This is my journey as an E-commerce Consultant
Archive for September, 2009
Is eBay in your future?
970 days
I do alot of ebay consultancy, but eBay once considered the ultimate way to make money online is fast dwindling in the eyes of my clients. Its still great for start ups, but focusing on eBay solely is a sure way to sink under the pressure of feedback, DSR’s and the ‘easy returns’ process.
However, setting up an e-commerce website and driving traffic is easier and cheaper than EVER before.
Lets consider the free open source websites:
- oscommerce
- zencart
- cubecart
- spreecommerce (ruby on rails offering)
- prestastore
The list is a lot bigger now since I started, and even to get someone to do it for you is cheaper than ever. I only charge around £500 to set up an e-commerce website, and that includes design, SEO marketing and various integrations. Then as the client owns everything (PSD’s the lot, I never hold onto design rights) they just have to pay their hosting every month and update their SSL certificate each year. Simples.
Services like shopify are still going strong, so you don’t have to mess with any code and pay a percentage.
So what to do in 2010 when most of my clients will loose their eBay fee discount? Websites here we come…
Its Daily Deal Day today Kids!
So here we go, my first eBay daily deal:
Lets see how we go, in 30 minutes 30 have been sold.
Yay!
Update: Our daily deal neighbour is using Frooition pro and the description does not show up in Internet Explorer on his big day! WHAT A SHAME! eBay’s iframe at 9am wonked a little but our templates are working fine. 9:40am and 138 sold!
Update 2: Our daily deal neighbour has had to add the whole Frooition Pro template in the ‘additional’ html which brings up a duplicate template to make it work in I.E (Duplicate seen in Firefox and the pictures don’t work)
Daily Deal rule 1: Make sure your templates are reliable!
242 sold at 11:10am, slowed a little, Friday is never a good day. We might have a SUNDAY DD coming up….ka-ching….
Update 3: Roughly 800 sold, but orders are still trickling in so it might be a week until we really know the effect of the daily deal. However it doesn’t seem to increase normal sales just the sale of the daily deal item. Plus DD crashed on us half way through and an item had to be re-listed 
Dear eBay, your new view item page is a failure….
as now customers ask MORE questions about shipping prices to other countries as they never seem to see or use your snazzy new shipping tab at the top of the description.
And no, even though this is explained in sellers F.A.Q’s before they ask a question, it is often ignored. I wonder how many people ACTUALLY read them. It was not an issue with it was displayed at the bottom of the listing.
Sometimes your new iframe doesn’t load up either so they don’t get to see a description.
Don’t you think about useablity?
Kind Regards,
A frustrated eBay consultant.
*that what I would write if I thought they would listen. Anyone else see an increase in this type of question?
