Aug
20
“Time Ending Soonest” is no longer a factor in the Best Match algorithm for fixed-priced auctions. Best Match is the new method by which eBay determines how listings are sorted in the site’s search results. Another factor will be replacing “Time Ending Soonest” for fixed-priced listings - “Recent Sales.” Apparently, only listings offering multiple quantities can reap the advantages of this factor. According to eBay, recent sales from a particular multiple-quantity listing will advantage that listing over others that don’t have recent sales. This means higher rankings in the search results and more subsequent sales as a direct result.
The more sales you have per listing, the greater the opportunity for better visibility and standing apart from the competition.
This provides an obvious incentive to offer multiple quantities if you sell via the fixed price venue.
eBay has also announced that the Best Match algorithm will advantage fixed-priced listings over auction-style listings in some categories and auction-style listings over fixed-priced listings in other categories. Of course, they did not specify which categories would favor which type of listing format — so I’ll be researching that for you after these changes are placed into production live on the site.
eBay clarified that “Time Ending Soonest” was still a significant factor in the Best Match search results ranking algorithm for auction-style listings.
eBay did not specify when the changes would be placed into production. However, one would assume (is that safe to do with eBay?) that the changes would coincide with the new fixed-priced listing fee schedule that will be effective on the 16th of September.
Aug
19
Registering and setting up a seller’s account on eCrater.com is simple and quick. Unlike some sites, eCrater does not require the seller to provide any personal financial data in order to confirm their identity.
After clicking on the signup link, the prospective eCrater seller is presented with a typical signup page.
After clicking the “Create Store” button, the user is presented a page that acknowledges the submission and directs them to check their email for a message from eCrater containing a confirmation link.
After clicking the confirmation link, eCrater lets me know that my new store is live and ready for me to customize with my desired colors and logos.
That’s all there is to register on the site! I don’t think any seller could ask for a simpler process.
Aug
15
I thought it would be important to put myself in the buyer’s shoes for a complete review of eCrater.com. After all, if the site doesn’t make the buying process as friction-free as possible, there’s not much of a point selling there. Buyers who experience a confusing or difficult time are likely to abandon their shopping carts and move on to the next Internet merchant.
Initially, I went straight to the eCrater home page to start my shopping experience. I found myself a little nervous at the potential prospect of dealing with fraudsters posing as merchants. The feedback system isn’t very mature yet, and many of the merchants whose listings I visited were unrated.
Additionally, there is no verification required to register as a seller. While the seller in me sees this as a benefit, I’m uncomfortable with the additional risk this exposes me to as a buyer.
This was reminiscent of my experiences in the early days of eBay & Yahoo! auctions. I actually sold for a year before I ever worked up the courage to buy from someone I didn’t know in these venues. (I was always amazed when someone sent me a money order, someone they didn’t know, and trusted me to send them the goods).
Hesitant, I decided to take a break and hit Google to see what others were saying about eCrater. That’s when I came across a Blog of an individual who sold comic books on eCrater. After spending a little time on this seller’s site, I felt extremely comfortable that I was dealing with a real person (who, BTW, graduated from the same University as me) that wasn’t trying commit fraud.
After I followed the links to his eCrater listings, I realized that this is the way eCrater is supposed to work. eCrater doesn’t send traffic to seller’s listings in the same way eBay does (or used to). Instead, it is incumbent upon the merchant to send traffic to his or her listings after establishing some level of trust and credibility with the buyer. I’ve been preaching this for sometime on this blog, yet I still surprised myself a little with how effective this technique can be.
At any rate, I soon found myself at the home page of Walkin’ Willie’s eCrater Comic Shop: http://walkinwilliescomix.ecrater.com/. I was immediately impressed with the clean layout and the customization. The fact that this store is hosted by eCrater is not obvious to the visitor. The seller has uploaded his own logo and the only reference to eCrater is in the URL and a subdued “Powered by eCrater” link at the bottom.
Being the frugal shopper that I am, I immediately clicked through to the $.50 Specials category and found a couple of listings for Star Wars comics that my son would be interested in. The listings were simple yet, for the most part, contained all of the information I needed to decide to make the purchase. The only thing I was confused about was whether the seller would combine shipping or not.
Unlike eBay, eCrater offers a shopping cart, so I was able to consolidate all of my purchases from the same seller into one transaction. I decided to splurge and buy all three Star Wars comics the merchant had listed.
The shopping cart still did not dispel my confusion about combined shipping, but I decided to press on knowing that I would be able to back out of the transaction before making the payment if the seller required me to pay $3.50 per comic for shipping and handling.
The seller offered PayPal and Google Checkout as payment methods. Since I don’t have any experience with Google Checkout and because eCrater places a lot of emphasis on that form of payment, I decided to give it a try.
After clicking on the Google Checkout button, I was presented with a summary of my purchases and the option to either create a Google Account or sign-in to my existing account. I already had a Gmail account, so I only needed to add my credit card information in order to use Google Checkout. The process was fairly quick.
Completing my purchase with Google Checkout went smoothly. I was pleased to learn that the seller had set up his store to automatically combine shipping. I was only charged $3.50 for mailing all three comics.
I was also impressed with Google Checkout’s option to hide my email address from the seller. Because he had taken the time and effort to create a blog and website that built my trust, I felt comfortable providing that information to this particular merchant. However, when I first started this eCrater buying experiment, there were sellers from whom I was considering buying a $1.00 eBook via PayPal but hesitated because I was certain to wind up on more SPAM lists.
Soon after checking out, eCrater dropped me a note with a link to the feedback form in order to evaluate the seller. They will automatically send me a reminder in three weeks if I haven’t yet left feedback on the transaction. The seller does not have the opportunity to leave feedback on the buyer.
I was a little dismayed to see the items still listed and available for sale on eCrater right after I made my purchase. I guess the seller needs to acknowledge the sale or Google Checkout needs to send some sort of electronic confirmation before the listings are no longer available. If this transaction were for an in-demand item on a popular store, this phenomenon presents the very real possibility of multiple purchases of the same single item. eCrater needs to consider resolving this potential issue before it becomes a problem.
Google checkout sent me an email when the seller shipped the comics with a tracking number and the comics arrived safely soon afterwards. Leaving feedback was quick and didn’t involve detailed seller ratings.
Overall, I was quite satisfied with my eCrater buying experience. The integrated shopping cart encouraged me to buy several items at once. Had I bought the same items on eBay, this would have required three separate transactions and probably an email to the seller to coordinate combined shipping. The integration of Google Checkout was seamless and made for an easy purchase. While eBay struggles to “improve the buying the buying experience,” it seems that eCrater has it figured out.
eCrater’s mantra is “Cater to your sellers and buyers will come.” Fortunately the site doesn’t neglect the buyers either. I recommend that every seller first try a site out as a buyer when they are considering an eBay alternative. eCrater gets passing marks in my grade book.
Next post in this series: Registering as a seller on eCrater.
Aug
6
When David and I began AuctionBytes in 1999, the most common question people would ask us was, “How do I start selling on eBay?” Today, the most frequent question we receive is “How do I diversify?”
-Ina Steiner, AuctionBytes.com
As eBay becomes less and less of a marketplace in which small sellers can thrive, many merchants are left wondering what alternatives are out there. This article is the first of many that will examine eCrater.com for merchants looking for a different venue to sell their goods. This post provides an overview of the site while my future posts will discuss my experiences buying, setting up an account, setting up a store, creating a listing and selling.
eCrater was started in the Spring of 2004 by Ditimar Slavov as a marketplace of fixed priced products and hosting site for individual merchant stores. The site is free for buyers and sellers and, unlike most other free auction/market sites, does not feature advertising as a revenue model. eCrater depends on commissions from Google Checkout and fees paid by sellers for featured placement for monetization.
Emphasis on Sellers
I like the emphasis and attention eCrater places on the seller. According to their “About Us” page, the site “believes that a good foundation for a growing marketplace is a community of happy sellers.” This is a good sign for sellers disaffected by eBay corporate policy. Another positive indication is this quote found on the same page:
Cater to your sellers and buyers will come.
Friction Free Buying
There’s no registration required to purchase. This is a plus — keeping the buying process as friction-free as possible is important to a successful transaction. Prospective buyers simply add items to their shopping cart and checkout like virtually every other eCommerce site on the internet. While the site encourages Google Checkout, sellers can offer a myriad of other payment options, including PayPal.
Clean Website Design
I’m impressed with eCrater’s simple, clean website — it’s very reminiscent of Google. As I stated above, there are no ads to clutter up the page and lure prospective buyers from your listings. Dial up users will appreciate the speed in which the site loads over a analog connection.
Feedback System
The feedback system is simple and one-way. Buyers leave feedback for sellers — period. Recipricol and retalitory feedback is not a problem, because sellers don’t leave feedback for buyers. The buyer has the opportunity to leave feedback immediately if the purchase was made through an instant payment option and they are automatically sent a reminder three-weeks later if they have not taken the opportunity to evaluate the seller yet. Feedback is displayed as a simple percentage. For example, a seller’s feedback rating is 100.0 if they’ve received nothing but positive ratings and a seller that has received 3 positive and one negative feedbacks will display as 75.0. A detailed feedback page allows the visitor to read feedback comments and see the number of feedbacks received over the past year in a manner very similar to the classic eBay feedback page. There are no detailed seller ratings.
Listing Format
The listing format is fixed price only. The items are listed indefinitely (until sold) and the seller can offer multiple quantities. Every seller is provided a store with a short & simple URL. These stores include all of the merchant’s listings subdivided into categories defined by the seller. The owner can brand the store with their own logo and using the search function from inside the store will return only listings from that particular merchant’s store.
Restrictions and Terms of Service
There are significantly less restrictions than eBay users are accustomed to. In fact the site’s terms of service are only 899 words long! That’s less than some of the auction terms and conditions I’ve seen included by some sellers on eBay. The restrictions and terms are pretty straight forward. As of the time of this writing the site prohibits the listing of:
- Body parts & organs
- Pirated materials and products
- Copyrighted Materials (images & texts)
- Counterfeit Designer Items (replicas or imitation of designer products)
- Fake Documents
- Illegal Goods and Services
- Personal Information about another individual
- Prescription Drugs
- Prostitution
- Currency Exchanges
- The same or very similar content several times (even in different categories)
- Miscategorization
- Meaningless title & description
- Test items unless your store is put on-hold
- Free items and items with prices that are not “real”
- Items that are not for sale
- Pre-order items
- Firearms & ammunition
- Tobacco and cigars for smoking
- Live animals
- Mod chips or mod chips accessories
Community
eCrater boasts an active, friendly community. The lively bulletin board is reminisent of eBay’s in its early years.
Seller Tools
Besides the free store, eCrater offers an excel based bulk listing tool and offers free picture hosting. Each listing includes a gallery photo and the site boasts a shopping cart for visitors to your store. A widget and RSS feeds are available to promote your listings on your website, blog or Squidoo Lens. eCrater automatically submits a feed of active listings to Google Products Search (formally known as Froogle) and the listings support inclusion of Google Product Search attribute tags.
Simple Registration Process
I’ll document the registration process in a future post, but suffice to say that it’s quick, simple, and doesn’t require a credit card or any other financial data. While that’s a boon for sellers who desire a quick start and are concerned about the security of their personal financial information, it does expose the buyer to some risk. If it’s easy for honest merchants to establish an account and start selling, it’s equally easy for a fraudster to do the same.
Therefore it’s important for a seller to establish credibility and trust on their own website, blog, newsletter and/or forum community before they send potential customers to their listings on eCrater. Which leads me to my next topic:
Where Are the Buyers?
Here’s the rub. eCrater is not a natural destination for online consumers. The site wasn’t designed to be. It was designed to attract traffic from potential buyers directly to listings and stores from Google and through active traffic generation tactics on behalf of the seller. What I’m talking about is attracting free search engine traffic via the seller’s active blog or website, active participation (posting - not lurking) in forums relevant to your niche and including a link to your eCrater store in your signature file, Google AdWords campaigns, etc.
Success as a seller on eCrater requires work on your part to promote your listings — plain and simple. You need to attract buyers, establish a level of credibility and trust and send them to your listings. That’s the cost of free listings on a free store. But, for many sellers — this works! The chart below is a comparison of the traffic between three eBay alternatives from Alexa.com. The graph compares the Alexa rankings of eCrater.com, eBid.net, and UpperBid.com. The stats are from a live feed, but as of this writing, eCrater has a healthy amount of traffic relative to the other eBay alternatives.
eCrater is reminiscent of eBay in the early days — before it became wickedly corporate. I started this eCrator review primarily because I needed something to write about. Now I’m genuinely excited about participating in the site and sharing my experiences with you.
Look for part II of my eCrater review: Buying on eCrater.