eBay rolled out its new fixed-price eBay Express marketplace on April 21, and announced the launch on April 24. eBay Express remains in "Preview" mode while the company gathers user feedback and makes enhancements (http://www.ebayexpress.com).

President of eBay North America Bill Cobb said, "eBay Express is for buyers who prefer a more conventional online shopping experience. We think eBay Express will attract new buyers to eBay and inspire existing buyers to use eBay even more. We're excited to team up with our most experienced eBay sellers to deliver a simple, easy and convenient shopping experience through eBay Express."

Shopping Cart Feature
eBay believes the shopping-cart feature will encourage buyers to buy more items, since they can add items from multiple sellers to their cart and checkout with one transaction.

Sellers currently don't get much information from eBay about how visitors shop on eBay Express, information that would be helpful in trying to improve presentation and sales. Sellathon, an analytics service for tracking traffic to eBay listings, said it redesigned its ViewTracker application to provide some of the shopping-cart data to ViewTracker subscribers.

Sellathon President Wayne Yeager said, "ViewTracker subscribers can monitor whether a visitor adds or removes the seller's item from his or her shopping cart. Shopping cart abandonment is a serious issue for e-tailers, and it's rare for sellers on third-party platforms to have this kind of feedback loop. Sellers can now do their own testing to see what causes items to get added to a shopping cart and what causes items to get dropped" (http://www.sellathon.com).

Seller & Listing Requirements
In order to sell on eBay Express, sellers must meet certain requirements. If a seller becomes ineligible for eBay Express, new listings they create will not be included on eBay Express from then on, and their existing listings will be removed from eBay Express within 7 days from the time of the eligibility change. However, their listings will continue to appear on eBay as usual. For example, this could occur if a seller's positive feedback falls below 98%.

Similarly, if a seller was previously ineligible but becomes eligible for eBay Express, new listings they create will be included on eBay Express from then on, and their qualified existing listings will be added to eBay Express within 7 days from the time of the eligibility change. For example, this could occur if their positive feedback percent rises above 98% (if that was the only qualification that they were previously missing).

Once a seller qualifies for selling on eBay Express, the listings must then qualify as well.

Seller Requirements

• Feedback Score must be 100 or greater.
• Positive Feedback Percent must be 98 or greater.
• The user needs to have a public feedback profile.
• The country name in the registration address must be US or Canada. (Canada registered sellers may be eligible if they list items on the US site and ship from the US).
• Seller must accept PayPal and have preferences set that they will send items to unconfirmed addresses (or will do so on a case-by-case basis).

Listing Requirements

• List items in a Fixed-Price format
• List in an eligible category
• Specify the Item Condition
• Specify a picture or gallery image
• Specify shipping costs
• Accept PayPal as a payment method
• Specify sales tax
• Integrate third-party checkout process with eBay Express, if applicable

According to eBay's FAQs, sellers can opt-out by updating their selling preferences in My eBay. If a seller opts out, it can take up to 24 hours for their listings to be removed from eBay Express (http://pages.ebay.com/express/service/about/seller-questions.html).

There has been some confusion over whether sellers need to use a Gallery photo in the listing to qualify. According to eBay's FAQs:

"You do have to provide a picture for you listing meet the listing criteria, but it does not have to be a gallery photo. This can be any type of picture as long as it is hosted by eBay Picture Services OR if you're using another photo hosting, you must specify the Picture Web address of the photo during the listing form. We are working on an enhancement which will simplify this for sellers using photo hosting other than eBay Picture Services."

Helpful Tips Submitted by Readers

To find a particular eBay seller's items on eBay Express, use the following URL, and substitute the seller's User ID for the letters "MERCHANTNAMEHERE":
http://search.express.ebay.com/merchant/MERCHANTNAMEHERE

Here's how you can tell if an item was sold on eBay Express versus eBay.com:
eBay.com seller email: in between two lines of asterisks is "Get Paid! SEND INVOICE with a link."
eBay Express sellers email: same location has "Item has been paid for! LEAVE FEEDBACK with a link."

Resources
AuctionBytes ran two reviews of the new site in the AuctionBytes Newsflash newsletter:

"eBay Launches Preview of "eBay Express" Fixed-Price Marketplace," by Ina Steiner
http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m04/i24/s01

"A Shopper's First Impressions of eBay Express," by David Steiner
http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m04/i27/s03

eBay has created a new area on its Discussion Boards devoted to eBay Express:
http://digbig.com/4hmdf

This month's Chatter newsletter has an article about eBay Express where you will find a link to a survey so you can tell eBay what you think of Express:
http://digbig.com/4hmbd

Stay tuned for more information about the new eBay Express marketplace.