eBay Watch: New Dispute Resolution Explained

EBay Details New Dispute Resolution Services

We've known for some time now that eBay has been working to pull dispute resolution services from PayPal to the eBay platform. Earlier this year when eBay opened its doors to new online payment processors, it only made sense to move the dispute resolution off of PayPal to eBay.

Over the next couple of weeks eBay says it plans to start phasing in the new eBay dispute-resolution process. This process is for resolving item-not-received and item-not-as-described claims.

On eBay, buyers can file a report when they have not received an item they purchased or the item did not match the seller's description.  As a seller you can also file through eBay when you have not received a payment or when you need to cancel a transaction.  Under the new system, you can contest buyer claims in the same way that you do using PayPal system; for example you can provide delivery confirmation in the event of an item-not-received claim.

As a part of the change-over, sellers can manage disputes that have been filed through eBay in the Resolution Center (you access this via the Account tab in My eBay ).

Now, PayPal still has its own dispute process.  Sellers will see PayPal disputes in the same location in their My eBay , however they will need to use PayPal’s resolution center to manage these disputes — not eBay’s interface.

New Unpaid Item Assistant Automates Filing Against NPBs

In the new process, sellers are going to be able to go through a faster process for claiming against NPBs (non-paying buyer).  EBay is launching a new automated process called Unpaid Item Assistant that will automatically open and close cases for sellers.  When enabled, the Unpaid Item Assistant will open a case if your buyer doesn't pay after a specified period of time — you can choose a timeframe of four, 16, 24 or 32 days after the listing closes.

After a case has been opened for four days without payment, the case will be closed and eBay will refund your Final Value Fee. EBay expects to have this new feature rolled out to all sellers by the start of the holiday selling season. To use the Unpaid Item Assistant, sellers must list with approved safe-payment options in your listings such as PayPal, credit card, Moneybookers, Paymate or ProPay.

EBay has posted an online FAQ that details the new eBay Resolution process.

ProStores Contest: Win a $799 ProStores Package

ProStores has recently launched a new contest, designed to help eBay sellers get their ProStores Web store up and running for the 2009 holiday selling season.

The Jump Start Your ProStores Web Store Contest runs through Nov. 9 at 11:59 PM (PST). To enter, existing ProStores customers or eBay sellers who would like to have a ProStores Web store need to submit a story explaining why you need the most help getting started with a ProStores Web store.

Up to three winners will receive a free ProStores Jump Start Package — a $799 package — which includes a ProStores Web store along with a number of setup and marketing services.

To qualify for an entry, simply visit the ProStores blog and post in the comments section or post to your own blog with a link back to the ProStores contest post. You also must sign up for a ProStores Web store before you can win the contest (don't worry they have free-trial accounts). For further contest details and official rules you can read the ProStores contest blog post.

Also, for more details on how eBay sellers and merchants can use ProStores for their off-eBay Web store needs, watch for our review tomorrow on Ecommerce-Guide.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Web Design: Why Consistency Counts

If you’re designing a Web site, you need to understand and adhere to one iron-clad rule: consistency is vital. You may think that consistency equals a boring design or a lack of imagination, but the opposite is true. It’s crucial design attribute and creating a site without it can lose you customers.

We all look for consistency in the world around us. Whenever you open a reference book, you expect the table of contents to be in the front and the index at the back. You have learned from reading books over the years that this is the pattern that books follow.

If you were to open a book and find the table of contents in the middle and the index at the front, you would be confused. You wouldn’t know how to navigate this book because the design breaks the rules that you have learned.

The same process works on the Web. Your visitors have learned certain rules about navigating shopping sites, and while it might be tempting to design a cutting-edge site that breaks all the rules, that kind of design will cost you visitors.

Visitors won't be able to easily find what they want on your site. At best they will become disorientated and confused. Even worse, they may be angry because you’re wasting their time and making them feel foolish.

The multi-lingual Little Zebra site has everything you’d expect to find in a shopping site, just where you would expect it to be.
(Click for larger image).

Consistency, like good spelling, just is . It doesn’t wave a flag, and it doesn’t say “look at me” — it just exists in the background making your visitors feel comfortable and at home.

Consistency with Other Sites

It’s best to approach consistent design from a number of directions. First, your Web site should behave pretty much the same way as every other Web site. Start with a navigation system, and put it in the same place on every page. Use underlined text only for links — never for emphasis. If your links aren't underlined, then be sure to format them in a way to make it obvious they’re links.

Make sure that the navigation links clearly describe what visitors will find by clicking on them. For example, keep information about your business in the “About Us” page. In addition to the products for sale, you also need to post details about your privacy policy and information regarding the purchase and return process. Online shoppers expect Web shops to provide all of this information.

Consistency within Your Site

Next, you need to ensure consistency within your site. Every page should be clearly identifiable as part of your site. You can’t build walls around your Web site the way you can with a bricks and mortar store. Instead, you define your site by giving each page the same look and feel so that it’s clear to visitors which pages belong to your site and, conversely, which pages do not.

You create this affect through the use of the same type faces, color, images, backgrounds, positioning of elements, page layout, voice, etc. — on every page of your site. When you do this, the visual consistency you create from one page to the next lets you define graphically where your site begins and ends.

Consistency with Your Physical Business

If your business has a physical presence as well as an online presence you should make your Web site consistent with your physical store, too. Your color schemes, logo and all the things that make up the print materials and signage for your bricks-and-mortar business should be reflected in what people see on your Web site.

While your Web site does not have to look exactly the same as your store, if you were to hold up your print materials in one hand and look at your Web site at the same time, the two should be clearly identifiable as part of the same business.

The layout and style at Vanns Spices at show consistency from one page to the next.
(Click for larger image).Consistent Communication Design

The elements of consistency extend beyond your Web site to other forms of communication such as newsletters, PDFs and e-mail. Brand everything clearly and be sure it’s visually identifiable as belonging to your store.

Applying consistent design across your Web site and other communications simplifies the design process. Once you have specified the colors, fonts and design for your Web site, anyone should be able to immediately create a Web page that’s consistent with all the other pages on your site. This will significantly reduce the time it takes to create Web site content.

Profiling Your Style

Develop a simple Web site profile detailing all elements that you use and how they are to be used. For example, list the font names, sizes, colors and any special attributes. Opposite these you should list how and when to use them — i.e., for headings or for body text.

Specify the position and size of your logo, along with the basic layout of every page. Reducing your site design to a series of statements about the elements in use will help you create content more quickly, and it will result in a better-looking site and a better user experience.

Implementing consistency across your Web site — and throughout all aspects of your business — you will create a more professional looking site that your visitors will feel comfortable using.

Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com

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Solve Cart Abandonment Issues by Black Friday

SeeWhy, a conversion service company that can help you recover potentially lost sales due to cart abandonment, has an interesting offer for small to mid-sized e-commerce businesses.

Online merchants who sign up for the new Live-in-Five program by midnight (Eastern time) on November 21, 2009 will have a shopping cart abandonment re-marketing solution up and running “in as little as five days” — in time for the official start of the holiday shopping season on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

How Re-marketing Cart Abandonment Helps Merchants

SeeWhy’s Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Charles Nicholls, said that merchants who capture and re-market to customers who abandon their shopping cart can recoup up to 50 percent of that abandonment.

“In e-commerce we call abandonment The Grinch who steals up to 70 percent of a merchant’s potential sales,” said Nicholls. “Our new Live-in-Five program is designed to get merchants up and running quickly before the 2009 online holiday shopping season starts.”

Like a good retail sales associate who catches empty-handed customers on their way out, SeeWhy’s re-marketing services work like that—they send a timely service contact to ensure the customer doesn’t need further assistance on your site.

The way it works is simple. After signing on with SeeWhy, merchants put tags on site pages. If a customer lands on your site and adds products to his or her cart, at different stages he or she will provide information, such as an e-mail address, that is captured. If the customer abandons the cart before checking out, the SeeWhy service will contact the customer via e-mail asking if he or she needs assistance and provides a direct link to the unchecked basket.

According to Nicholls, when that service contact e-mail goes out within hours, merchants see up to a fifty percent checkout rate on those abandonments. He said that the longer you wait to make the service call, the less response rate you get. “Even when you wait 24 hours, many merchants see a lower response rate from the customer.”

Best Practices, Test factors, Tracking and More

SeeWhy follows industry best practices and adheres to CAN-SPAM standards and legal obligations. When your customer data is captured (e.g. from previously logging into your site log-in or when they create a cart account) they’re to opt-in to receive cart reminders. Before implementing the service, Nicholls recommends that merchants review their online privacy policy to ensure it permits re-marketing offers.

When customers unsubscribe from the cart reminders, SeeWhy immediately removes them from the list. According to Nicholls, these service reminders are so relevant to the customer that they actually see fewer unsubscribe requests than one would see with a general newsletter subscriber list.

The new Live-in-Five program is a more simplified add-on of SeeWhy’s re-marketing service that lets merchants have the service online faster.  After adding basic page tags, SeeWhy works with you to test abandonment and the messages they send out to your customers. Then they turn the service on, and it goes live on your site.

SeeWhy provides the e-mail services and tracks deliverability and open rates, but it can also tightly integrate into an existing e-mail service if you use one. You can also integrate SeeWhy with your analytics solution to track conversions. For example, if you use Google Analytics, SeeWhy can be added as a campaign inside Google Analytics.

Do You Need Incentives to Re-capture a Customer?

Nicholls said that most merchants do not need to offer incentives to regain a customer. “When you send the service contact in a timely manner, that is often enough to capture a proportion of those customers who abandoned their cart,” he said.

Nicholls believes that when merchants send discounts and offers right away, it trains customers to expect a discount when they purchase — a trend we saw last year during the holiday shopping season. He believes that a gentle nudge approach is best. The first contact should be a basic service reminder with a link to the abandoned cart to see whether the customer needs further assistance or encountered a problem with the checkout process.

“After the first 24 hours, if there is no response, then you could offer a small incentive,” he said, “But stay in the context of a service communication and save those free shipping or bigger discount offers for the last contact.”

Pricing and Availability

SeeWhy’s Live-in-Five program is available to all merchants who sign up before midnight on November 21, 2009. By registering before this date, the company promises live service in time for the official start of the holiday shopping season on Black Friday and Cyber Monday (November 27 and November 30).

The company doesn’t charge any fee for accelerating the timing to get service up and running for the big selling season. You do, however, pay for the Abandonment Tracker Pro service. SeeWhy doesn’t make its pricing for that available other than to say it’s based on volume.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Big E-commerce Features for Little Money

Like many small business owners, Brett Rosenthal, the founder and president of ThatsMyShirt.com (and several other t-shirt sites), gets a lot of help from friends and family, including his brother, Reid, who model many of the company’s cool t-shirts.

However, when Reid appeared on season five of the popular ABC reality show The Bachelorette earlier this year, his brother got more help selling his t-shirts than he – or his e-commerce host – could handle.

“In June and July our sites spiked in traffic significantly due to Reid being on The Bachelorette ,” Rosenthal explained. “This would have been great for business, however our existing carrier could not handle the load and we lost a lot of business as a result.”

Even when the show ended, interest in Reid and his t-shirts did not. And Rosenthal got nervous. “We’d been experiencing a lot of timeouts and server issues – and we couldn’t process or even view or edit orders,” he said.

On top of that, customers were getting error messages when attempting to add items to their cart or checkout, so they left. “And we were getting scared of what the holiday rush would be like based on this traffic we saw from Reid.”

In order not to lose critical holiday business, Rosenthal went in search of a new hosted solution, one that would be easy to use, easy to customize and that wouldn’t conk out during peak periods.

After looking at many different hosted solutions, Rosenthal chose BigCommerce, which bills itself as “the world’s easiest to use e-commerce software.”

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EBay Tools: Off-eBay Options to Publish Listings

EBay sellers have a number of online auction tools at their disposal when they use the options on eBay’s own platform to list and sell online. Still, some want to stand out from the competition and millions of item listings on eBay.

One way to enhance your eBay business is to invest in third-party eBay tools — tools you can use on eBay that are not developed by, or included in, eBay’s own online selling platform.  

When you use these tools, you are not giving up anything in terms of running your business. You can choose to keep using eBay’s tools, but at the same time you can use third-party services so you can work with a unique mix of eBay tools to help you grow your eBay business.

Tools to Publish eBay Listings

Auctiva is a certified eBay solution provider offering a full auction-management platform. The solution has a number of features to publish eBay listings, including bulk-listing tools, profiles to quickly add your most commonly used information, image hosting, tools to manage inventory and consignment, Auctiva eBay Stores, traffic counters, automatic customer e-mails, Auctiva secure checkout and more.  In total Auctiva offers more than 15 features and most are options you won't find when using eBay’s own listing platform.

Auctiva offers a free 30-day trial and four account plans to suit any eBay seller. If you run a small eBay business, you can invest $2.95 per month for 14 listings up to $19.95 per month on an unlimited plan that includes the stand-alone Auctiva Commerce Store.

Related EcommerceGuide.com Review: Three New eBay Management Packages.

BiggerBids services for eBay sellers include auction templates and image hosting accounts. The auction templates offered by BiggerBids are designed to save you time by storing the information that doesn't change from one auction to the next. 

You can also make your listings stand out by using eye-catching templates that match your products, or you can choose seasonal themes. To use the service, you add the item information for a listing, upload and edit images, and then select a template that "wraps around" your information.

When you add information, you'll find that you can edit many areas within a BiggerBids' template. For example you can customize your auction title, description, shipping and payment details, auction policies and a number of other data fields.

The service also offers image hosting with a number of features, including bulk image uploads, watermarking tools to brand your eBay item images, image management tools, and an image-to-auction transfer that lets you associate images with the auctions in which they belong.

BiggerBids offers its services (unlimited auction templates and image hosting) to sellers at a flat rate of $8.95 per month.

Related EcommerceGuide.com Review: Sitting Pretty: Five Free Image-Hosting Services.

InkFrog is another certified eBay solution provider that offers a full auction-management platform. Once you have created your account on inkFrog you can then use this service to handle all aspects of your eBay business and listing requirements. When you list an item on eBay, you use inkFrog's interface and also use the seller dashboard to customize eBay templates, manage all inventory tasks such as photo uploads, and to track your eBay sales and history.

The inkFrog auction service costs $9.99 per month flat fee for all services, and the company also offers a free 14-day trial.

Related EcommerceGuide.com Review: Using inkFrog Auction Tools for Princely eBay Profits.

You can use Page Mage, an eBay compatible application that we recently covered, to improve your selling page by listing items in a more interactive and engaging way. For example, you can embed video, show eBay image galleries, or add scrolling text to any eBay auction or fixed-price item listing when you use the Page Mage service.  

Recently added features to this service support the option to publish eBay listings to a number of social networking sites and blogs.

Pricing starts at fifty cents per listing on the pay-as-you-go option, and up to $34.95 per month for 1,000 listings. Page Mage also offers new customers a 60-day free trial account.

Related EcommerceGuide.com Review: Page Mage Lets Sellers Get Creative with eBay Listings.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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How to Protect Your Business Against Cyber Fraud

Like the flu virus, cyber-crime never vanishes, it merely evolves. According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) — a partnership between the FBI and The National White Collar Crime Center — the U.S. lost $239 million to Internet fraud in 2008.  This represents a 33 percent one-year rise, with the recession leading to an increase in fraud both on and off the Internet.

Most online fraud goes unreported — as little as one cyber-crime in seven, according to Justin Yurek, president of ID Watchdog, Inc. As the recession continues, we can expect the problem of cyber fraud to remain with us.

For certain scammers an economic downturn is manna from the gods. In a money crunch people can grow desperate and succumb to even well-publicized e-mail scams — they believe that the Nigerian gentleman who wants to split $8 million with them really exists, or that they did win the Spanish lottery, even though they never bought a ticket.

Even if you’re not gullible or desperate, you still risk falling into an online scam. Among the latest cyber fraud mutations are “typo squatting,” “fast flux” sites and social networking site scams — which contribute to the nine million annual reported cases of identity theft in the U.S., according to the Federal Trade Commission. Here’s a look at the latest concerns.

Typo Squatting: Mind Your Ps & Qs

For years savvy eBay buyers have been purposely misspelling product names in eBay searches, counting on seller typos to keep potential buyers away and to score a bargain. Now a sinister offshoot of this concept — called typo squatting — targets both companies and individuals.

A typo squatter typically registers a domain name that is within a keystroke of a legitimate business (such as Compac for Compaq). The practice is prevalent: in 2008 McAfee Security found 80,000 domains that were typo squatting on the top 2,000 Web sites. Criminals do this to perpetrate click fraud; they cash in on paid ads being sponsored by legitimate Web sites. Worse yet are sites with misspelled bank names intended to lure bank customers to a bogus site set up to harvest the customer’s account numbers and other sensitive information.

Fast Flux and the Botnets

The term “fast flux” refers to scammers who first create “botnets” by hacking into third-party computers via spy ware, virus-bearing e-mails, or browser activity such as compromised banner ads. Without the original owners knowledge, the criminals turn the infected computers into software-infested (ro)bots to do the bidding of the botnet “herder.”

Botnet herders continuously move the location of a Web site, e-mail source or DNS server from one zombie computer to the next, never staying in one place more than several minutes. This makes it extremely difficult to locate and shut down illegal activities and sites.

Social Networking Scams

According to Reuters, Facebook with its 200 million customers has become one of the most dangerous places on the Internet, replacing MySpace as the favorite social networking target for cyber-predators.

Scammers break into Facebook accounts posing as friends, and then direct them to Web sites that harvest personal information and spread viruses. Facebook has an advantage over e-mail systems in that once it detects a spam message they can delete it from all inboxes on the site. Still, Facebook issues this caveat among its terms of use: “We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we can’t guarantee it.”

Romanian Ruse

Online auction fraud has become a cottage industry in tech-savvy Romania. In November 2006 the FBI declared most eBay fraud traceable to “Romania or Romanians.” More than a year later eBay sent detectives to Romania — to no avail as Internet fraud still ranks with human trafficking and drug smuggling as the main crimes in Romania. The fraudsters tend to work out of small towns away from the increased police scrutiny in Budapest.

The above is just one depiction of the many fraud perils lurking on the Internet. Here are a few precautions you can take to minimize your exposure:

Never pay for anything online by Western Union, money gram, or bank wire transfers as the money is virtually unrecoverable with no recourse for the victim. eBay will not even allow sellers to put the words “western union” in an item description. While many legitimate buyers use free e-mail services that do not require a credit card to open the account, so do scammers. Be wary as the free accounts show a higher percentage of Internet fraud than do paid Internet server accounts or a company e-mail address. Laws in other countries may be quite different than those in the U.S. Refuse U.S. buyers or sellers who claim they’re out of the country and request goods or money sent overseas. Always try to obtain a seller’s physical address rather than just a phone number or post office box. Call the seller to make sure the phone number works. Google Maps’ Street View can help accurately assess the risk of fulfilling a suspicious cc order. If the address looks like an abandoned building, call to determine if the cardholder actually made the purchase. To fight click fraud, businesses should monitor order velocity for multiple orders placed within the same day, hour or even minute, typically appearing from one device, address, credit card or user ID. “Friendly fraud” involves a buyer claiming he never purchased or received an item.  A delivery confirmation form will establish that an item is delivered for PayPal transactions, but insurance or registration on international orders can be prohibitively expensive. Cast a wary eye on orders from known fraud hotbeds such as Eastern Europe, Russia and China, to name a few, but be aware that fraud gangs now operate out of most everywhere. Escrow services are not practical for small ticket items. Minimum transaction fees typically start at $25 and go up to $63 for every $1,000 of value for credit cards and $32 per $1,000 for wire transfers. But for piece of mind when purchasing big ticket items, it’s wise to use a reputable escrow service. Escrow.com is fully licensed and registered, and while there are other services licensed in other states, Escrow.com is the only online escrow company that eBay approves (see the company's fee calculator). Be sure to check services carefully as there are many more that are fraudulent. Careful spelling is the first step in avoiding typo-squatting scams. Businesses victimized by typo-squatters can seek recourse with the Federal courts, which have increasingly ruled against the cyber squatters for domain name infringement.

A good resource for monitoring the latest scams is LooksTooGoodToBeTrue.com.

Frank Fortunato is a regular contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com.

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TRUSTe Offers Privacy Services for Small Businesses

According to a recent Marketing Sherpa study, fifty-three percent of consumers worry about sharing personal information — especially when it comes to sharing information with smaller Web sites and businesses.

E-tailers and small business owners with a Web site should establish professional privacy and disclosures policies relating to customer information to boost consumer confidence and to increase conversions. Unfortunately, for a large number of small businesses, creating and maintaining a privacy policy is not something they how to do correctly.

A survey by TRUSTe showed that fifty-six percent of small business owners have no privacy policy in place.  Even worse —the study revealed that one-third of small businesses admitted that they cut-and-pasted a privacy policy from another Web site into their own site.  Not only can this damage your own business and the business you steal a privacy policy from, but it is also creates a risky situation for your site visitors.

TRUSTe Privacy and Security Options for SMB Owners

Fran Maier, CEO of TRUSTe was not shocked by the survey results. While some may consider a lack of a legitimate privacy policy as laziness on the part of a small business Web site owner, she believes that many small businesses know this is an important issue, but they do not have the in-house knowledge or the budget to pay legal fees to implement a privacy policy.

For years TRUSTe has offered its Internet privacy services and seal (trustmark) to a number of well-known brands and corporations — for example eBay and Verizon use TRUSTe certified privacy services.  

After realizing that the need for TRUSTe services in the small business sector existed, TRUSTe launched a new Privacy Service for small and medium businesses.

The service is useful to any small to medium sized business that needs a privacy policy, and different plans include the right to display the TRUSTe Verified Seal — something that will benefit SMBs and especially e-commerce businesses.

Why Privacy Policies Matter for Small E-commerce Businesses

The problem is that many businesses adopt an online business model and don’t give a whole lot of thought to having Web site privacy and security policies in place.

Sales and reputations are at stake because today’s online consumers are savvy—they want to know that a Web site is operated by a legitimate business that will be responsible in handling and safeguarding their personal information. 

When moving business operations online, Maier says that few entrepreneurs pay enough attention to Web site privacy, and they also don’t understand the risks associated with this part of their business Web site.

TRUSTe makes it affordable for companies of all sizes and type to use its privacy services. Businesses who invest in TRUSTe, according to Maier, will be able to grow their reputation and meet the needs and concerns of online customers.

Online merchants who use TRUSTe services that include the use of the TRUSTe Verified Seal now have another reason to investigate the service.  The company recently announced a partnership with the well-known price comparison shopping site, PriceGrabber.com that will show the green TRUSTe logo in product listings in PriceGrabber search. This partnership, which was announced in time for the holidays, will show verified TRUSTe merchant listings to more than 23 million shoppers per month who use PriceGrabber.com

The TRUSTe Privacy Service for SMB

Like the TRUSTe service for larger corporations and brands, the SMB privacy service gives the same level of professional privacy policy and options to display same the TRUSTe Verified Seal that many larger corporations and businesses already use.

If you want to get a good privacy policy in place — or to dispense with the cut-and-paste privacy you are using — TRUSTe’s Basic Privacy Policy is a one-time service, starting at $249. The service uses TRUSTe’s proprietary Privacy Policy Generator and will provide you with an industry-compliant privacy policy that is based on your own business practices.  

For an online business looking to offer a secure site to encourage consumer trust, the TRUSTe Privacy Service includes the custom SMB privacy policy as well as options to display the highly recognizable TRUSTe Verified Seal.  

Pricing starts at $49.00 per month and offers a number of features including A/B testing to measure transactional improvements from displaying the trustmark, regular updates on privacy issues, and consumer dispute resolution services. To qualify for the trustmark seal, a business must pass Web-based privacy and security scans. 

Lastly, the new SMB-focused privacy and security services also let businesses with a more demanding privacy program apply for TRUSTe’s flagship Web privacy certification program. This program offers one-on-one privacy consultations, assistance with privacy disclosures and practices, consumer dispute resolution services and unlimited display uses of TRUSTe’s Web Privacy Seal. Pricing starts at $849 per year.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Page Mage: Publish eBay Listings on Social Sites

Page Mage, an eBay Compatible Application, which launched in beta last August ( see Page Mage Lets Sellers Get Creative with eBay Listings ), has recently upgraded its service to include social networking features for eBay sellers, along with a new pricing structure.

Using Page Mage, you can improve your eBay selling page by listing items in a more interactive and engaging way. For example, you can embed video, show eBay image galleries, or add scrolling text to any eBay auction or fixed-price item listing when you use the Page Mage service.

New Page Mage features lets sellers publish eBay listings to social networks with one-click.
(Click for larger image).

Chris Taylor, vice president of marketing, said that the newly added social features are designed to help sellers reach out to friends and their network of friends on some of the more popular social media sites.

“Access to social commerce is something that sellers want,” said Taylor. “Through social media sites any eBay seller can reach out people who will have more trust in them, since they are a friend—or friend of a friend.”

Publish eBay Listings on Facebook and other Social Sites

Page Mage has made it easy for sellers to push their interactive eBay listings across multiple social media platforms. It takes only a single click to publish your Page Mage eBay listings to your online social networking accounts.

The actual process of listing on eBay using Page Mage has not changed.  You still connect an eBay account in Page Mage and then design your graphical ad template for your eBay listing. Page Mage has plenty of options for adding eBay image galleries, video, and scrolling text to make the ad more engaging and interactive for buyers.

With the new features, once you have submitted your listing and it is live on eBay, you will see an option to "share" the listing. When you click the share link you will see a new screen that lets you choose which social networking sites you want to publish the listing to.

Page Mage currently supports posting to a number of social networking sites and blogs, including Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Live Spaces, Voz, iGoogle and several others.

The first time you publish on a social site, you will need to provide your login and password for that site, however, once connected through Page Mage you don’t need to provide that information again. This makes it faster to share subsequent listings.

On Facebook your ad will appear in your Wall so that your friends can add comments or share your listing with their friends.
(Click for larger image).

Before you publish eBay listings to a social profile, Page Mage gives you an option to select the size of the thumbnail that will be displayed. For example on Facebook or MySpace you can use a bit larger graphic than you would for posting to your blog.  

Lastly, you will add a description or message that will be shown with the graphic that appears on your profile status (or wall in the case of Facebook), so people in your social network can comment on or share your new listing with their friends. 

One of the unique features of Page Mage’s new social publishing tool is that when someone in your network clicks the post, the image expands to show the full listing, including any eBay image galleries, video or scrolling text you used when you designed the eBay listing.  When people click the full ad they are directed to the actual listing on eBay to bid or buy.

New Pricing for the Social Interactive eBay Listings

In addition to launching the new social features to its service, Page Mage has also rolled out new pricing for its interactive eBay listing service.  According to Taylor, Page Mage has a core group of customers who provide feedback— as a result of that feedback, the company now offers a number of plans based on the number of ads you create — not the number of features you use in each ad. 

The pay-as-you-go option lets you pay fifty cents per listing and this includes all the service’s features.  People who sell more frequently on eBay can choose from one of three monthly subscription plans to reduce the cost per listing. The plans include subscriptions at $9.95 per month for 40 listings, $19.95 per month for 200 listings and $34.95 per month for 1,000 listings.

Page Mage also offers new customers a 60-day free trial account.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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SEO Marketing Tips: Optimize E-mail Campaigns

Campaigner, an e-mail marketing solutions provider, launched a series called  101 Tips for Getting Started with E-mail Marketing to help small business owners implement successful e-mail marketing campaigns. One of the topics covered by Campaigner includes using SEO (search engine optimization) best practices to enhance your campaign performance.

To take advantage of SEO, you need to archive your e-mail campaigns online—on your own Web site or blog. On your Web site, you should offer links to your past newsletters right from the main page navigation.  Not only will this provide new content for your site visitors to read, but you will also get more mileage out of relevant content when you repurpose your e-mail campaigns.

Wendy Lowe, Campaigner's director of product marketing says that SEO and e-mail are a great compliment to one another. She continued, "Using SEO best practices can really help you hone in on what customers are searching for."

Five Tips for working SEO into your E-mail Marketing

If you want to optimize your e-mail content for search engines, Lowe offers these five tips that can help small businesses get started quickly.

1. Start SEO and E-mail Campaign Planning with Keyword Research

The best way to have your e-mail content optimized for search engines is to research relevant keywords that not only reflect your product or service but that also signal buyer intent.  Keyword research is not a difficult task.  Lowe recommends the free Google AdWords Keyword Tool to get you started. Using the tool you can search existing Web sites and topics to see top keywords for the site. This will also let you check your main competitors’ sites to see their best keywords.

2. Coordinate SEO and E-mail Marketing for Best Results

You don’t have to choose between SEO efforts and e-mail marketing. Most people look at SEO as a way to optimize their Web site, but you should combine the two and incorporate SEO elements into all aspects of your online marketing efforts.  When preparing your e-mails, Lowe suggests that you actually “think in keywords” when you write—just as you would for Web site content. Any SEO changes made to your site or special sub-pages on your site should always carry over to your e-mail marketing campaigns.

3. Surround Text Links with Relevant Keywords

Once you have completed your keyword research and are ready to optimize your e-mail campaigns, Lowe recommends that you surround hyperlinks with those important keywords.  Wherever you use a keyword it should be hyperlinked back to your main Web site or a landing page for best results. You should also include relevant and descriptive words around the hyperlink, as search engines do look at the words which are near hyperlinks on pages.

4. Bolster e-mail Marketing Results with Specific Landing Pages

Landing pages—unique Web pages that contains information that would interest your targeted readers—are extremely important for e-mail campaigns. In the e-mail you would direct your subscribers to a special landing page that would explain the product or promotion details. It’s really about providing your best-of-the-best sales copy to encourage the visitor to make the desired action, such as download an eBook,  purchase the product or sign-up for a special offer list.  When you create the landing page, it is important to incorporate SEO by using your targeted keywords on all landing pages.

 5. Repurpose E-mail Content into a Blog for an SEO Visibility Boost

Rather than “orphan” your e-mail content, Lowe recommends that businesses get a blog and repurpose their e-mail campaigns to it.  If you currently do not have a business blog, then you use a free blogging service, such as WordPress or Blogger to repurpose your search engine optimized e-mail content.  In addition to putting the content on your blog and linking to it from your Web site, Lowe says that the content can also be used in other marketing tasks, such as including portions of the content with the keywords in any press releases you send out.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Free Twitter Tools to Tweak Your Tweets

When it comes to social media services, Twitter is now up there in popularity with Facebook, blogs, Digg and YouTube. A microblogging service that wants you to provide the answer to " What are you doing? " in 140 characters or less is used to post links to pages and Web content they like, to randomly update friends' on what's new, and also to market their own products and services via online tweets.

When you create your Twitter account, the site offers a basic update form box where you can send out your tweets. Outside of using Twitter's own Web interface, there are a number of applications clients, tools add-ons and helpers you can download to make tweeting a better, faster process. To help you sort out the best options for tweaking your Tweeter tactics, we take a look at several cool and useful Twitter tools including URL shrinks, Twitter clients and Twitter Web widgets to get you started. Shrink That URL

One of the most important tools used by Twitterers are URL shrinkers — online services that will take a long URL you want to include in your Tweet and shrink it down. Technically speaking, these Web services provide short aliases for redirecting long URLs , however URL shrink is the more common description to use.

So, why would you need to redirect a URL? Remember that tweets are limited to 140 characters and you really don't want to waste that space with a long URL. That is why tweeple love URL shrinkers. You can toss out a URL and still have character space to describe what is on that Web page. Read the Full Story

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EBay Adds Top-Rated Badges, Ups Buy-It-Now Conditions

New Top-rated Seller Program Confuses Sellers

EBay rolled out its top-rated seller changes this week, but managed to upset a number of sellers before clarifying rules and dates.  As we covered back in July (Sellers: Get Ready for New eBay Policies), the company rolled top-seller status into the PowerSeller program and now rewards those who have only a few 1 and 2 DSR scores with a special badge to inspire buyer trust.

This month, when top-rated rolled out, a number of sellers who met the requirements were not invited to the program because they were not PowerSellers. Information provided by eBay in a previous announcement indicated that qualifying sellers who were not PowerSellers would not receive an invite to top-rated until April of next year. Being excluded from the top-rated seller program right before the rush of holiday sales was the biggest issue for sellers.

New eBay search options let buyers see listings from only sellers who have a Top-rated seller badge.
(Click for larger image).

The topic had many sellers upset and frustrated, however Brian Burke from the Seller Standards Team used the official discussion forum to tell sellers that if they qualify for top-rated now—including those who do not have PowerSeller status but meet $3,000 U.S. sales per year— they would receive invites for the PowerSeller program the week of October 11th. This will make those sellers eligible for top-rated status around October 20th.

While the official clarification helped, some smaller sellers posting to the discussion forum believe that top-rated will continue to hurt their eBay business by making their listings near-impossible to find and less appealing to buyers in eBay search results.

EBay’s New Featured-First Option Now Available

This past week eBay officially announced the retirement of several listing features, including Featured Plus, Border, Highlight, Gift services, ProPack and Homepage Featured.  Sellers who purchased these features for listings that are online past October 1st will receive pro-rated credit.

The new Featured First option was also made available to top-rated sellers. Featured First gives sellers a chance to have their listing randomly selected to appear in the Featured area (top ads) section of a search results page.

Featured Plus is another topic that has been debated in eBay's Seller Discussion forum.  Some sellers are not pleased that Featured Plus will only show your listing as featured on the search results page it normally appears on. A few sellers believed that paying for Featured Plus would help them to be shown in top ads on the first page of search results. That is not so. If, for example, a listing was shown on page three during a search, Featured Plus bumps it to a top ad on page three, not the top of page one results.

To use Featured Plus, sellers must maintain a top-rated seller status. The optional listing upgrade also does not come cheap.  EBay charges $24.95 for Featured First on auction-style or fixed price listings (in three- to 10-day durations) and $74.95 for fixed price (30 Days, Good 'Til Canceled) or classified ad.

New Buy It Now Requirements

You can add eBay’s popular Buy It Now (BIN) option to an Auction-style listing for an additional fee. If an auction bid has not yet been placed, Buy It Now allows buyers to purchase at the BIN price, instead of placing an auction bid. Until now, sellers could set any auction start price and any Buy It Now price they wanted. Under the new guidelines sellers must set the Buy It Now price to be at least 10 percent higher than the auction start price.

In eBay's official announcement, the company stated that it noticed some sellers would set the Buy It Now price to be the same dollar amount or just a few pennies more than the auction start price. According to eBay this practice takes away from the excitement of auctions for buyers and also confuses buyers.

Keeping sellers on-task with the new guideline will be an automated process. When sellers create an Auction-style listing with the Buy It Now feature, they will be unable to submit the listing if the new 10 percent more guideline is not met. A message will appear asking for a valid Buy It Now price until a valid price is set.

Vendio Announces Reviser Special Edition

As many sellers know, eBay has changed its requirements on Good 'Til Canceled listings, requiring sellers to include handling and return policies. Working with eBay, Vendio has released a simple solution that can help save sellers hours of manual work to updating their listings. 

The tool, called Vendio Reviser Special Edition, helps eBay sellers to quickly make changes to a variety of selling policies, including handling time and return policy. Using the tool, you would simply select the policies you want to update on a single screen and have the policy changes updated across all of your live listings.

To use the new tool, eBay sellers will need to register on Vendio.com then confirm their eBay Account with Vendio and enter in the new handling and return policies. Vendio Reviser Special Edition costs $20 per month, and there is no limit on the number of revisions you can make with the monthly subscription.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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