eBay Australia to Allow Feedback Revision
eBay has announced a new feedback revision process to launch in the week commencing 13th October.
This has been sorely needed since they banned feedback removal a while ago, especially when there had only been some miscommunication with a customer for example, and the seller was able to provide them a satisfactory sale at the end of the day.
What will this mean? Not a great deal. You will only be able to change .5% of your feedback. Why limit it?
From eBay’s news annoucenement :
A number of changes were made to the feedback system on eBay this year, including the removal of the Mutual Feedback Withdrawal tool. Many sellers felt this left them with little option to have feedback revised or cancelled when they had rectified an issue.
This new Feedback revision tool provides sellers with an opportunity to send a Feedback revision request to a buyer.
Sellers will be able to use the Feedback revision tool if they feel a buyer should now be satisfied with the transaction (i.e. an issue was resolved) or if they believe a buyer may have accidently left incorrect Feedback in the first place.
While the Feedback revision process is initiated by a seller, buyers have the option to accept or decline a request. Only one request can be made per transaction and sellers will have a limited number or requests available within a 12 month period. We suggest that sellers get agreement from a buyer to change their Feedback before initiating the process.
Coupled with this, eBay is introducing a ‘Resolution’ centre (note the change from the ‘Dispute’ terminology - a smart move).
Lets hope that they Resolution Centre is somehow tied into the negative feedback process to help resolve issues first, rather than letting the current ’shoot from the hip customers’ leave feedback first…
5 Tips to Get Useful Feedback From Your Customers
Getting customer feedback/testimonials/complaints can really help you identify what parts of your business are working well and what needs attention.
We recently implemented a free feedback service on one of our online fishing stores, and the information we have received has been quite valuable.
People have given us testimonials which we can use on the store to boost buyer confidence. We have received constructive criticism, helpful hints and some product range ideas too. And (I must admit a little to my surprise) we haven’t been abused at all!
So, here are 5 good tips of mine to get some really useful customer feedback :
Read the rest of this entry »
Is Magento Commerce a good eCommerce solution for you?
There are been a little bit of buzz around the place about Magento Commerce.
The open source eCommerce arena has been a crowded one in the last 5 years. The big names are popular still (including stores like X-Cart, osCommerce, Zen Cart, CRE Loaded and there are more).
But Magento was mentioned to me by a potential customer a while ago. I only had a quick look at the time, but some weeks later another customer mentioned that they were looking at it.
Well, that got my attention, so what is Magento Commerce like as an eCommerce solution? It certainly looks great, and even installations ‘out of the box’ have a very slick feel to them. Certainly better than osCommerce for example.
Read the rest of this entry »
PeSA Australia Summit Wrap-up
Back on deck at work this morning, following up a few people that I met at the Pesa Summit over the last few days.
It was great to meet some readers of my blog, and talk to a lot of sellers. After my panel session on Business Automation my 15 min one on one blocks with sellers were booked out very quickly. I had lots of sellers ask advice on their websites, listings and business and it was great to see so much enthusiasm.
As Jonathon Garriss pointed out during one of the sessions, he doesnt know it all and neither do I. But it is great to chare experience and we always learn.
Every time I catch up with some of my peer sellers we always learn things too. You will never hear of Paul from DealsDirect.com.au visiting a conference like this and walking away saying he didn’t learn something to go back to his business and implement, for example. I learnt a lot too.
Day two of the summit had some great material. I was particularly fascinated by Tom O’Toole (of Beechworth Bakery fame). He is a very energetic and passionate speaker!
Other sessions included copywriting and headline skills which was very interesting. Direct marketing has a lot of common ground with eBay listings and advertisements. A lot to learn.
I also had a lot of people ask about our new product ReadytoShip which was great, and also got some great feedback on some other areas that sellers find frustrating and time consuming that we are working on fixing. But I will post more about that shortly!
PeSA Australia Summit Day 1
I just got home from the PeSA Australia summit, Navigating Success for Change.
A good turnout with close to 300 signups,s to the Flemington staff were kept busy with coffee and snacks during breaks.
Keynote this morning was from Jonathan Garriss (of Gotham City Online) who has flown in from the US and talked about current opportunity in eCommerce. He had some interesting facts to get everyone motivated and keep things in perspective. eCommerce is growing at 15% pa, traditional commerce is +/-3% pa.
There is a massive and more importantly growing marketplace to find opportunity in.
The ‘Navigating Change for Success’ tagline for the event was followed up with some discussion on change and opportunity. Jonathon is always a good speaker, with some great sites, technology and processes in his business that give him some good credibility.
Some of us more experienced eBay sellers also got the chance to spend some one on one time with sellers and talk about their ebay listings, stores and strategies which was interesting. I had quite a range of sellers talk to me today, from very small turnover sellers to quite large ones.
The attitude today was very positive. Simon Smith did ask that no one yell at him, and it sounds like he got his wish.
The 2 panels today were Business Automation (with Your truly, John from JJ entertainment, and Anthony of AuctionBlox), and the Top Seller panel (with Shaun from Selby Acoustics, Shayne from i-soldit.com.au and Jonathon of Dinosaur Deals).
I love the chance to talk to sellers about their business. It seems that there are som many sellers out there wanting to grow that perhaps don’t even know what parts of their businesses can be improved with better tools and processes.
I think the panels were the highlight from today, based on feedback that I got. It is a great opportunity for sellers to ask questions to people who have travelled the road before them. Jonathon, Shayne and Shaun did a great job talking about some of their own businesses, challenges and strategies and answering questions.
Some brief highlights of the day
- Simon Smith did state that they had a ‘deep regret’ about how the Paypal changes were implemented.
- Effectively a promise that eBay Australia management would be far more active in discussing potential upcoming changes in Australia (with sellersand buyers) that are already occurring in eBay US
- One on one sessions. Great chance to talk to sellers looking for some advice. Jonathon Garriss had quite a crowd (but he loves it:) !
- Simon announces today that the interstitial prior to leaving a neg (advising buyers that sellers can’t leave retaliatory feedback) was being removed today.
- Great networking opportunities with lots of other likeminded sellers.
A big day. Definitely time for some sleep.
ChannelAdvisor Acquires Another $20million In VC Funding
ChannelAdvisor announced that they have acquired another $20 million of VC funding from New Enterprise Associates. Also, they announced some staff reductions.
Pushing towards an IPO, the lay offs are an effort to control expense and move toward profitability.
Apparently around 45 people will be/have been laid off from headquarters with some more staff cuts expected at other international offices too (totalling about 70 of the current 350 employees).
This news comes shortly after the announcement of the purchase of RichFX for $3mil, and release of the new Premium Store product which should provide a much better online store presence for CA customers than their old store technology.
A more detailed article can be found here.
With $25mil in rev last year, Scot is shooting for profitability next year.
Back to the Real World
Well, I am back from some long needed time off, hence the long break between posts.
I travelled with my wife and now 8 month old daughter to South Australia and visited a lot of family friends, squeezed in some fishing and even got time to read a book. Wow!
It was a fantastic trip.
Before we left I had plenty of friends asking if we were driving across.
“So, you have an 8 month old daughter, and you are driving 2 days to the Eyre Peninsula… Good luck!”
Turns out our little baby was a dream in the car. No crying, just sleeping when she should, and playing happily between feeds. We couldn’t have been more proud of her, getting couriered around and shown off to a host of different relatives and friends.
We must be lucky every one says… Sounds ominous… let’s hope the next one we have is the same!
One of the biggest eBay sellers in Oz gone bust?
Some news this morning that eBay seller ebusiness supplies (eBay account, website) is now NARU on eBay, not answering customer emails and seems to have stopped trading.
This article from The Age sheds a little more light on the situation.
These guys have been in business for many years now and moved a lot of stock. Like a few of the big sellers (perhaps many) they based their business model on preselling stock arriving from suppliers. When doing this you obviously run the risk of inability to supply if there is a supplier issue, incorrect goods arriving etc etc.
It probably also meant that their cashflow was operating the business, as if they had plenty of capital they may not need to run their business using the ‘pre sale’ method. I never saw them advertise the fact they were pre selling items, maybe they should have been more upfront if there were.
And, according to some discussion around the place, it seems that e-business supplies might have been pre selling items that hadn’t even left China.
In any case, it’s not a pleasant thing to happen to buyers who may be left out of pocket. The better news is that PayPal have come to the rescue and will apaprently reimburse customers who paid using PayPal. Not bad!
ChannelAdvisor Users: Your store of choice?
I know I have a few ChannelAdvisor customers reading my blog. This post is for you!
We are developing some automation tools for ChannelAdvisor customers, and to assist with a development roadmap I would LOVE some feedback on whether or not you use the ChannelAdvisor Store or another store altogether…
I put together a quick poll in the ChannelAdvisor Support forums, here is the link :
http://ssc.channeladvisor.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1418
Thanks for your vote!
eBay Australia Backs Down on PayPal Push
eBay.com.au released a statement yesterday notifying of their intent to withdraw its notification to the ACCC regarding the removal of other payment options from the eBay.com.au website.
This didn’t come as a big surprise.
Going to court over the matter would indeed have been a long and painful process, not to mention the amount of stress and anxiety it would cause eBay’s poor old PR team in Australia. The lesser of two evils was to withdraw the notification. Good move. They should now make some more publicly satisfying changes to try and get some goodwill back!
PayPal still remains a compulsory payment option at this stage. No doubt this will still cause some animated discussion. In fact, one website has already questioned the validity of the PayPal requirement in relation to the ACCC notice…
