Here is a roundup of news coming from online marketplaces and eBay alternatives.
Amazon.com launched a new feature to enable sellers to issue concessions to buyers for amounts in excess of original order costs. Sellers will also be able to add their own notes to orders to keep track of order processing issues. Concessions, which are voluntary, are amounts that can be paid by the seller to a buyer other than as a refund of the order amount, such as compensating a buyer for return shipping costs or as a goodwill gesture. These features are available now to Amazon.com Marketplace sellers and to WebStore by Amazon sellers. Amazon.ca Marketplace sellers should see these new Manage Orders features within the next week. (Link)
ArtFire.com will hold a Twitter contest on July 15 to help promote the artisan-organized 12 Days of Christmas in July Sale. To enter, all users will need to do is retweet the Christmas in July message sent out the morning of July 15 from ArtFire's Twitter account, which will include information on the sale and a link to the sale page. At 11:59 pm EST ArtFire will randomly select three contestants and award them a $100 shopping spree to spend on Christmas in July sale items on the site. (Link)
Atomic Mall launched a new feature so that storeowners can perform edit functions directly from a product view page. When viewing their own product pages, sellers will see new buttons located just below the "add to cart" area. The functions are called Activate (activates new items or restart listings that were previously sold out or placed on hold), Edit, Pause (place a listing on hold) and Nuke (permanently delete a listing). (Link)
Bonanzle updated its widget collection, launched a search widget in beta, and has plans to launch another widget. The Bonanzle search widget can be used to search all of Bonanzle's inventory, or sellers can set it up to search just the inventory of their own booth. It can be setup to display the results of a given search term by default, or to show custom-picked items by default. (Link)
Etsy launched "related searches" functionality on its search engine, a significant feature designed to help shoppers narrow their search results with more specific searches. Now when you conduct a search on Etsy, links for recent popular searches related to the search term will appear above the results. (Link)
