:07 +0000

If you have ever ticked the box to donate to your favourite charity when buying on eBay then you can now boost your donation by 25%. You’ll need to confirm that you’re a UK tax payer but then MissionFish will claim Gift Aid on the eBay Checkout donations you have made, and pass it on to your chosen charities.

eBay say that last year 1.3 million people made donations and if all eBay users who’ve donated at eBay checkout make a Gift Aid declaration, UK charities would receive more than £1 million.

If you want to select your favourite charities so that they will be promoted for you to donate to when you checkout on eBay you can set them in your charity donation account in eBay.

PayPal glitch prevents eBay payments

Chris Dawson — Sat, 14 May 2011 16:43:26 +0000

There is currently an issue with PayPal payments on eBay which is preventing buyers from paying for their purchases.

eBay are aware of the problem and say that it’s affecting 25% of buyers with the message “Sorry, we could not complete your request at this time. Please try again in a few minutes. If this problem persists, report an issue to eBay support”. However some buyers are getting a message which consists simply of a full stop “.”

eBay say the issue is caused by eBay Next Generation Checkout, we’ll update you when the issue is fixed which I hope is soon – I have only had 30% of today’s sales paid and have had telephone calls with buyers one of who hasn’t had a single one of their sales paid for today.

Edited to add This glitch has now been fixed and payments should be completed as normal.

Shopping basket to replace eBay checkout

Chris Dawson — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:11:10 +0000

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 unpaid items.

The shopping basket will automatically replace the eBay checkout. It will also spell the end for the Buy It Now button on eBay which will be replaced with an Add To Basket button. This is a big advantage as it will remove unpaid items for fixed price eBay listings – buyers won’t be able to purchase them until they go to their shopping basket, check out and pay. Until that time the item will be available for other buyers to purchase.

As a seller you don’t need to do anything, but there are a few things that you should consider to maximise your sales, once the basket is mandatory for all buyers:

Offer discounts for combined postage
Postage discounts are a great incentive for buyers to purchase more from the same seller. With shopping basket, all your discounts are clearly marked and buyers can view other items you offer. It’s easy to set up.
Consider offering free postage
In the shopping basket buyers will see two totals – one for the product purchase price and the other total for carriage. There is a chance that some buyers might be put off with shipping charges when buying from multiple sellers and by offering free postage there’s less chance of them dumping your product before paying to reduce shipping costs.
Offer a variety of postal options, including international delivery
Having more than one method of delivery and detailing the cost of each can increase the likelihood of purchase.
Offer multi-quantity listings with a longer duration on fixed price inventory
A listing that expires is a lost sales opportunity. List items for longer and stock greater quantities, so they remain available in buyers’ shopping baskets.

SNAFU: eBay checkout glitch

Chris Dawson — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:50:09 +0000

Your buyers might be having problems buying from you this morning. There’s a problem with eBay checkout which is currently being worked on.

eBay say they are “currently experiencing checkout problems. Community members may see errors or timeouts when attempting to pay for an item. We are working on the problem and apologise for the inconvenience.”

Hopefully this will be fixed soon, but if you’re not seeing many sales this morning or payments aren’t coming through at least you’ll know why.

Edited to add: This issue should now be fixed

ChannelAdvisor revamp their eBay checkout

Chris Dawson — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 09:53:03 +0000

ChannelAdvisor have quietly revamped their 3rd party eBay checkout which is now a single page four tabbed process. There’s a pre-populated address check tab, followed by shipping method, payment option and final order confirmation tabs.

As you go through the process a sliding sidebar showing your order total is on the right hand side of the page with contact details for the seller should you run into any problems.

I spoke to Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor to ask the question why hasn’t the checkout been updated in the past? He told me this is something ChannelAdvisor have been looking at for over two years since eBay first indicated that 3rd party checkouts would be abolished. Due to uncertainty, making changes to the ChannelAdvisor checkout wouldn’t have make sense and this was proved correct when eBay delayed and changed their mind over the future of third party checkouts on eBay.

Since then eBay have announced the final retirement date for third party checkouts and with more fixed price items than ever on eBay there are more opportunities for combined shipping. ChannelAdvisor decided that for the 2010 holiday shopping season they wanted to give their customers the best checkout experience available on the Internet.

The developments won’t be wasted when eBay retire third party checkout, the technology behind the one page checkout will be used in a variety of products including the ChannelAdvisor webstore platform in the future.

The other question I had to ask Scot is why keep the third party checkout at all? The reason is that eBay still don’t provide functionality that many sellers need and has been added over the years. eBay have committed to building the checkout features that sellers use into the eBay platform before 3rd party checkouts disappear for good in June 2011.

Functionality still missing from eBay that can be provided by a 3rd party checkout include:

Tax/VAT calculations – This is essential in the US where sales tax varies by State and even for the UK where VAT is chargeable for EU sales but not for the rest of the world. Also VAT may or may not be chargeable on shipping depending on the product(s) purchased. Sellers need the flexibility to charge VAT/sales tax correctly.
Shipping capabilities – Sellers want to be able to offer different shipping methods based on multiple purchases to offer buyers the best service available.
Promotions – Offering discount coupons, free shipping, buy two get one free and combining orders just isn’t easily available on eBay but sellers still want to offer incentives to buyers to increase order size.
Shipping and tracking – eBay are pretty much exclusive with UPS/USPS in the US and Royal Mail in the UK. Sellers want flexibility to ship with Fedex, Interlink, Citylink and other carriers and to inform buyers at checkout which carrier will deliver their item as well as providing tracking numbers to customers.
Payment options – eBay allow a variety of payment options including the sellers own merchant credit card processing, but they don’t provide the ability on eBay to do this.

Whilst I’ve never been a fan of 3rd party checkouts, I’ve bought a couple of items from ChannelAdvisor customers recently and I have to admit that the checkout flow is a vast improvement. On past experiences where I’ve had up to seven pages to click through to complete a purchase but now it’s simple, straightforward and, unless you want to change any details, it’s pretty much a four click process.

Changing delivery address in ChannelAdvisors checkout is easier than it is on eBay (an improvement eBay could make immediately is to make the “Change” link much more prominent to encourage buyers to enter the delivery address that they want rather than email the seller to request a different delivery address).

The list of features that eBay need to build into checkout before June next year is extensive, but it needs to be completed to ensure that it’s a world class platform and to enable sellers to provide the best checkout experience on the Internet.

Disclosure: ChannelAdvisor advertise with TameBay

“Your item should arrive…”

Sue — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:14:50 +0000

eBay are now telling buyers when their items should be expected to arrive, based on delivery time estimates and the shipping service they’ve selected. Here’s what I just got on checkout:

A couple of people have mentioned this, but I hadn’t seen it before today; I’m not absolutely sure if it’s a staggered roll-out, or if I just haven’t been paying attention. Either way, it’s one to be aware of: eBay are telling buyers when to expect their parcels, and sellers need to be both aware of and managing those expectations.

Of course, for anyone who shops on Amazon, this will seem very, very familiar

eBay to scrap all 3rd party checkouts

Chris Dawson — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:29:15 +0000

eBay have announced that as of the 30th June 2011 they will be closing all 3rd party checkouts and the only checkout available on eBay will be eBay’s own checkout.

This will impact 3rd party solution provides such as ChannelAdvisor, eSellerPro and 4Sellers and the companies will have to rejig their software solutions to use eBay Checkout. The biggest impact will be on stock control as they’ll need to find an alternative way to deplete seller’s available inventory, especially when that inventory is being sold across multiple marketplaces. eBay say that “the change will not affect any of the inventory management and listing features that you currently use through that provider and we will continue to work closely with them to support these”, although doubtless some service providers will need to rejig their software if they’ve not already done so.

Other benefits of 3rd party checkouts include advanced shipping calculations and discounts for multiple purchases and the ability to offer multiple payment options such as the sellers own credit card merchant account. It’ll also remove options for sellers to allow buyers to add themselves to mailing lists which will impact the ability for merchants to market to previous customers off eBay.

Many buyers are likely to welcome the move as 3rd party checkouts aren’t universally popular despite their advantages to merchants.

The changes will only impact you directly if you use a service provider who offers a 3rd party checkout and they have all been briefed on the changes and will be able to work with you to migrate your solutions well before the deadline of June next year.