Kidson Talks | The E-commerce Chemist

Sue from Tamebay had her eBay shop designed free, and has recently reported an increase in sales of approximately 33%. Not to attribute this to one design company, as I believe GOOD eBay design in general improves the customer experience. Sue noted that her traffic had not increased, but the items per customer had.

Sue Says

‘Prior to installing my shop front, the average buyer in my shop bought around three items. Now, they buy five.’

So it seems a thumbs up for eBay design! I have a few eBay designers for the UK listed on this page ‘eBay Design Services Available in the UK‘ (It does need updating as I have noticed a few more eBay Design companies, offering their services in the UK)

Choosing eBay design is a tricky one. The cheapest is not necessarily the best deal. You have to remember the hosting and structure of the eBay design is going to change the face of your eBay shop and listings which are your selling point.

In choosing an eBay design I would consider:

- The usability of the design, does it promote easy navigation?

- Does it work across international eBay platforms (eBay can change the rules for different countries, so make sure the countries you want to list to, you can see examples of the design working)

- Where is it hosted. This is a tricky one. As with e-commerce stores you can either pay the designers to host it for a maintenance fee which means you are subject to their downtimes, or host it yourself. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. If it is self hosted, you might need to acquire a bit of knowledge on web hosting. However, you won’t be held to ransom by your eBay design company, and have full access to the design you paid for. If you self host, the trouble of hosting is taken away. So check their uptime guarantee and what kind of compensation you are entitled to if you ‘go down’ and loose sales as a result.

- What d0 their previous customers say? Can you get in contact with a real user (as anyone can make up testimonials!)

- Do they integrate with eBay automation systems like Marketworks and Channeladvisor (AKA marketchannelworksadvisor, I don’t know the new name is so long I can’t remember it)

- Does it look consistently nice? If they leave a credit link on the eBay shop then you should be able to Google them to see what te bulk of the designs look like. Watch out for block like image splicing, and check if the design still looks the same in Firefox as well as Internet Explorer.

- Click around the example eBay shops and listings. Never take a design at face value. Check the category links, the about me page etc. You would be amazed how many eBay shops I see where the category links don’t work and you are stuck.

- Never invest in eBay design above your means or before you have tried eBay as a business. I also visit eBay design websites a lot and it pains me to see the ‘This shop no longer exists’ message from eBay when I try to view this amazing looking eBay Shop, that has increased buyer traffic 100 fold. (OK I exaggerate on the 100 fold, but some claims do tickle me)

- Never believe a design company is the number one, unless they have been verified by an independent watchdog, and the BBC said so. Debbie from As Was commented on the tendency for a ‘Mystery Guarantee‘ from the ‘The #1 Ranked eBay Store Design Service‘

- If they claim that no one else in the world can offer the same service, then see the post above. I bet Coca Cola thinks its sells the best brown, carbonated gut rot in the world, but hey I am going through a Pepsi phase. It is fine if they want to claim it or even believe it, but you don’t have to buy it.

- Beware of companies that copy the designs and code of an existing company. If you like it, go with the originals. It is just less risky, and you won’t be in fear of legalities.

- Be careful you are not being offered a ‘custom, tailored solution’ that really is just a template system. If you want that then Seller Source Book or something similar is what you need. You will be able to tell if they are using a template system by taking a look at all of their examples. Changing the colours and the header image is NOT a custom design. (not in my books anyway)

- Can you speak to a person? Do they have customer support? If not, do not spend more that you can afford to loose.

- Do they offer training on their template? Is it easy to use? You don’t want to be editing lines of code, as you will break your design!

I think that’s it for tonight. I have do a least an hour on my Web Applications Development project tonight as I have HTML validation ‘warnings’ on my site and they are driving me mad. Mad I say!