WIDSHOPS EBAY DESIGN

Some might say we are ‘late to market’ with now providing a solution for the SME market but we decided not to rush. We wanted to be ahead of the game and provide something that is intuitive and very ‘now’ in relation to how the world of e-commerce is progressing. We wanted to look forward with our design innovations like with our premium service eBay designs. We want you to be future proof!

Widshops is an affordable ebay design solution (set up and design around £1500) but it provides all the look and feel of a professional stream lined shopping experience. It carries a subscription cost based on number of listings (http://widshop.com/en/prices/)

The key features are:

• Fast – Your new template delivered quickly
• Easy – only the best features show up in your shop
• Economical – Sales increase, costs decrease
• Optimised – HTML template also works on iPhone and iPad
• Compatible – works with all eBay listing and sales management tools
• Professional – Project managers at your side

The best bits are:

Category and filter navigation just like on the eBay platform

We filled an important technical gap with the eBay category and filter navigation. eBay® customers are already familiar with the intuitive filter navigation. This is now available with WIDshop in your eBay® storefront as well.

WIDshop navigation sorts your items out in real time and automatically recognises in which eBay® categories, and with which items specifics they have been listed. Through this, the WIDshop generates a navigation that displays all of your eBay® categories and item specifics filters. This way, your customers can search by category and filter the results according to items specifics. Your customers will easily and comfortably be able to find the right size, colour or material! You are thereby significantly enhancing your customers’ shopping experience!

Sell more with clever cross-selling

Every eBay® customer who clicks onto one of your products is very interested in buying. You keep your customer in your shop by using clever cross-selling. For this purpose, WIDshop makes a product gallery available to you which automatically presents similar products from the same eBay® category. This way your customer sees, for example, additional t-shirts, CDs from the same music genre, more hard drives or different trainers. The WIDshop cross-selling gallery can also work with customised rules based on item specifics or keywords, if desired. We would be happy to advise you.

Reach more customers with Facebook etc.

By linking the WIDshop to Facebook and Twitter, your customers can inform their friends that they like your storefront. You benefit from this additional marketing channel, which increases the popularity of your storefront and thus, the number of your clients.

The list of search results for a positive shopping experience

The most important thing about search results is their speed. Not only have we made the WIDshop search very fast. We have also made it look appealing and incorporated a few added features for your customers, such as wish lists or the display of the item condition. The search results are compiled and loaded anew in the navigation and filters after each click. This way, your customers always have an overview and can find their way easily and quickly through storefronts, even with a larger selection of items.

Integration of custom pages

All custom pages such as the legal notice, etc., that you’ve created as personal pages in your eBay® storefront can be easily accessed through the navigation and are displayed in your storefront design. This way, the entire storefront features your corporate design.
You can also easily manage and update your custom pages in your eBay® account. Therefore, the WIDshop works like a small editing system.

Examples:

http://stores.ebay.de/Sport-Fischmann

http://stores.ebay.de/outdoorsportshop24

http://stores.ebay.at/123boerse
So feel free to quiz me or comment on our new service and watch our for the discount code worth £250 in the 2012 Tamebay Tools and Services Guide

It was a unique experience as you are immersed  in a room filled with people JUST LIKE YOU.

On my table were business women, photographers working in e-commerce, web designers, social media experts, mobile web designers and even people who had just started at technology companies.

Girl geek meetings are not just for us to let our inner feminist out (men do come too along with their girl geeks) but to understand and provide support, stories and mentoring to each other in a typically male dominated industry.

Denise Jacobs was our first speaker and told a story about her rise to becoming a public speaker, writing a technical book and basically becoming a web diva of extraordinary proportions.

She reminded us to stop beating ourselves up for being female and thinking we can’t progress in this world. She indicated that actually, most of the barriers we feel are self generated and no one will stop us…however male dominated we think the technology industry is.

Us girls of a geek nature also need to shout about what we do. If we are too understated (I suffer from this affliction) and don’t say ‘ Hey, I can do that’ we will never get where we want to be.

We know more than we think we do

Want to feel inspired? Pop over to youtube: http://youtu.be/FTTj7DWABes

Second up was Karen Strunks from the 4am project – She detailed about using social media to promote her photography at 4am from a insomniacs walk about to a global photography project showing our world at this unique time.

This is Karen’s video (shot by me as I was sitting there): http://youtu.be/v1B18U_KgiY and see our world at 4am on flickr!

Our final speaker was Rachel McCollin taking about mobile web and how she got into the industry from working with the environmental agency.

Her video is here:  http://youtu.be/ZzWFCSV365o

So all in all it has inspired me to become more active again, on this blog (and meeting with my fellow girl geeks will give me more content to write again) and also is public speaking. Hey I may even offer to speak at a girl geek event.

IN OTHER NEWS >>>>> (shameless self promotion segment)

A new eBay design offering is hitting the web-o-sphere. A smart phone optimised solution for the SME market with dynamic navigation to die for. Full details will be in the new Tamebay Tools and services guide coming out on the 31st of Jan.

Want a sneak peek of new clients taking advantage of this?

Check out: http://stores.ebay.de/outdoorsportshop24 (still updating hislisting templates), http://stores.ebay.de/HHV-MUSIC (still updating his listing templates) and http://stores.ebay.at/123boerse (who has actually updated his item templates!!)

With a set up fee of 1500 Euros (plus monthly subscription based on volume) this is an ideal solution for eBay sellers.

More info to come of course but if you want to get in touch about this product please contact us via info@widshop.com.

I have had a very busy e-commerce 2011. The economy has taken a bashing but online things are still hotting up! The world is our oyster online with the expansion of social commerce and like many sellers looking out to Europe and beyond is the key to success.

This year as been the year for international expansion for my sellers and myself. Most of my eBay clients are moving into France, Germany and the USA as a minimum. Most are going much further.

To stay ahead of the game as always, I am looking into the Asian markets. Strong currency in these countries suddenly makes buying stuff from Europe side cheap and boy is it TRENDY!

While I was in Japan (business and volunteering) I saw that the union jack was EVERYWHERE on clothing, accessories in shops and on the people walking past. It was very surreal.

Language is no longer a barrier. Improvements in translation engines have made things easier.

For a year or two I have bought from Rakuten and Yahoo Auctions Japan (though a shopping service) and each time it gets a bit easier. For instance Japanese sellers are more interested in international trade, probably due to economic conditions in their own countries and better support networks.

So as my clients are expanding in to Europe, Australia and America in the next few years, I will get ready for the expansion east by building relationships, language skills, cultural/business skills and finding sensible solutions.

Oh yeah, and prepare for Widshops…oh yes….eBay design mark deux….

and a picture from my volunteering in Ishinomaki!

Fixing a shrine gate in Onasaki

Onasaki – Rebuilding houses, reflooring, clearing out garbage and putting a shrine gate back up.

Place was completely flooded – government is not restoring electricity and water.

On the way in we passed the shrine at Okawa Elementary School, the team had worked on the clearance of the area so stopped to pay resepect and see the progress – it was completely destroyed, killing 75 of 108 students and 10 of 13 teachers and staff. The teachers and students were evacuating from the school and were swept away by the tsunami while crossing a nearby river bridge.

You could see the part of the bridge ripped out by the tsunami still in the river.

Over the snowed in December, I was informed by almost all of my service related companies energy, insurance etc that the VAT was rising AND their prices were going up. The largest increase was my pet insurance at 25%. I just hope the car insurance doesn’t follow suit!

So as my family costs per month rise a further £211 (I kid not, family of two adults, two cats, one car) what will this do to my spending in 2011? I, like most who probably read this blog make money from or as an on-line retailer. The VAT rise will slow everyone’s spending in the New Year on face value, at least until they forget it happened. But the increase will squeeze the ever dwindling household budgets and affect spending. In this environment I imagine we shall see an actual increase in on-line spending. Why?

1. Online ‘sales’ are ALL YEAR ROUND baby..
2. Choice
3. Easy to price compare
4. No parking fees
5. Fast and competitive shipping

Now, I hear you say ..well you have to pay shipping on top! True, true, there is a shipping cost. But if I go to Birmingham by car, the cheapest car park is around £6 and the most I have paid is £11. I have to carry the heavy stuff home if I want to be cheap and take the train at £4.

Facebook is getting in on the e-commerce action, fan pages are coming with buy buttons and featuring eBay listings. You have been able to have your Etsy store showcased on Facebook for a while. This is now not a nice addition to your business model it is essential. I communicate kimono buys and bargains to my kimono friends via facebook, at least once a week. One friend mentioned that she has brought two of the items I posted to my profile.

On the flip side, I have been stalking the sales on Rakuten with my friends and we have all been recommending things to each other. This is the future of shopping.

I hope I will have more time this year to blog on the changing face of e-commerce. I have separated out my kimono blogging to a new site so you won’t be troubled by that obsession.

My sideline e-commerce business Hairfreax has started the year with a waiting list, booked up till mid April already! Its going to be a defining year for e-commerce. I am excited!

A bit random on the blogging side of things, but I am striding forward into a new genre/customer base in April for the Hairfreax brand. I will document the successes and pitfalls or hitting a new audience!

So when I had to recently provide an invoice for customs I wondered what I would have to pay (in additional to the £15 Parcelforce clearance fee….or £8 if it comes via Royal Mail) for my parcel. Well for my import (Kimono) anything over £18 is subject to VAT (17.5%) and also a 5% customs charge.

Buying from eBay? See this little GEM : eBay Customs and VAT calculator and its parent if you bundle things from outside the EU to save shipping costs : http://www.dutycalculator.com/

So if you customer has a query on import costs, send them to duty calculator.

The issues I see at first glance is with shipping. eBay doesn’t let you be so bespoke with shipping methods as a checkout like Channeladvisor, eBay recently opened up to account for non mainland locations in the UK but I doubt they will get much more specific before next June. And how about promotional codes?

Third party checkout will be able to integrate no problem, but the sellers who have built their business on the extra flexibility of third party checkouts will have to edit their practises and how they price their shipping costs.

Fortunately, eBay has given everyone notice of this change – but as always you don’t really know the effect a change has on your business until you try it out

Some linkage:

Scott Wingo’s response to the death of the third party checkout!

and try the basket yourself http://pages.ebay.co.uk/shoppingbasket/

Ebay is doing some funky (and possible flunky knowing eBay) things in the next 12 months, changing the customer experience, fiddling with the feedback and unpaid item process, writing bad automated emails that you can’t change….

The double edged sword in this mix is the eBay shopping cart. On one side its a big ‘YAY’ finally eBay has done this but a big…hmmmm as third party checkouts will be banned from June next year.

We knew that things would get difficult but as an eBay buyer this is a good move, the eBay checkout process is familiar and quick. On the other hand as a seller, third party checkouts let you use other card payment systems other than paypal. From next June it will just be known that you use Paypal for eBay and that’s it.

eBay wants the money to keep within its walls, it has more control over it that way, it can refund a buyer and take the money away from the seller at its own discretion. eBay wants a dictatorship and not a democracy.

Will this totalitarian eBay control be a good thing or bad thing? We can only wait and see, its only the kind of control Amazon has over its sellers and that’s doing okay for itself.

However this move might take eBay away from its community routes which made it great, and this is a shame.

Is this freedom of community a little to hard to control now the hyperweb has become so big? Fraud, privacy and security always feature in the news to terrify people and I wwould like to hear eBay speak at insite about its direction and why it has taken those decisions.

Two great forces on the interweb for me are Amazon and Ratuken which operate a shopping cart. Rakuten are going from strength to strength.

Rakuten are a big lust for me with a fantastic kimono section and for a English site just machine translated is surprisingly not that complicated to buy from. I do think we shall see more of this marketplace in the western hemisphere with their acquisition of things over this way

Rakuten, make sure you let your shop owners have a unique design…I could do with making money from you to buy more kimono stuffs….and err…lets sort that shipping out its like a black hole when you buy if you don’t know how much things cost to be shipped from Japan

*edited to remove the over use of the word ‘however’

Tacklediscounts is one of our more recent UK eBay shop launch, so lets have a look at the unique features of this design!

Search is a heavily used feature on eBay so we like to make sure you can get the best out of it. We added some filters for more accurate search for tackle discounts eBay store.

Attribute sorters to help your buyers find what they want quickly and efficiently as well as providing optical guidance for those just browsing. Choosing fishing equipment can be quite complex with many variables and customer are looking for very specific items and ranges.

This is the attribute sorter on the front of Tacklediscounts eBay shop!

Information for buyers is paramount, they want to know certain things like:

• How much is shipping?
• When will I get my item?
• How do I pay?

So we like to make sure we you give this information in various ways, and in popular optical locations on the screen, for example in the sidebar and header.

The header space of the design is great e-real estate, so if you have a great promotion or offer like free shipping like Tackle discounts, well it HAS to be at the top!

Trust is an important factor in any online business, especially eBay. eBay rewards its sellers using the powerseller programme which is being replaced/updated to Top Rated Seller status. Remind your customers of these achievements to increase buyer confidence.

Dynamically cross selling on eBay is essential to increase your buyers cart contents. As your buyers are most likely to find your listings primarily via eBay search, making sure they see the rest of your items is essential.

Below you can see Tacklediscounts up sells hand picked items under ‘you may also like’ as well as from the category and brand. This is located directly under the item description within the template design.

Tacklediscounts has many other great features to boost sales and feature specific items, its best if you see the live store on eBay and check out their listings!

http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/TACKLEDISCOUNTS-ultimate-value

Our feature boxes can be a static graphic or more snazzy with attribute drop downs or ‘pop ups’.

Lets take a look at BRANDS OUTLET:

A quick find feature box to guide buyers based on what gender they are shopping for.

Roll over popup functionality can also be added to feature boxes, UKSPORTSWAREHOUSE has a huge product matrix on the front of the eBay store with this nifty feature.

This kind of technology can be added on any feature box from static feature boxes to more dynamic up-selling sections.

Feature boxes can also be added to eBay templates to generate a ‘call to action’ so that your buyers are persuaded to browse and keep shopping with you!

TACKLEDISCOUNTS has some of these feature boxes at the base of their eBay template to keeps their buyers clicking around their shop.

This feature about carp fishing has links to the most popular categories. Dynamic searches or links to specific items can be built in here.

Along side this is a more general feature box for the all important (and eBay favourite)….clearance offers and deals!

Making sure you utilise your retail space on your store and template wisely is the right way to make the most of your eBay traffic.

Keep your customers browsing with your memorable branding on show and making sure they know exactly the range of products you offer in store.

Knowing your category personalities and purchase habits of your buyers is essential for knowing where to place these boxes.

So, at CYT we make sure we understand your business, your traffic and your customers to make sure we make the most of your design.

Each of our eBay design projects is just that, a PROJECT – carefully thought out graphical and structural design with marketing and conversion in mind. All designs are unique and we constantly develop new features to meet our client needs.

Come to Createyourtemplate for your eBay design, we make you beautiful – and we don’t mind if you pile on the pounds at Christmas, as well…that’s the idea!

We are an odd looking bunch so I doubt we would get on beautifulpeople.com even if we went on a bikini diet!

Disclaimer: Since I have worked for CYT I have lost 5lbs on purpose.

Well, on the right hand side of the eBay template, in prime visual real estate is the ‘top ten’ – depending on what platform the game is for that your customer is viewing, the top ten changes to match the platform!

Lets see this in action, with Job island for the Wii, with their SK Computing design:

and then Heavenly Sword, for the PS3:

and then Prince of Persia for the the PC, with their SK Games design:

Disclaimer: this is how I feed myself and wrap up in gorgeous silk kimonos..