eBay vendors and sellers participated in Bear Stearns' Internet Roundtable on May 23, 2006. The conference, with the theme "Web 2.0 Meets the Street," took place on Monday and Tuesday and included panels of CEOs from emerging technology companies discussing trends and considering the ramifications of new technologies.
On Tuesday, the CEOs of BuySafe, ChannelAdvisor and ClickForensics discussed ecommerce fraud issues. According to the panel, one serious problem on eBay is that of sellers listing items for low amounts but with high shipping fees. This helps their listings rank high in eBay search results, but gives buyers an unpleasant shopping experience once they realize the total cost of the item. ChannelAdvisor CEO Scot Wingo said this type of fraud causes all of the other sellers' conversion rates to go down, prompting some good sellers to leave the market.
In another session titled "eCommerce & ROI Panel: The Seller's Point of View on eCommerce ROIs," Jonathan Garriss, the Executive director of PESA (Professional eBay Sellers Alliance), Rodrigo Sales of Vendio and Tom Woolston, founder of MercExchange, shared the stage.
Garriss said the concerns of large eBay sellers are "buyer confidence and seller health." When asked what he would do if he were eBay CEO, Garriss said he would focus on the buyer. Get the buyer to come back, and make the buyer confident to pay more for items on eBay, Garriss said. He said PESA members find they achieve substantially higher selling prices on their own websites versus eBay.
As eBay's auction business shows signs of maturing in the U.S., attention was focused on the challenges facing the company, including fraud, slowing growth rate and "the Google threat." Panelists seemed to pin their hopes on eBay's new Express marketplace as a way to overcome those challenges and bring higher levels of growth to their businesses.
Woolston, whose company is locked in a battle with eBay over patent infringement, said the Supreme Court will remand the case back to the Appeals Court within 25 days, where it should skip quickly back to the District Court in Norfolk. The issues the District Court will have to address include the original judgement (eBay was ordered to pay MercExchange $29.5 million for patent infringement); post-trial damages; enhancement for willfullness; and a permanent injunction ruling. In addition, Woolston said the District Court will have to deal with its request for a trial for infringement of another patent after the Appeals Court paved the way for the trial.
Other topics tackled at the Roundtable included Chinese search and commerce; online advertising; travel search; podcasting; "socialization of the Net"; and video search. Bear Stearns Managing Director Principal Robert S. Peck put together the roundtable for clients, and companies presenting included Alibaba, Digg, Feedster, Thomson Gale, Oxford University Press, Kaboodle and Blinkx.
