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In June, Elance Online announced a service for eBay Store merchants to help match them up with Web designers. The eBay Store Designer Program allows eBay Store merchants to purchase a complete "Store Makeover," including design of a company logo and a professionally written store overview, description and policies pages.
What are eBay Stores?
eBay Stores are storefronts on eBay. It's a way for sellers to list items for sale for longer durations - 30, 60, 90, 120 days (or "good til cancelled") - and have a single place for displaying all of their items for sale, both fixed price and auction items, with a fixed URL. eBay introduced Stores in June 2001, well after other services had sprung up to offer storefronts to sellers. Auction-management firms, including Activa and AuctionWatch (Vendio), had already begun offering storefronts that allowed eBay sellers to brand themselves, offer fixed-price inventory, and move items over to auction format when and if desired.
eBay charges its Store owners a 5-cent listing fee per item per month and a final value fee of between 1.25% and 5%. The Stores Grand opening was September 6, 2001, and a monthly fee of $9.95 was instituted in October. eBay Stores come in "Basic" ($9.95/month); "Featured" ($49.95/month); and "Anchor" ($499.95/month). See fee details at http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/pricing.html.
Over the years, eBay has added features to Stores, but it should not be confused with having an independent ecommerce site. One big difference is that you can't format your eBay Store the same way you can your own Web site. Most eBay Stores are quite bland. In fact, a comparison of Dell's eBay Store
http://www.stores.ebay.com/dellfinancialservices with its eBay About Me page
http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/dell_financial_services shows a striking difference.
On Dell's eBay Store page, there's a little space at the top for information about the store, a small logo, a little search box, and tabs. Underneath is an eBay-style list of all items for sale. Click on an item to view the full listing. Tucked right in between the store information and the listings are category lists that the Storeowner can create to help buyers navigate, but it's hard-to-see, and if the categories are broad, it still brings up long lists of items.
In comparison, Dell's About Me page has lots of room at the top, and it's inviting to click on the types of laptops Dell offers in the "Refurbished DFS Products on eBay" box. (If you know you want an Inspiron, why have to wade through listings for Latitude Notebooks and Dimension Desktops?)
So can the new Elance service make the Stores more user-friendly and effective?
The Elance service that was introduced in June is a package deal. eBay Store merchants can hire independent designers from Elance Online's network to give them a "Store Makeover" for a fixed introductory price of $649.95. eBay Store merchants can also purchase components individually, including corporate ID and logo design, Web content development, store layout and design and eBay listing template design.
The good news is that all of the deliverables from the Store Designer program (such as logo, any writing, design elements, etc.) become the property of the client (Store owner), who can use them as they see fit (e.g., on business cards on other sites, etc.).
The bad news is that even with the Elance service, you are limited in the eBay Store formatting. The logo is limited to 310 x 90 pixels, no matter if you design it yourself or if you have an Elance-affiliated provider design it. There are tabs that you can click for "Feedback," "Store Policies" and "About the Store," and you can get more creative on these pages.
An Elance spokesperson provided an example of an eBay Store that used Elance Online's new service, "Pretty Girlie Things" at
http://www.stores.ebay.com/id=11703374.
The Store merchant used the same creative from her "About the Store" page on her "About Me" page
http://members.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&id=11703374. The graphics are great and very memorable.
But let's say you set up an eBay Store. How are people going to find it?
You might think your items would show up on searches at eBay.com. No, not unless you have auctions running. Someone would have to go to the eBay Stores home page and do a search in order to find your fixed-price Store items.
The purpose of any store is to attract buyers and make sales. When it comes to "Basic" Stores, you have to count on listing eBay auctions to attract attention to your Store. There is a clickable eBay Store icon that appears next to your User ID, and a "Visit my store" link located on your listing pages. Potential buyers will see these links if they are looking at your listings or User ID already.
Is that the only way potential buyers will find your eBay Store?
Buyers who go to the eBay Stores home page can View All Stores Alphabetically; Search Stores; or Browse Categories. The best shot of being found is if a customer conducts a search for something you carry in your store. The alphabetical list is unwieldy, and so is browsing, due to the volume of Stores.
Let's go back to the Pretty Girlie Things example. Suppose next week you decide you want to visit the store, but you can't quite remember the exact store name. You go to www.ebay.com and go to "Search" then "By Seller." You type in Girlie Things. Nothing. Even if you remembered the store name, you would not find the store by searching this way. That is because the eBay User ID of the Pretty Girlie Things Store owner is mrswarren. She chose to give her eBay Store a different name than her eBay User ID.
If you go to the Stores home page http://stores.ebay.com, note that the default for the search box is to search titles. You must click on the radio button that says "Search store name and description" if you want to search by Store name. If you can't quite remember the store name and type in Girlie Things, two stores come back, one of them Pretty Girlie Things. Bingo!
Assuming people can find your store, there is a good cross-merchandising feature available. (Note that AuctionHelper pioneered cross merchandising with its AuctionLynxx service http://www.auctionhelper.com/ah/info/auctionlynxxinfo.asp, which we first wrote about 2 years ago http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y201/m07/abu0041/s07.)
The idea is to cross sell. Someone is buying a digital camera from your store? They probably need accessories. The eBay Store Merchandising Manager lets you set up relationships among your products so that on Bid Confirmation and Checkout Confirmation pages, the customer will see other related items you have for sale http://pages.ebay.com/merchandisingmanager.
There are some good reasons for having an eBay Store, but it's not for everyone. Unfortunately, most eBay visitors probably limit their searching to ebay.com, not stores.ebay.com. And the eBay Navigation Bar always appears at the top of the screen even when viewing an individual eBay Store. If a buyer in your Store clicks on Search or Browse at the top of the screen, they are taken to results pages that list competing products.
It's up to you to determine if a Store is right for you, and to study the ways to drive traffic to your Store if you open one.
As for the Elance service, remember that Elance is similar to eBay. When you use Elance, you are not using an Elance employee http://www.elance.com/c/com/main/communities.pl. You should read the service provider Profile Pages to read about experience, certifications, and work samples. You should also review the Elance Feedback system, which shows past performance, a star rating system and comments from previous buyers. You may also want to communicate with previous clients firsthand.
I'm interested to see what actual owners think of their eBay Store and to hear about their experiences. Are the fees worth it? How do customers find your Store? Write to ina@auctionbytes.com with your tales of success or woe, and post a message in the forums at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=5851
SideBar - More Information
Helpful information about eBay Stores:
eBay Stores FAQs:
http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/faq.html
eBay Stores Help:
http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/store-builder.html
"eBay Stores Linking Strategies," by Jerry
http://pages.ebay.com/community/chatter/2002Dec/Sub2.html
or http://digbig.com/3bjn
or http://digbig.com/3bjn
eBay Stores Merchandising Manager
http://pages.ebay.com/merchandisingmanager
eLance "Store Makeover" Service for eBay Store Owners
http://www.elance.com/storedesigner
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