Sellers: Get Ready for New eBay Policies
Say goodbye to the DSR 4.3 and to well-known PowerSeller icons. Say hello to minimal instances of low DSRs and top-rated seller badges.
Going forward the company will shift away from average DSRs to focus on the number of low DSRs (1s and 2s) that a seller receives. This, according to eBay, will give buyers a more accurate measure of customer satisfaction. In October there will be a new minimum standard for eBay sellers based on the number of low DSRs received. The new DSR standard will apply only on domestic transactions—i.e., U.S. buyers.
An expert looks at the benefits of video SEO—plus tips to help businesses optimize video content for major search engines.
SEO has always been a hot e-commerce topic. And now the trend’s expanding to include video SEO—that is optimizing video content for search engine traffic. Most major search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo offer consumers the option to view only video search results.
However, according to Benjamin Wayne, president and CEO of Fliqz, a company that manages, distributes syndicates and tracks video content for businesses, there are more video results shown on natural search engine results pages (SERP).
The goal when working with video SEO is to have your video content appear in video searches as well as in the organic search results for major search engines—with traffic being directed to your site and not to your video hosting provider.
EBay sellers often use acronyms to save precious title-character space, but new research provides another reason to abbreviate—to demonstrate expertise.
A recently published report in the Stanford Knowledgebase from the Stanford Graduate School of Business offers sellers another reason to use acronyms in their eBay listings.
According to the report, Specializing Can Mean Bigger Sales, the study examined nearly 1,500 online titles that sellers used when listing their auction items. The research spanned several eBay categories, including dolls, Elvis memorabilia and toys.
The interesting result from the research: sellers who used item-specific acronyms in their titles had more successful auction endings. The reason for the success, according to the research report, is that bidders view a seller who uses correct item-specific acronyms as more knowledgeable about that specific category.
My new Sell It! Blog tracks e-commerce industry news and reviews of the best tools and resources for online sellers and small retailers. The blog is updated daily with my own tool reviews and news, plus links to some of the latest e-commerce and online selling articles on the Web. You can read it here.
The new “ValueRange It” search tool helps sellers find previous pricing on products to help them determine a starting bid or reserve price.
On the iTaggit site, you simply type the product details in to the ValueRange It search box. To obtain the best results, you should be descriptive when searching—but not too specific. For example, you could enter in phrases like 2002 Gibson Les Paul Guitar or Madame Alexander Doll, leaving out details like a specific color.
ValueRange It will scan the Internet, largely drawing on closed eBay listings to generate low, average and high values for the item. For the most part, the different values will help you figure out what price you can expect to get for your item, taking in to account the item’s history and condition. You can also refine your ValueRange It results for a completely customized value range for your specific item.
Based on the ValueRange It results, you can use the data to help determine the best minimum or starting bid price.
Last year people were surprised when eBay announced plans to cancel its 2009 eBay Live event. At that time the company said smaller workshops would take place in various locations rather than one large event. EBay also said that the eBay Live event would return in 2010 in Orlando.
Not so, according to a statement recently made by Lorrie Norrington, president, eBay Marketplaces. EBay will continue to offer multiple smaller events that will replace the larger eBay Live conference.
Online payment service, PayPal commissioned a survey (conducted by comScore) through its SMB merchant services division to find out why online shoppers are abandoning their carts. According to PayPal, the average cost of abandoned goods in U.S. shopping carts is $109—and that adds up to a lot of missed sales for online merchants.
The PayPal survey revealed that nearly half of online shoppers have abandoned their carts multiple times over a period of three weeks due to high shipping costs, security concerns and a lack of convenience during the check-out process.
The survey showed that high shipping cost was the largest single reason for cart abandonment. Additionally, the survey found that if merchants had provided shipping costs upfront, this might have caused 40 percent of participants to complete the purchase.
In the era of the Internet and social media, corporations better take note: when you provide unsatisfactory customer service, hundreds of thousands of people will learn of it.
Such is the predicament that Unites Airlines now faces.
Last year, Halifax’s Dave Carroll discovered that his $3,500 custom-made guitar had been damaged after taking a United Airlines flight. According to Carroll’s blog, United did not deny that the damage happened however he couldn’t find a United representative who would take responsibility on behalf of the airline.
After nine months with no compensation for the damaged guitar, Carroll says he promised the last United Airlines person he spoke with (Ms. Irlweg), that he would write and produce three songs about his experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.
Write, produce and launch on YouTube he did. Now one of the most popular videos viewed by Canadians (by number of daily views), Dave Carroll’s first song, “United Breaks Guitars” is making International headlines.
This quirky, in-your-face song and video, details Carroll’s experience with United Airlines. It is an excellent video, and while full of humor the song is catchy and demonstrates the level of customer service passengers using United Airlines can expect.
For United, Carroll’s video serves to incite change at this—and all airlines, where lost and damaged baggage is, for the most part, considered “no one’s fault”.
This endeavor by Carroll should serve as a warning to all corporations who currently do not stand behind their service—and offer fair and courteous customer service. When you mess up, consumers are going to turn to social media networks to spread the word and make sure that everyone knows about it.
Be sure to check out the video and spread the word of Carroll’s video.
By Vangie Beal
Nova Scotia Girl Blog, July 09, 2009
Webopedia.com is an excellent resource for adding a little tech term creativity to your blog posts. Lamer, dilberted, e-nag, Tweeple and many other tech term oddities are defined in Webopedia’s slang category. Here is a list of all the slang tech terms currently defined:
133t speak 24-7 advermation alpha geek anonoblog anticipointment AOLese astroturfing bagbiter banana code barn doors best practices beyond-the-banner Big Blue Big Iron bioidentification blaudience blawg blog storm blogola blogroach blook burp buzzword cellphone novel chips and salsa churn citizen journalism clewbie cobweb Site compooter connectile dysfunction crackberries crapplet creeping featurism crisis blog crowdsourcing customer bounty cyber cyberbuck cyberbullying cyberculture cyberlawyer cyberloafing cybernaut cyberprise cyberpublisher cybersuicide CYS cytizenship dead tree edition digital footprint dilberted DM dooce drexting early adopter ego-surfing e-nag enterprise whuffie faceosphere flog floodgater friendquest future-proof Google blips Googlewhack griefer grok GUIX hairball id10t error influencer Intarweb internesia jailbreak lamer linerd lock-in LOL loss leader mashboard mopy moved to Atlanta Neo-Luddite netroots netscuse PEBCAK photoshopping picnic Retweet screenager spaghetti marketing Splog sploitz sporn swag swivel chair interface synchicity TOSsed Twaffic Tweeple Twidroid Twitosphere Twitterers Twittworking Uberveillance virtual group Web novel Webinar woot wugging
We show you three free applications that eBay sellers can use to showcase their wares on Facebook.
According to Facebook’s own data, this popular social networking site has more than 200 million active users, with more than half logging in to the site each day. One big reason people keep returning to Facebook is the site’s applications, called apps for short. According to Facebook 70 percent of its members engage with the more than 52,000 applications currently available on Facebook.
There are a number of Facebook applications that sellers can use to promote their own eBay business to friends and acquaintances on Facebook. We look at three eBay applications that you can add to your own profile to promote your eBay business on the Facebook platform.
Most people have multiple passwords for e-mail accounts, online banking, discussion forums, site memberships, eBay, PayPal and so on.
With so many passwords to remember, it can be difficult to remember them, and people may think it is easier to simply use the same password on different sites, or to use passwords that are easy to remember such their date-of-birth or a child’s name.
Unfortunately, these types of passwords can easily be hacked. The problem is that while you might be able to remember these passwords, which is why so many people use basic passwords and phrases, they are not at all secure and hackers will be able to easily crack them to obtain your account information.
The following 10 tips will help you to create strong, secure and hacker-proof passwords and phrases.
This week we offer 10 tips for selling on Kijiji—actions that sellers can take to produce quality leads and sales on this local classified ads network.
Use a template: Mange multiple Kijiji ads by creating a basic template, in Word or even Notepad, that you can copy-and-paste into each ad you post. The template should contain the basic information you carry over to each ad, such as contact information, pick-up and delivery details, and so on. Save each ad you list in a file on your computer for future use.
Send ads to top category page: On some Kijiji sites, you might get an e-mail to let you know your listing has fallen off the first page for the category you have listed in, and an offer to “bump” your ad back to the main for a small fee of $1.99. You can bump the ad yourself by deleting it and reposting it as a new ad. If you have saved the ads in a template, you can put your item back on the main category page in seconds.
Don’t delete pending sale ads: Kijiji sellers can save time by not deleting an ad until the item has actually sold. Don’t delete the ad as soon as an e-mail comes in with a request to buy, as the person may never show up to get the item. If you leave the ad online you can go back and respond to the second and subsequent requests after a “no-show.”
