Website vrs ebay

[jdurkin]

Started using actinic it about 12-14 years ago and got away from the web about 5-6 years ago just come back to it now for a new project, just wondering though how hard it is nowadays getting the traffic to a website in the ebay world?

Thoughts chaps

[completerookie]

we use ebay to "advertise" but a lot of that just seems to depend upon the competition
There is a couple of our competitors that seem to trawl the ebay listings looking for any reference to our website, the momemnt they find one, they report us to ebay, the listing is removed and we lose our fees.
of course, they are allowed to link to their website without penalties

Its the ebay/paypal fees that we don't like, and we end up having to raise our prices a shade to offset the fees, especially as we lose fees in listings we have to remove.

I think a lot of it depends on getting your listings in google and the like, if you sell giggle-pins, and youv'e not got much in the way of competition, then its easy to get up your search rankings,
if you are in a competitive market, then you will struggle a bit more.

one method you might want to try is to have "special information" on your website, or "how to return your goods" type form on your website, this way, you seem to be able to link from ebay across to yours a bit easier (at least ebay let you get away with it a bit more)

Having said all that, we show links to the website, we raise th eprices a bit on ebay, people are at liberty to compare ebay with oour website, but we rarely get people complaining that ebay prices are higher, they just seem to buy thinking that ebay is always cheaper ?? not sure why, but . . .


kev

[Mike Hughes]

As with most things I think it all depends on your market, your target customers and what you're selling.

I would say that in general getting traffic and customers these days is a lot harder than it used to be. There's a lot more competition from other sellers, the big guys are getting their act together and the other channels like ebay and amazon are taking their cut as well.

On the plus side, more people are buying more stuff online so there's a lot more business to go round.

So yes, it is harder to get the traffic and there are a lot more things you need to do to be successful. The ecommerce world is maturing and I expect we'll see the good businesses be more successful and more of the poor ones to disappear.

Mike

[chickenhouseman]

We find that ebay (and Amazon) and website people are different. They rarely look at the other having their preferences as each has it's own niche. ebay and amazon both cost more which is reflected in the price charged in most cases although sometimes we have a product cheaper on eBay as that's what that market demands. This is only noticed by a very small percentage which leads us to the conclusion that there is very little cross over so for maximum sales use all methods. Amazon is much nicer from a sellers point of view as they don't use punitive measures to try and force you to sell so they make as much money as possible. The emphasis on "free shipping" is the most annoying as when it's included in the price eBay charge their fees on the whole lot rather than just the actual item cost. double the profit for ebay on smaller items.

[Horsepoo]

i do about 80% of my trade on ebay and i hate it! but find that all the other equestrian traders undercut you and the 'shoppers' will buy from the cheapest source, its a lot of hard work having to check that my items are 1p more expensive then everyone else andi lower mine to match theirs and then some 'newbie' comes on and undercuts everyone again. I used to have about 300 listings but have cut it right back just to spend less time answering questions and the other rubbish that goes with trading in ebay - also the customers generally want the moon on a stick and it annoys me!

i provide a gift voucher with every purchase in the hope that they might use it or at least come and have a look around.

i also encourage people to email me directly (turn on the ebay autoresponder) and tell them that you respond quicker - then if your product is cheaper you tell them to go to your website. i also have a 'handy' discount code i can give them over the phone if i know the item they are looking at is more expensive on my shop.

also when you responde via your iphone to messages - it adds your iphone signature (so stick a marketing strapline in there!)

im still new to online selling so ebay is easy for me and i make a good profit - its just massivly time consuming unless you sell a unique product.

ive thousands more - but dont want to bore you

[Sean Williams]

We tentatively tried selling one of our best-selling items on Ebay that's not available from anyone else, anywhere.
Price including postage was slightly higher on Ebay.
Surprisingly, our total sales of that item didn't change, so clearly some people were buying from Ebay instead of the website - possibly because we don't accept Paypal on our website.
But the pressure! Boy oh Boy that sale needs to go out the door that very day or else there's a 'dissatisfied' customer moaning about the delay, whereas we NEVER have comments about delivery being two or three days from our website sales.
Then we looked at the costs of selling on Ebay and realised it was slashing the profit on those sales.
Plus, we found it was far more time consuming selling on Ebay, which could be because we aren't particularly slick at using it, but having to keep an eye on feedback, answer all the idiot questions (we never get those via the website) etc makes selling there just too high on the time overhead.
All in all, we hated the experience and hope we don't have to do it again

[Darren B]

I tried ebay and it was not worth my while, to many people happy to make a quid on a item. Sorry my time alone is worth more than i could generate through sales pricing things that low.

Does anyone here use Ebid? im still trying to get Jan to write a ebid mash and im sure she has started it but i have not seen any more about it.

Ebid has a different set of rules when it comes to charges, it would be nice if they did a little advertising so the public became more aware of its existance, you can still use paypal, GC and their own payment system PPP

[chickenhouseman]

Ebid produced very little for us. We used a mash feed and had 200+ items on there. Sales were in single figures / year and then you had the problem of peopl only paying for the item not the postage. Generally very disappointing.

We use tradebox to process our ebay and amazon orders into sage which works well and just sits there in the background doing it's stuff.

I think there is another system that imports into actinic if you prefer to do it that way.

yes, eBay people ask stupid questions, expect you to bend over backwards and do it for nothing. The biggest issue we have is not with our service but with royal mail not delivering. I suspect this is a local problem (although it could occur locally throughout the country) as we've now change to RM tracked 2 day and next day and they have got in a right tizz about collecting our mail and getting into the system the same day. Obviously, our daily collection previously just sat in a corner until someone could be bothered to process it.

[Sean Williams]

Every single item we send out is always on a signed for basis with either courier (UPS) or Royal Mail.
Mostly, if it's RM we use the Special Delivery and I must say over the last 10 years I think we've had one package go missing and a handful delayed (apart from the weather of course).
We also have a daily RM collection and praise where it's due, they are very diligent in making sure the collection occurs and is on time, even to the extent that if the postie forgets to come by, someone is immediately sent the 20 mile round trip to make the collection, after we give them a ring.
All-in-all, we couldn't fault RM I think they provide a top class service in the face of a lot of adversity and criticism - it's always our service of choice for everything under 2Kg.
And no I'm not married to a Postwoman

[Fairyglass]

Does anyone here use Ebid? im still trying to get Jan to write a ebid mash and im sure she has started it but i have not seen any more about it.

Ebid has a different set of rules when it comes to charges, it would be nice if they did a little advertising so the public became more aware of its existance, you can still use paypal, GC and their own payment system PPP

I've had a pro seller account with eBid for a couple of years- for the low one-off cost I thought it would be worth it. Despite being lowest price (or the only seller) on many items we rarely see an order- less than 10 a year. While initially we did a lot of work on descriptions etc to make the listings look attractive, I've let it drop now and don't pay it any attention unless an order comes through. I find the back-end order management a pain- it's not intuitive at all- and you rarely get a customer leaving feedback for you. Not worth it IMHO.

Contrast this with eBay- we're a Trusted Seller, 2000+ positive feedback, and we see good levels of daily sales. At Christmas our eBay sales were greater than those on our website selling the same products by some large margin. This is partly due to the fact we're selling craft based products and eBay is the right market for those.
eBay does require more management- pricing is a constant issue as already mentioned- but we use Auctiva and Selling Manager Pro which does make things easier. While margins are lower on some products, they're more on others, and every customer receives a flier with our websites on so it's useful publicity to qualified customers.
Another useful benefit for us is that the volume of business going through Paypal is high enough to qualify us for better transaction rates with them, which we would not otherwise benefit from. As a Trusted Seller we also pay less in listing and final value fees, so the margin difference is not as great as it could be.
Hope this helps.
Ben

[Darren B]

I've had a pro seller account with eBid for a couple of years- for the low one-off cost I thought it would be worth it. Despite being lowest price (or the only seller) on many items we rarely see an order- less than 10 a year.

Do you think this is more to do with the fact not many people know about it?

[Fairyglass]

Yes, I think that's certainly a reason. However the overall feel to me isn't as polished- the amount of stock in each category, the layout- it just doesn't feel as though it's got critical mass yet in terms of sellers, as well as buyers. It's been around long enough, and I thought that when we set the account up we would be taking a long view, but I don't see that momentum increasing I'm afraid. Maybe if they got some big, trusted merchants on board, it might change things.