Actinic will be holding a webinar and live product demonstration on the 7th February starting at 11am which will show:

• The benefits of selling on eBay, Amazon and promoting your products on Facebook
• How to list your items on marketplaces and on the largest social media platform right from your Actinic Online admin console
• How to retrieve and process your orders

If you already use Actinic, or if you’re looking for an ecommerce website solution then register in advance to attend the webinar.

Last year’s Spring Seller Update was released in mid-March, so there’s probably a good few weeks before we find out what eBay have in store for us this year, but what would you like to see?

If you were eBay and planning changes to selling (or buying!) what are the first things you’d change and why? Would it be feedback, fees, categories and seller standards which are the main areas last year’s changes affected, or are there other things you’d like to see eBay change?

I’ve blogged previously on the problem of Illegal Business Seller Terms on eBay on a couple of occasions. In April this year while browsing as a buyer and 3 out of 5 of the outlet sellers I looked at that day had illegal seller terms and put me right off buying from them … yes the eBayAnorak bought from Amazon, not the first time.

So, how much responsibility should eBay take for its Top Rated Business Sellers who continually flout the law and the EC Distance Selling Regulations as regard returns and refunds?

As a ‘selling venue’ is eBay responsible for the Top Rated Sellers’ it promotes from front page, outlet & deal of the day etc? Should eBay check that they are compliant with the law along with the other criteria for entry?

As I type this, a very large national retailer all over the eBay front page is charging a 10% restocking fee for returned items over £25. Ultimately the retailer is responsible for their T&C’s. eBay promote the ‘good buyer experience’ how can they promote a good buying experience at the same time as promoting companies with illegal seller terms that actually give a bad buying experience.

I firmly believe that in most cases this is an education issue eBay has made it easy for the Mumpreneur, the front room/garage based business and the teenage start up to progress in the world of online retailing at low cost and so are unaware they are breaking the law. Learning about Distant Selling Regulations, EC Rulings and UK business law is usually not on the priority list.

eBay, please, what does it take to send out an email or short multiple choice button survey to all new business registered sellers to let them know that these phrases/terms are not permitted?

But, Outlet sellers’ shame on you, you should know better, some of you have been bought to book before.

Terms like:

• We are not responsible for items lost in the post (Yes you are!)
• We charge X% restocking fee (No you can’t!
• Buyer has option of shipping insurance in case of damage in transit (Seller responsible until it reaches the hands of the buyer)
• Refund less PayPal & eBay fees (fraud as they get fees back from refunds
• Refund less original P&P (Refund including original P&P)
• No returns, or no returns unless faulty (this applied to items relating to returns due to hygiene reasons; buyers have the right to change their minds)

The list goes on …

Business Sellers, give your buyers a reason to purchase from you not 10 reasons to be scared to, know the rights of your buyers and your legal obligations as a seller.

eBay, take some responsibility for those sellers you promote.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer but advise you read this OFT (Office of Fair Trading) document on the Distance Selling Regulations

eBay search now defaults to Best Match, which blends auctions in Time Ending Soonest with Fixed Price items sorted according to relevance. The criteria that is most important for relevance is recent sales – the more an item sells the higher it will appear in eBay search.

You can change your eBay shop settings to sort your products by Best Match and this will ensure that your best selling lines are featured highest in your eBay shop. This works for both the home page view, for eBay shop categories and for eBay shop searches.

In the run up to Christmas (yes I know it’s early, but Christmas isn’t that far away) it’s worth changing your default shop setting to sort by Best Match as this will ensure visitors to your eBay shop will be presented with your fastest selling most popular items first.

As an added bonus it’s a quick and simple way to see which of your products are performing best, and which could do with some extra promotion with Best Offers or MarkDownManager or possibly just lowering the price or offering a shipping promotion. If an item is at the bottom of your eBay shop when sorted by Best Match you know that item isn’t selling well compared to other products you stock on eBay.

The introduction of catalogues in May 2011 makes searching for specific items easier for buyers and helps sellers to save time when creating and adapting product listings. The main advantages are

• To provide buyers with a positive shopping experience: The eBay catalogue provides buyers with a user friendly way to find specific electronic products both quickly and easily
• Help to maintain and drive sales: Sellers need to ensure they always list an item against a matching product where one exists, to avoid listings being removed. Start preparing today by listing and relisting relevant products to avoid losing out on potential sales
• Save time: Sellers can now save time spent on listing items by taking advantage of the pre-filled product information and stock photos when matching to the eBay catalogue
• Increased visibility: The best deals from Top rated sellers will prominently appear at the top of the product page, with best offers from other sellers showing below

The new categories where sellers should list against the eBay catalogue are: Apple Laptops; Apple Desktops; iPads, Tablets & eReaders; Printers; Routers; Hard Drives; Monitors and Televisions.

This does create some dilemmas though. Firstly what do you do when your item doesn’t match the catalogue information and secondly what do you do if the catalogue information for your item is incomplete or worse the catalogue data is incorrect?

Listing if your item is not in the catalogue

If your item simply isn’t in the catalogue you can select the “Continue listing without a product” link and list the item as you normally would.

Listing if your item is not an exact match with the catalogue

If the catalogue information isn’t an exact match for your item the situation is unclear. I sell printers and often there are several different models available, e.g. an HP 4000 printer, an HP 4000N (with a network card), an HP 4000TN (with a network card and extra paper tray), and an HP 4000DTN (with a network card an extra paper tray and a duplex unit). Suppose I have a 4000DTN but it’s missing it’s duplex unit and the extra tray (which isn’t an unusual situation) – should I list it as a 4000N even though the product code on the printer is DTN, or should I list as a 4000DTN and hope the buyer reads the description to find that some parts are missing? This is a call that each seller will have to make on a case by case basis.

Listing when the catalogue data is incorrect

The worst situation are the many instances where the catalogue information is simply wrong. For example the eBay Catalogue Information for the HP LaserJet Mono 4000TN printer has the description for an HP LaserJet Colour 4500 Printer! One would have to excuse a buyer who thought that they were purchasing a colour printer if you listed against this catalogue data.

If the catalogue data is incorrect you have two choices – list without catalogue data and there is a chance your listing could be ended, or list with the incorrect data and call out the errors in your listing description. It is also worth highlighting the errors to eBay support so that they can be corrected.

Should sellers be able to edit catalogue data?

Is it time for eBay to open up the catalogue data to allow users to correct misleading or incorrect information? Would you like the ability to edit catalogue information or to add new entries to the catalogue data? What would happen if you listed against catalogue data which another seller subsequently edited?

How will you handle instances where your product isn’t an exact match or where the catalogue data is incorrect?

Click to embiggen

In search results you’ll see a blue arrow when you mouse over a listing and clicking anywhere in the item information (apart from title or picture) will open up a sidebar showing gallery images, pricing, seller details and in some instances a Buy It Now button.

I have to say with a few reservations I like this new Preview Pane. When I’m buying consumables like printer toner or jiffy bags I don’t necessarily need to see the View Item page. I don’t need to read reams of information that the seller may feel important such as about their company or their detailed terms and conditions of trading – I just want to buy the product and get on with my day.

Click to embiggen

Buyers may choose not to purchase from the search results page and so this may never roll out site wide in it’s current format. However it will still be useful as eBay can display information buyers often visit the View Item page for such as Item Location and Seller Feedback. These details can be displayed in the Preview Pane enabling buyers to rule out a particular search result or decide that the product is indeed worth further consideration.

The new feature will also alter the basic search results page layout. The information will no longer be presented in columns, but details such as Price, Bids, Postage and the Top Rated Seller icon will appear in a triangle beneath the item title.

There are some interesting considerations for sellers for example eBay gallery pictures will be displayed in the Preview Pane. In Clothes Shoes & Accessories up to 12 gallery images are free, but there’s a charge for gallery images in other categories. Many sellers have a sidebar embedded on the left hand side of their product descriptions or large headers, sellers will need to evaluate their usefulness compared to having item information prominently displayed in the Search Results Preview Pane.

The tests will run for several weeks while eBay evaluate the results. Whilst you can’t opt in or out of the test if your account is included in the tests you’ll be able to give feedback comments from a link in the Preview Pane.

Don’t wait to give eBay feedback though, tell us what you think in comments below – Will you purchase direct from the search results page and do you want your buyers to have the ability to do the same?

How were your eBay/Amazon/Website sales over the Easter weekend? There’s probably a correlation between your sales and they type of products you sell and I’m guessing that sellers of home and garden products fared better than sellers of tech products (although I could be wrong).

I know I was out in the garden, having BBQs and out with friends, enjoying the sun over the whole weekend, but what were your buyers doing? Were your sales up, down or about the same as normal for a Friday – Monday period?

DVDs maintained its top spot from last year as the favourite gift to purchase on “Super Sunday”, with women’s shoes in second spot and CDs in third. Unsurprisingly given the prominence of the Fashion Hub on eBay, clothing, shoes and accessories made up eight out of the top 10 most popular items bought yesterday.

International sales were up 11% as buyers from overseas headed to eBay UK. With the exchange rate in their favour sellers willing to ship overseas are cashing in and if you don’t currently ship outside the UK it’s time to strongly consider doing so. With UK still in economic turmoil making the most of the weak pound and overseas markets is one of the easiest ways to increase sales.

It’s good to see eBay going from strength to strength and with the freezing temperatures and the stress of busy high street crowds eBay is still the place to shop especially in the run up to Christmas.

Based on the feedback from 600 top sellers 63% are intending to absorb some or all of the VAT increase, with almost a quarter of sellers indicating that they’ll absorb the full increase. The bigger issue is that the same number 63% are concerned that the VAT rise will harm the economy by decreasing demand with half of all sellers believing it will directly impact their own business.

28% of sellers are concerned that the VAT increase will not only affect consumer demand but will also directly impact the profitability of their own business although 55% believed it will make no difference to profit margins.

It’s important to realise that for many sellers the VAT impact to their business will not be the full 2.5% headline increase as many VAT registered sellers can reclaim VAT on purchases. However for non-VAT registered sellers or those that can’t reclaim VAT it will make purchasing stock more expensive.

How will you handle the VAT increase? Do you think it will affect sales and will you increase prices or absorb the increase? Are you expecting your overall profit margins to rise or fall and do you think it will impact your sales?

All you have to do is tap in your item along with it’s make, model and condition to receive an instant cash offer for your unwanted item. Rather than leaving it sitting in a draw gathering dust. If you accept the offer you can print out a shipping label and as soon as your item is received you’ll get the money in your PayPal account.

Beware though, this really is for the ultra lazy – I decided to check out an old iPhone 2G 4Gb in good condition with a charger and the offer price was $50.00. A similar iPhone listed on eBay with a start price of $50.00 currently has bids of $112.50 with seven hours left to go before the auction finishes.

Of course eBay Instant Sale gets rid of the worries about unpaid items and you don’t have the bother of creating a listing, but if you want the real money that your item is worth sell it on eBay, use Instant Sale as a guide to what a business would pay for your item. A business expects to make a profit so use the offer as a start price guide for selling it on eBay.

eBay Instant Sale isn’t for everyone, in fact it’s for the lazy buyer who would prefer a simple environmentally friendly way to recycle their unwanted consumer electronics and receive a token payment along the way. However if it frees up some cash in PayPal accounts which buyers can then re-spend on eBay I’m in favour of encouraging people to dig out their old unwanted items and turn them into instant cash.

My first impression of the tool is that it’s quite good at highlighting performance differences for your own listings. It highlights listings that are performing well against listings that aren’t attracting as many impressions and sales. What the tool doesn’t do is highlight the reasons why some listings that aren’t performing so well. It’s still down to you to determine which keywords top performing listing titles contain that aren’t in you listing titles and what keywords you do have which aren’t attracting clicks and sales.

There is a link to some tips on how to interpret the data and steps you can do take increase your listing’s performance, but these are basic housekeeping rules that all sellers should be following when they list their items.

Where the tool is less useful is comparing your listings against similar items on eBay. It’s only possible to drill down to the top level eBay categories (for me that’s “Computing”) and so when looking at my listings for items such as “Printers” I’m comparing my listings for printers against competitors listings for printer cables, printer toner & ink, printer paper, OHP acetates and every other printer accessory on eBay. That means the click and sell through rates aren’t really relevant to my listings, the tool would be much more useful if I could drill down the category structure to ensure I am comparing like for like.

One of the most useful features of the tool is a quick and easy way to see the position of your listings in search results. If you’re rank is under 50 then you know you’re on the first page of search results and you should be getting plenty of impressions. If you’re not getting clicks then your title or gallery picture isn’t attracting buyers. If you’ve got a high position in search results and are attracting clicks but not converting the clicks to sales then it’s probably your listing description or T’s & C’s that need attention.

As the Listing Analytics tool has only been intermittently available today I’m sure there are plenty of other features and information to assist sellers. If you’ve subscribed let us know what your first impressions are and what the Listing Analytics tool has revealed to help you increase your sales on eBay.

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

eBay haven’t put out an announcement on the UK site regarding this, but an announcement on eBay India might have a clue. They say that “The new bulk edit and relist flow will be wired off from site today and will be wired back on 27th Sept with a lot of new features i.e. all other options including payment, shipping and others will be editable using the new bulk flow.”

Until it’s fixed other methods such as TurboLister still work perfectly, although not quite as quick and easy for relisting in bulk.

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.

We get this a lot. The question goes something like: “I’ve had enough of buyers holding me to ransom over DSRs. eBay charge me too much money for the amount of grief. I’d like to quit selling, but I need the money. Where else can I sell?”

The problem people have with wanting to leave eBay is that they want something to replace eBay. There is NOTHING like eBay. You will not find another site that supplies a stream of buyers like eBay does. There is nowhere so easy to sell as eBay.

If you can sell on Amazon, then do. That probably only applies to media sellers… if you can deal with the price competition. The race to the bottom can be fierce on Amazon: as John Jantsch says, “there’ll always be someone willing to go out of business quicker than you.”

Other marketplace sites don’t even hold a candle to eBay. Some sellers will tell you they’ve made a success of Ebid. What they mostly mean is that they’ve sold a couple of things (if anyone really has made a business success of Ebid, I want to talk to you. I’ve been asking that question for two years and still no one’s volunteered). If you make-to-sell, Etsy is worth a look, but as far as I can see again, doesn’t offer anything like the volume of buyers that eBay does: if you’re trying to earn a living from this, it probably won’t cover it.

There’s a reason those two sites have four letter names beginning with E-. eBay is it. You might be lucky and your niche might offer a specialist site (Just Beads is one example) – but again, they won’t offer the traffic that eBay does. If you’re going to make a success of those sites, you’ll need to be prepared to put in a lot of work pulling in buyers for yourself.

Sellers who don’t like eBay any more have a pretty stark choice at the moment:

1) suck it up and deal with the DSRs, the policy changes, and so on. Restructure your pricing if fees are hurting you. But you’ll be able to keep selling.

2) quit eBay and be prepared for a long hard slog. Get your own website and be prepared to market it hard. If you’re like most of us, there are about three zillion competitors of yours hanging out in Google buying PPC and going after the same traffic. You’ll need to be clever. You’ll also need another source of income while you get it going.

Sensibly, you’ll do a combination of these two. Your income should never rely solely on one site. Get your own website and start working on it. Market it to your eBay customers: a little flyer inside every parcel with a coupon for free shipping, for example, will help massively.

But don’t expect to be able to turn off eBay and turn on something equally effective, because it doesn’t exist.

Shamelessly repurposed from Auctionbytes’ comments.

photo credit: papalars

Edited March 31 2011 to add: because I’ve just linked this old thread from another forum, anyone reading might be interested to hear what the Ebidders were saying when they thought they were in private. I stand by EVERYTHING I said in this article.

If sellers opt in to Unpaid Item Assistant, they will be able to override it for individual transactions, so if a buyer has stated that they’re still shopping or will be sending a cheque next week, the reminder can be turned off. If you often have people paying by cheque, or buying multiple items over a number of days, a better idea might be to set a reasonably generous time before the Unpaid Item Assistant kicks in, otherwise overriding it will become as onerous as dealing with unpaid items is at the moment.

Over the next few weeks, eBay.com will make the Unpaid Item Assistant available to more sellers and eBay expect that it will be available to all sellers by the end of the month. If you’re a .com seller and want to see if it’s available for your account yet, go to My eBay or Selling Manager > Account tab > Site Preferences > Selling Preferences, and look for the opt-in.

Running out of real stories in the days before Christmas, the press has been full of advice on how to sell your Christmas presents on eBay. What journalists fail to tell you though, is that your granny is going to be seriously upset if she spots that Rudolf-design sweater up for sale the day after she gave it to you. Make sure you get away with it, with our handy guide to guilt-free gift selling.

Have a secret ID

Never, never, NEVER let your family, friends or work colleagues find out your eBay ID. You don’t want your boss to know about your penchant for Dilbert. You don’t want your trendy friends to know about your Bridget Jones pants. And there might be a million things you don’t want your mother to know about!

If by some act of carelessness on your part, your eBay ID has become known, then register a new one; you can have as many as you like, all they need is different email addresses. Believe us, this will save you grief in the long-run.

Don’t let your own home be visible in the photos

You will not be able to deny it’s Auntie Doris’s plaid pantaloons you’re selling if your living room can be seen in the background of your photograph. Photograph larger items against a plain, neutral-coloured wall. For smaller items, a light tent makes your photographs so much better, or use a plain sheet.

Have a tidy out

Bored with mince pies, sherry and TV holiday specials already? Us too. Have a tidy out. That Des O’Connor CD won’t show up nearly so badly if it’s part of a job lot of discs you no longer listen to.

Leave it til Easter

Let’s face it, by Easter, everyone’s forgotten about Christmas. Give it a few months, and no one’s going to spot your ingratitude, you undeserving traitor

But if you really think eBay’s a no-no…

Give it back to them next year

“I loved mine so much, I got you one just like it! Merry Christmas!”

One of the reasons for this is that it would result in less TRS than keeping the status quo. I can sympathise with eBay here as if they changed the rules again and took away TRS status from those who currently hold it there would be uproar. However it can only mean that those who would suffer if the rules changed have more recent low DSR scores than those that would benefit.

Leaving the status quo continues to penalise sellers who have low DSRs from before August when TRS was announced. There are only two viable options if you’ve got low ratings last summer and still have six or seven months before they drop off the radar:

1) Up your selling volume to become a volume seller – if you sell more than 400 items in a three month period you’ll be measured on the most recent three months sales only.

2) Open a new eBay account and scrap your old one – If you have a buying account more than two months old you can qualify as a PowerSeller and TRS within a month. Simply sell more than £2250, at least twelve items and get 100 feedback and you’re there. If you don’t have an existing eBay account opened at least two months ago then it’ll take you three months to qualify as a TRS.

Compared to waiting until the middle of next year to be a TRS on your existing account, option 2 above is the most attractive course of action. Don’t forget that if you start selling on an existing buying account today you could qualify for discounts as a TRS in January. If you stick with your existing selling ID then your discounts will be slashed by 15% or more in the new year compared to those that qualify as a TRS.

Why eBay would be happy for you to abandon your existing account transfer your listings to a new selling account and qualify for TRS but won’t let you qualify on your current selling ID is beyond me. If you want to be TRS open a new selling account today, it’s easier than reviving your existing selling ID and if you don’t eBay will financially penalise you with the drastically lower discounts.

Finally if you don’t have a spare eBay ID that you’ve been using as a buying account go and open a couple of new eBay accounts today. Sell a few items on them and then continue to use them as buying accounts – you never know when the next eBay rule change will trash your selling account and you’ll need an emergency selling account already set up and ready to go.

In the mean time, across the pond in America, eBay have been tracking Black Friday sales and mapped where each buyer is located. Black Friday follows Thanksgiving Day in the United States and marks the start of their Christmas shopping season. It’s one of the busiest online shopping days of the year in the US with eBay attracting just over a million sales.

What struck me was that UK sales predictions are also for about a million sales on each of the peak shopping days – The US population is 5 times size of the UK so why are they not getting 5 times as many sales as the UK?

eBay UK are streets ahead of the US in maximising sales per head of population and 86% of the UK are due to do some or all of their Christmas shopping online this year. According to a YouGov survey commissioned by VeriSign most people will spend about a third of their total holiday spend on the Internet.

What’s less encouraging is regardless of the best price often being online, Verisign found 1 in 4 still hold back their Internet spend with worries about online ID theft and fraud. Unsurprisingly following the recent postal strikes, 27% are also concerned that goods bought online will not arrive in time for Christmas.

What’s certain is that, despite the effects of the recession and some buyers concerns about security, the Christmas selling season should remain strong in the UK, with more people buying online than ever before.

…what’s important is that French eBay users who own a bottle of perfume don’t have the right to sell it. French users are blocked from buying perfume from any eBay site world wide, not just from eBay France. French consumers are being discriminated against and have lost the freedom to purchase perfumes from other EU countries. For the French the EU Single Market no longer exists.

You might think “So what! – Why shouldn’t brands be able to limit where their products are bought and sold?“, however it’s not just online businesses that this affects. On eBay UK over the last year consumers listed 10 times as many bottles of perfume as businesses. This affects products that you personally own in your own home. Restricting resale of products means when you buy something someone else still retains rights to it – items that you own and paid for are not yours to dispose of when you no longer need them.

So back to Monday’s hearing – Whilst eBay have respected the injunction and done their utmost to comply, it’s the thin end of the wedge for users. If the selective distribution ban of legitimate product isn’t overturned in May 2010, it will give legitimacy and precedent for other brand owners to do likewise. It will lead to higher prices for consumers and ultimately result in businesses owning stock which one day they discover they can no longer sell.

This case also undermines the aims of an open EU Single Market with freedom to trade across borders. EU legislation needs updating to ensure that all EU citizens can purchase products freely within the Single Market. If selective distribution exists and anti-competitive practices are allowed to flourish then EU cross border trade will be stifled and that will put the Internet back 10 years.

Here are some of our top tips to survive the strike, and please feel free to add your own in the comments. (I’m going to relax my usual vigilance about spammy advertising for this one too – if you’re a courier offering a real alternative to RM small packet and large letter services, we want to hear from you!)

Don’t post on the day before a strike
In the last postal strike, we saw huge backlogs of mail pile up. It’s already happening again, and we have no reason to think it won’t get worse. It seems that when these backlogs are processed, the top of the pile is dealt with first, so that’s where you want your post to be. However tempting it is to “get it in the post before a strike day” so that you can tell your buyers it’s at least on its way – don’t. Post a day or two after the strike and it seems your post will have a much better chance of getting through reasonably quickly.

Actively promote alternative services
In every Royal Mail strike story, there’s a line about “managers are out delivering the Special Deliveries themselves”. Your buyer knows how urgent their item is to them, and they know there’s a strike on (because you’ve told them). Even for a cheap item, don’t assume they’re not willing to pay for Special Delivery. A buyer who’s had a choice should be a little more understanding if they go for a cheaper option and delivery is slower – and offering SD is, in any case, good practice as we get closer to Christmas.

Look at other carriers
We’ve heard of some couriers (DHL for one) offering prices as low as £4 a parcel if you have the volume: it’s cheaper than SD. Parcel2Go (disclaimer: they’re a TameBay advertiser) have a bulk-uploader to import delivery information from eBay, from £6.89 + VAT per parcel. Don’t assume that couriers are not an option for you: the lovely Maria from Seduction Lingerie has spent this afternoon looking at alternatives to RM, and told me “if this new company work out, it will be bye bye Royal Mail!”

Get marketing with it
Even if you’re selling small, cheap items, you can encourage your buyers to bundle up orders to make courier shipping worthwhile. Offer a target price for free P&P even via courier – more people than you’d expect will meet it. Encourage Christmas shoppers to buy early, and as the strike dates won’t be announced for ten days (so say the CWU), a little email marketing encouraging your buyers to purchase this week rather than next, seems in order.

If you don’t normally offer pick up, now could be a time to be a bit more flexible on that.

Communication, communication…
There are still people saying they didn’t know that there’s a postal strike on. You can bet that even tomorrow when it’s been all over the news all day, there will *still* be people who don’t know there’s a strike on. And because their phone bill and some junk mail arrived last week, they won’t believe that the strike affects them anyway. Be proactive. Tell your buyers – before purchase – what your plans are. Your business has a blog, right? (If not, why not?) so talk about what you’re doing to keep things moving. Most people, most of the time, are reasonable – if they have enough information. I think this is one of those times when you can’t over-communicate, so tell ‘em what’s going on.

If you have tips of your own you’d like to share with fellow etailers, please leave us a comment!

Price, description and postage costs can now be revised, as can just about any other aspect of a fixed price multiple item listing, with the exceptions of title, format, duration and category. (Why not title and category, I ask myself, but we’ll let that go: being able to change the description and the shipping costs is a crucial and superb development.) Buyers who’ve already bought from the listing will be able to view the previous version.

I’d really like to echo the Dev Blog’s call for developers to take advantage of this. Tools that would – for example – easily find and update all listings missing a returns policy, or all listings that don’t offer special delivery as a shipping option, or which have your old email address in the PayPal field, would make sellers’ lives a thousand times easier. There’s an opportunity for someone here to make a truly great listing tool – at last.

Several eBay staff, whilst not mentioning numbers, have intimated that eBay growth in the UK has remained buoyant, fueled especially by exchange rates leading to 30% growth in exports. eBay in the US hasn’t been so fortunate with stagnant sales so the latest increases may be a positive signal that changes implemented over the last year are starting to bear fruit.

Its been a long 18-24 months for ebayers as the site has gone through a painful transition. The increase in y/y sales indicates there is a light at the end of the tunnel (and most likely it isn’t a train).
 
That being said, eBay has definitely become feast or famine. Those sellers that have switched to fixed-price, worked the DSR system, etc. are on the feast side. However sellers that have not been able to adapt for whatever reason are on the famine side of the equation.
– Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor

At the end of the day sellers will always go where the sales are and in recent times for many that’s meant Amazon. If eBay’s sales engines start firing on all cylinders again it won’t be long before sellers (or at least those that can get to grips with changes and Top Rated Seller status) start to forget their gripes and get on with the business of selling.

Disclosure – ChannelAdvisor advertise with TameBay

photo credit: Jon_Marshall

Back at the end of March, eBay UK made their announcement about what would be changing for eBay sellers this summer. The new rules and features launch on June 15th, so here’s our checklist: make sure your listings are ready!

Urgent changes

• Mandatory dispatch time: all listings must show a dispatch time.
• Free postage and packing in some categories: if you list in Video Games, Mobile & Home Phones, Consumer Electronics, Computing, Photography or Clothes, Shoes & Accessories, then check the list to see if your sub-category is affected (not all sub-categories are). If so, you must offer free P&P as one option for your domestic postage, though you may choose to charge for an upgraded service. If you’re a non-UK seller listing on eBay UK, this includes you.
• Category changes, which will mostly affect sellers in Clothing, Home & Garden and the Motors’ categories (not an exhaustive list, so check your own cat.s aren’t listed).

  Some sub-categories are being done away with and all listings will be moved into the parent category: live listings should move automatically, but make sure you update your listing templates or new listings in vanished categories could (in my experience) end up invisible to buyers. And check your Item Specifics too: previous category changes have seen them wiped out.

New features

It’s not going to be possible to plan for these in advance, because they don’t go live til the 15th/16th, but at least be ready for the cool new stuff when it happens.

• Multi-variation listings: time for a little stock-take, maybe, so you can get all those colour/size variants listed as soon as possible.
• Free pictures in Clothing Shoes and Accessories & Home and Garden. Most business sellers will be using their own hosting, but the advantage with eBay’s is that you get the slideshow at the top. Worth considering.
• Custom item specifics
• Easy returns
• Smart FAQs: have a run through your ASQs – do the same questions come up again and again? If so, that information should probably be on your listings… but Smart FAQs may also be useful to you.

eBay have put out a timetable of when the various changes are supposed to go live on the site: we share their optimism that everything launches smoothly

Online sales were also up 12.5%, Sharon Hardiman of the British Retail Consortium said “Online and catalogue sales were boosted by extra customer interest in many of the same things doing well in stores – DIY, outdoor furniture and toys, sandals and summer clothes. That took non-store sales growth back up to virtually the same rate seen in February but it was well below the rates seen in December and January, showing this route to customers is not immune from the effects of recession.”

Until figures for May are available we won’t know if it’s a sign of consumer spending returning or if it is just a seasonal blip. How are your eBay and other online venue sales performing? Have you seen additional sales in the last few weeks or has the sunny weather driven people outside and away from their computers?