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.
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13 Responses to “Review: eCrater (Part 2) - A Buyers Perspective”
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Hi - I can alleviate your confusion. Google checkout requires the seller to accept the transaction by manually reviewing and clicking the “charge the buyer” button.
That would explain why the items still showed in the store immediately after purchase.
Good luck with your tests, and it’s great to read your reviews.
Robyn,
Thanks. I knew it was something like that…
Doug
Why is this article or series of articles on a site called “Auction Insights” There are no auctions on Ecrater. Not a single one.
Nice article. I thought it was both fair and accurate. As both a seller on eCrater and a disgruntled seller on eBay I am happy to see there are viable alternatives out there. Those of us who have made a go of it on eCrater attract prosective buyers through various marketing techniques; Adwords, blogs, newsletters, and even good old word of mouth. But most importantly, we keep those same customers through world class customer service. Again, thanks for the nice article.
Dave Rudrud
http://www.awarenessbracelets.ecrater.com
Maggie,
One of the most common questions I receive here at AuctionInsights is regarding alternatives to eBay. This eCrater series is designed to satisfy that need.
I hope you get the opportunity to poke around my site some more - I think you will find that its about more than just auctions.
Doug
FYI, Google doesn’t require the seller to manually charge the customer’s card — but it is one of the options in set-up. The other option is to have Google automatically charge the card.
Great post, and thanks for showing the buying process step-by-step. People are reluctant to changes and your article helps spread the word on other buying and selling alternatives.
Wonderful article! I have a store set up on ecrater and it was nice to see the perspective as a buyer. I really like the screen shots and the information. Good job!
Walkin Willies ecrater site does combine shipping as he uses the shipping matrix,
which works great if all of your inventory is
relatively standardized (like comics), but if
you are a seller of collectibles which can vary greatly in weight and size, the system falls apart. How about an article on how to handle
this problem with ecrater?
Thanks for reviewing this so thoroughly I’m an ecrater seller but I wasn’t exactly sure how everything would work from the buyers perspective as in would shipping combine automatically etc but through your blurb and a few others I figured out how to set up the shipping matrix by weight so as to make sure shipping is in fact combined and added google checkout as an option solely based on this article thanks man. I feel confident in ecrater now I’m not sure I was before.
Thank you for your insight! I too am an Ecrater seller-and a former Ebay seller. I got tired of Ebay’s shabby treatment of sellers and decided to give Ecrater a go. I joined about 3 weeks ago and I already have a few sales and feedback as well. Because of Ecrater’s free services, I can sell my designer clothes, jeans, electronics, etc… for less, and pass my savings on to the customer. It’s good to see that there are alternatives out there-and eCrater is getting bigger thanks to Ebay’s present bad behavior.
Great Article. I just opened my new store on ecrater. Had a few hits but no customers just yet. I hope to get a few before the month is over. I myself use to be a Powerseller on Ebay. Shame on such a big company that they are to treat us sellers like the botton of their foot! It is us that brings in the $$! I hope Ebay goes DOWN for being so Rude and ignorant to their loyal customers! Please check my site out and see what you think.
Thanks
http://coachandpoloexpress.ecrater.com
I just made my first sale on eCrater store. Am I required to manually charge PayPal transactions? I though this was automatic but I got an email from noreply@ecrater.com with the details about the sale and a PAY NOW link. Do I need to send this to the buyer?