Web Site Design Blog

I keep getting calls from clients, potential clients, and of course my mother. With the exception of mom, many clients want to use a particular system to run both auctions on eBay and their website. This is all well and good. I’ve analyzed various huge powersellers for traffic, linking, and PR Rank with Google and made some discoveries that are important if you really want a website venue that sells on it’s own, without regard to eBay traffic.

First and foremost, realize that when you are talking to auction managers that they are selling a bundle of products and services, some better than others. Go look at the #1 seller on eBay and the #1 seller in your category. Are they running a website from an auction management tool? The time you save using these systems will be the cost and time you’ll spend later in Pay Per Click on Google, or the lost revenues that you’ll deal with if you go this route. I’m not saying that those services are not valid or good, but figure out if you are #1 or #500 and make a decision. The listing manager company is there to make money, and to sell you their products. They are not independant consultants. They are not going to tell you where to go, except to go with them. Now on some of them, I concur. Some of them have an excellent package. But you have to do the homework to find out for sure.

Auction management listing tools offer you an advantage in inventory management, but don’t get lazy. The time that is spent daily or weekly on updating inventories is only a few minutes. Integrating the sales into your back office system is a one time deal. After that you get the sales, and you fill the orders. If you work on Amazon, you’ve already had the opportunity to merge two channels, now merge three.

The issue comes in when you try to get independant traffic from your eBay buyers. Sure you’ve got plenty of traffic there, so why bother with a website? Most store owners will say they want more traffic, the abundance of traffic out there. So don’t shoot yourself in the foot. Using an auction management companies standard website offering will have some issues when it comes to PR rank on Google. Most of the rank acutally goes to your auction manager, and not to your website.

How can you tell if your auction management tool is good for your website too?

When analyzing traffic rank, get the google toolbar.Go to your favorite “huge eBay seller” and take a look at his PR rank. Is it over 4, or better yet, over 5? If not, this is not good. Nearly anyone can,with a bit of trying get a PR rank that is a 4, especially on a product site. Get the Alexa toolbar, is his rank lower than 200,000? If not, it’s a sure bet that his is not going to be reaping the benefit of a stand alone website. Although you may admire him because he looks great, his wonderful marketing has worked on you! That is what sets him apart from the other sellers that you compete with. But take a look at the inside workings and analyze his traffic rank. If his rank is nearly the same as yours, then likely you have bought the goods from his beautiful templates and branding and not based upon reality in sales and conversions.

Then there was my other favorite Bill Cobb moment from eBay Live!

If you’ve ever attended the Gala event at Live, it is a sight to behold. Who could resist walking through a greeting line of hundreds of eBay employees all cheering you on? I have to tell you this is one of the great things about eBay’s Gala night. It’s almost a throwback from the 80’s group dynamic seminars. When you walk into the hall, there are litterally hundreds of staffers who have spent the better part of two hours cheering every single person who walked in those doors. They clap until their hands are red. They cheer until their voices are hoarse. It’s a great warm feeling for every eBay seller and buyer to walk in and be famous for that one moment in time.

Anticipating yet another great time at the Gala, we stood in line, rather than go to dinner with our powerseller buddies, and we stood in line and stood and walked and stood and finally just a mere mile from the entrance to the gala event, it hit me. There’s a bathroom right over there and I can make it. I can run in and run out and get back in line. So off I flew. I came running back out, expecting to jump back in, but no. One of our friendly eBay staffers said, no cuts missy, get back in line.

I guess by now I was the second to the last person in the parade of people who entered the hall with the cheering and screaming eBay staffers. By now I would have been overcome with anger (and I was) watching my group up there at the top of the escalator and me at the end of the line… but just as I entered the line, I was greeted by that oh so wonderful face of Mr. Wonderful. That’s right it was Bill Cobb. I shook his hand, he remembered me from days of late, and a big smile came across my face. (damnit – I was planning to be miserable, mad and angry, after all wasn’t I just about the last person in the door!).
Nevertheless, that was a fine Bill Cobb moment.
Thanks for that Bill, you’re a trooper. I have to applaud any CEO, or VP for standing in a group of staffers cheering on customers. I guess if I made a gazillion bucks a year I would do it too. You can always get bandaids for those tired feet later on, eh.

Don’t forget next year, hope they do that cheering thing again. Just love that!

For those who couldn’t make it to eBay Live this year, fear not. We have the scoop.
We walked, and walked and walked and we still didn’t feel that we were that close to anything until we saw those goldenpalace casino guys handing out tickets. What’s this? Do they actually have a booth? No, but who cares. All is well that ends well.

Bill Cobb is really one of my favorites. He’s a gentle man, has integrity, stands tall, is friendly and I really like him. So why was he booed at the keynote address? Well that was the pesky little fiasco called search in stores. Everyone loved it and they took it away. Why? Well because of buyer confusion. Buyers were apparently confused when too many choices were offered. I guess that means that buyers on eBay don’t like choices. What?! Are you serious! That is the joy of eBay and something that kills every seller there. A bone was thrown out with that one and then it was taken back like candy from a baby, like a piece of meat from a pit bull. There will be no search in stores, it was just too much fun for sellers to reap profits off of that at the expense of eBay’s bottom line, or so it is said. Since eBay said one thing and lots of people guessed another thing, no one knows for sure, but that is the joy of eBay. We shall never know what really happened to search in stores. But what we do know is that eBay sellers want it back and eBay isn’t giving.

Well that’s a story for another day.

Now back to eBay Live. We walked and walked – oh right, I already said that. Walking was fun. The exhibitor hall was good. Many vendors there selling their eBay related wares. Sellathon did a hell of a business I hear. Marsha Collier was grand with her friend accompanying her, signing her autographed books at Buysafe’s booth. Buysafe is good. We recommend it to any seller needing a boost in integrity.

Now eBay has gone wiki, and eBay has gone with blogs and that is a good thing. It’s more of the Google authoritative thing. I guess I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth repeating. If you have an authoritative site, you’ll do well with natural search. eBay is on the right track here with many sellers touting the eBay Guides as a good way to SEO (search engine optimization) for those newbies out there. In fact from what I gather, doing a guide will give you almost instant gratification as an authority from eBay coupled with Google search results. Wallah! Note to self: Start writing those guides and do it now.

… well until next time… we’re off to write a guide, or .. um.. okay, gotta go do some web pages for customers that are waiting.

See you next year at Live!