Growing Your Online Business

eBay Feedback Recalculations Scheduled for August 19th

eBay announced yesterday that they would be recalculating Feedback percentages on August 19^th—just in time for the August PowerSeller eligibility deadline.

 

This news is based on Lorrie Norrington’s previous announcement that Neutrals would no longer be considered as part of the Positive Feedback percentage, which includes Neutrals left in the past as well as any Neutrals sellers might receive in the future.

 

This is great news for most sellers, especially for those who lost their PowerSeller status from the previous Neutral=Negative change.  Assuming that thier DSRs (Detail Seller Ratings) are at acceptable levels, they will once again receive their PowerSeller discounts.

 

Original Announcement: http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200808.shtml#2008-08-13085512

eBay is Listening, "Flex" Design is Staying!

eBay sellers should be happy to know that they no longer have to worry about changing all of their listing templates! During eBay Live!, it was announced that the description area would be limited to 710 pixels, which caused a lot of concern from sellers. However, eBay has since decided to stay with the existing "flex" design, allowing the description area to be more than 710 pixels.

With Laurel's announcement also came two recommended best practices:

 1. Smaller resolutions should be considered in template designs since approximately 10-15% of eBay users are still running at 800x600 screen resolution.

 2. Specific pixel width and height should be used instead of just setting them to 100%. This will avoid unexpected white spaces and scrollbars in descriptions.

We're excited that eBay is listening and willing to admit when something just isn't going to work. We're also very excited about the new View Item page design, which we believe should help create a better buying experience and increase conversions for sellers.  If you haven't seen the new View Item page, check it out at http://pages.ebay.com/newitempage.

Original Announcement
http://developer.ebay.com/community/blog/article/?category=Blog.Developer&name=http%3a%2f%2febaydeveloper.typepad.com%2fdev%2f2008%2f08%2fwe-heard-your-f.html

eBay's Feedback Fallout

When eBay first announced sweeping changes to their feedback system, the community's response was lukewarm to say the least.  But true to their word, after revisiting the issue eBay has decided to rollback some of these changes, specifically the calculating of Neutral Feedback in the feedback percentage.  eBay sellers should expect to see increases in their Feedback "effective in late August."

But forgive me for burying the lead...towards the bottom of the announcement, Lorrie Norrington hinted that more significant changes to feedback may come and that "buyers should have a mechanism to change feedback if they make a mistake or if the seller rectifies an issue."  Obviously this will have enormous implications for sellers, especially those who strive to differentiate themselves through customer service.  Could it be true?  Will eBay step out of the way and allow the buyer to alter the feedback they left for the seller?  We'll keep a close eye on this as we move closer to a potential October release date...

How Social Bookmarking Can Help SEO

Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, view, and share their favorite websites with others. The best known site is http://del.icio.us/ (owned by Yahoo!). Delicious can also be considered a “link blog”—someone just posting websites they think are cool or interesting.

Del.icio.us can be a great resource to help you determine what keywords people associate with your site. You can look up the del.icio.us history for your website to see how many people have tagged it on their del.icio.us page.

• Go to http://del.icio.us/url.
• Type in the URL of your website.

You’ll not only see the number of people who saved your website to their del.icio.us page, but also what keywords they used to tag, or categorize, your site.

These results, located in the “common tags” box in the upper right-hand corner, could help determine some good keywords for search engine optimization because it reveals what sort of words people associate with your website or business. The larger and darker the word, the more times that word is used as a tag to identify how they categorize your website.

My thanks to Michael Pranikoff (http://del.icio.us/michaelpranikoff) for this information from his PR seminar “PR in a Web 2.0 World.”

Jenny

11 Customer Service "Must Haves"

In conjunction with The E-Tailing Group’s 10th Annual Mystery Shopping Study of 100 eCommerce sites, the group defined 11 "must have" customer service features.  Of the 100 sites they considered only 11 sites provided all of the features. How do you measure up?

+ Provide real-time inventory status on product pages or in the shopping cart

+ Display shipping status and order confirmation in the shopping cart

+ Send an email confirmation of the order

+ Display your toll-free number on your homepage

+ Provide prominent keyword search functionality

+ Respond to emailed questions within 25 hours

+ Deliver packages within 4 days of order being placed

+ Require 6 or fewer steps at checkout

+ Display recommended products on product or cart pages

+ Display customer service hours

+ Show holiday shopping deadlines

These can split into a few subsets: site features, order fulfillment and customer interaction.  Several of these things should be enabled by your website provider - if they aren't you should be looking to switch!  But as a shopper, it is the interaction that will really make or break the experience.

Looking for more ideas on how to engage your customers?  Check out Infopia's customer lifetime value webinar: http://www.infopia.com/website/resources-webinars-recorded.shtml.

$50 Rebate for IMA Conference

The Internet Merchant’s Association (IMA) is offering Infopia customers a $50 rebate if they sign up for its annual conference. This year’s conference will be March 3 – 5 in Las Vegas. Go to https://www.eventville.com/Catalog/EventRegistration1.asp?Eventid=1003110, and enter the rebate code InfoVegas08 where it says “referring association name.” IMA will issue you a $50 rebate in the form of a refund. IMA is one of a handful of trade associations for the eCommerce community (others include PeSA, ECMTA, as well as many local groups around the country). As an online retailer, you might consider joining one. You will find yourself in a community of other people in a similar situation, in which you can bounce business ideas off each other, discuss the latest trends, and empathize over common pain points. Please note that many of these groups require dues, which are around a couple hundred dollars a year.

Jenny

Conversions start way back here!

There are lots of ways to increase conversions on your website. Using the right images, testing different buttons on calls to action, decreasing the number of pages in your shopping cart process. There are tools to help you do this, multivariate and split testing tools.

But one thing you can do before you even get to that point is proper keyword research. Conversions on your ecommerce site start way back here.

I have seen many people bid on (or worse yet, SEO for) a keyword because it has a lot of searches. Obviously we want traffic to our storefronts, because more traffic = more sales. Well, yes and no, more of the right kind of traffic = more sales.

A good way to do this is to take your internal site search and run some reports. There is a lot of information about how people view and search for your product. For example, you may sell "saunas". However, your internal search reports may show that most of your visitors search for "hot tubs".

Semantics right? However, if that makes the difference in how people view your product and influences them to buy, then it's obvious what word you should use in your marketing.

The research is worth it, in the long run it will pay off. Instead of trying to fit square pegs into round holes, you can spend your conversion efforts fitting round pegs into round holes.

Happy ecommercing! (Can I say that?)
Jason

Risk Management in Multiple Sales Channels

When I share oranges with my wife, I take two oranges and cut them in half. I give her half of one orange and half of the another. This is because I want her to have at least half of a good orange. It's also so I don't end up with a full bad orange.

Fundamentally, I've managed my citrus risk through typical strategies; including transferring the risk to another party, reducing the negative effect of the risk, or accepting some part of the risk.

There are many risks that could affect your online business: eBay recently introduced Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR), which may reduce the visibility of high-volume sellers; search engines could change their algorithm to reduce the number of customers who find you; or your prime competitor may continually outbid you on an effective Comparison Shopping Engine (CSE).

A high-volume eBay business could experience some volatility when eBay adds features or changes policies. Detailed Seller Ratings, changes in search results, Trust and Safety programs, and shipping edicts may all affect your business. By increasing or improving your sales channels, you limit the risk to your business overall.

The first and most important step is creating an online retail presence and driving traffic to that site. After that there are multiple marketplaces, including Amazon and uBid, comparison shopping engines, and search engine marketing tactics. All of these are ways of diversifying your sales channels and managing your online business risks.

JLow

How Web 2.0 Are You?

Do you know how many people are linking to your site, bookmarking your site, or subscribing to your blog? A few websites out there can help you find what sort of social media activity is buzzing around your business, website, or brand name.

Below are a handful of websites that can help you determine just how Web 2.0 you really are.

• www.google.com/trends can tell you how many times your business has been searched. You can also use it to track how popular keyword terms are and compare terms against each other.
• www.popuri.us is a tool to quickly glance at the popularity of your site across the Internet, or in other orders, how many people are linking to your site.
• http://del.icio.us/url is a search engine to find out how many people have bookmarked your site on del.icio.us.
• www.twitterment.com is a search engine for Twitter, the popular microblogging site. Use it to find out how many times your brand name has been mentioned (and what was said) in Twitter messages.

Jenny

Google Checkout Extends "No Fees" Promotion

Google Checkout allows buyers to register a credit card with Google and then purchase safely from registered sellers without having to re-enter private information. This model typically charges the seller a transaction fee and a percentage of the sale. To help push user adoption, Google Checkout has been free for both buyers and sellers in 2007. This was supposed to change at the end of the year, but Google has announced that the deadline has been extended to February 1^st 2008.

Sellers using both Google Checkout and Google AdWords have another incentive; for every $1 spent on AdWords, sellers can process $10 in purchases at no additional cost. After that, each transaction will be charged the standard price of $.20 and 2% of the total sale.

JLow