eBay has announced they are improving the search capability of the site to include eBay stores results... sorta...
We know it is sometimes difficult for eBay management to comprehend, but eBay stores are the main reason most smart marketers are paying eBay fees. Sure the fees in the stores are not as much of a sure thing for eBay as the listing fees for auction style listing is... But if eBay were to promote the stores sellers more consistently within eBay's main listings, (Google promotes eBay stores sellers just fine outside of eBay)... It is quite possible a higher percentage of stores listing will sell, resulting in final value fees for eBay.
Now what could be wrong with that?
Comments are gladly accepted...
January 17th, 2008 at 12:50 am
I fear the only problems with that is that eBay wouldn’t be able to pull it off without it coming at the expense of their auction sales if they could in fact do it without damaging auction sales, it would be great.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:17 am
If you take a look at the fee schedule, or use ebcalc.com to do a comparison of fees… You may discover eBay has adjusted the final value fees on store items upwards to match the overall fees from a sold auction item. i.e. If an item is listed as a store item, or as a auction listing and it sells, eBay makes the same amount of revenue.
There will always be a market for auctions and die hard auction buyers/sellers… But for the health of eBay and the continued loyalty of high volume sellers, eBay should consider allowing store listing into the general search. A sold item = revenue for everyone…
Items unsold, are not good for anyone, even if they are “just listed in the store”… Exposure to the general search of 225 million users will go a long way towards increasing sales…
The resistance among eBay management and hard core auction sellers to allowing equal search access to the entire eBay stores inventory does nothing but decrease the overall value or I should say… the perceived value of the service by high volume merchants. We all know there are great advantages to having an eBay stores account, but the perception of those advantages are diminished by this search conundrum…
Include Stores items in the general search and let the market determine how items are listed by sellers. The market will determine how we sell if it is not manipulated by a poor search strategy…
eBay makes the same revenue either way if the item sells… They only lose out, if an auction item does not sell… The goal is to create sales - right?
(This should be a post in itself…) LOL
January 17th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
It seems that eBay gets jammed every time they try to be both a store and an auction venue.
They have been struggling with this problem since the inception of the store.
I’ve had an eBay store on and off through the 9 years I’ve been on eBay I always went back to auctions because the store performance was very inconsistant for me and I found that I could not keep up with the many changes made, and it just wasn’t worth it for what I market. That said, I market antiques, collectibles and used items mostly. These are one of a kind items that an auction traditionally works much better for.
Also, I believe it was two years ago, they purchased ProStores to compete as online shopping cart type of venue. I’ve ordered from a couple of places for my packing supplies that use ProStores, and I can tell you ordering from a site that uses eBay’s ProStores and has an eBay store can be a nightmare, the checkout for me on such an order is typically 5 or 6 steps because of the back and forth from site to site.
I’ve actually had to start shopping for those supplies on Amazon, because I didn’t want to go through so many steps to order supplies.
I really liked the vendor and the produc, so I exchanged communication and they’ve admitted that it’s been a big issue for them.
I guess if I was selling eBooks or doing drop shipping, I might look at things a bit differently, but I think it’s very risky to mess with their search engine.
I see unsold items in stores being the result of too much duplicate product saturation, not a result of poor search. It’s not hard to find an iPod on eBay, I just don’t see how tweaking the search is going to help sell those types of items.