Category — Misc

Everyone wants a great looking eBay Store, but what some people don’t know is the limitations on stores and eBay Listings.

1. Live Chat on an eBay Listing or store: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/reviewsandguides/links-reviews-guides.html Prohibited links include: Links or other connections to live chat systems. You can include a live chat link in your About Me page or custom Stores pages, but not in your Store home page.  You may include your chat user names in an item description, but not a link to chat. http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-links.html
2. Audio or Video on eBay: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/listing-links.html You can include a video in your listings as long as it can be played back within the listing. But you’re not allowed to link from your description to a video on another website. There are some exceptions, ie: YouTube video is okay.
3. Mailing Lists on eBay: Links or solicitations to subscribe to non-eBay newsletters or mailing lists are not allowed.
4. Scripts on eBay: If you try to use scripts that we disable, you’ll get an error message that says “Disallowed JavaScript/HTML Syntax”. This means you won’t be able to list the item, or the script will be disabled at run-time.
5. Logos with .com on ebay: Anchor Store logos that are used on the Stores home page have to include the official Store name, and the name can’t include any of the variations of “.com” or other extensions like .net or .org
6. Phone numbers on eBay: Store logos and Anchor Store logos can’t include phone numbers, email addresses, or other contact information
7. Flash on eBay: Store logos and Anchor Store logos can’t flash, move, or be animated

There are virtually hundreds of rules for eBay Stores and eBay Auction Listings, but the above sampling are a few of the more common requests that we get. While we can design using any of these infractions we do not recommend it. It’s only a matter of time for any eBay seller until a competitive seller will bring your store or listing to the attention of the eBay policy enforcers and you are pulled down for this. I’ve seen sellers with thousands of auctions be pulled down in a heartbeat even though they have sold for years on eBay.

I will be out and about and traveling to Las Vegas for the Ecommerce Summit 2010 Tuesday April 13. eBay will once again be sending an army of executives from the various departments to the eCommerce Summit to spend quality face time with sellers about their issues, suggestions and concerns. In addition there will be a host of great speakers but more importantly great friends to network with on everything eCommerce.  If you’re in Vegas, look me up!

..Suzanne

So many eBay sellers need to photograph small items and have them look good to compete with other sellers. So today’s hot topic is how to do it inexpensively.

Well first of all a milk carton will do fine. Basically you can remove the pour spout from an opaque gallon container and put your jewelry inside on a gift box. Then put two lights of about 100 watts diagonally on the back area, such as this example sitting on a table top.

In addition to making your own, you can purchase the dome tent type which can be pretty pricey. But we have a few listed here that are only about $30. dollars or so which we located on the internet.

Click any of the links to follow and find them for yourself.

Below: About 35.00 dollars:

Below: About 50 to 75. dollars:

Hugh 60″ Inch Light Tent Lighttent Studio Photography White Photo Light Tent – Digitent – Dome – Cube – Box + 4 Chroma Key Back Drop Black White Blue Red PB60 B

Photo Light Tent 30″ Professional Studio Quality by PBL

When you start a campaign for Google Adwords, you might want to consider excluding certain types of networks. For example, if you are selling an ecommerce product, you’ll want to exclude places where people don’t normally travel to purchase goods. For example sites about crime and war. We used to tell our clients to simply use Search only, but in some cases you’ll want to get on networks. Some of the sponsored links on buying sites can be very important for some products.

Therefore, you may want to exclude things like Parked domains, error pages, crime sites, death and tragedy etc. To do this you should click on “Exclusions” and use the list under Campaign Level to exclude those places. This will get you into content areas and yet get you out of money wasters that can reak havoc on your advertising budget.

There are many different types of pages for websites, some more complex than others. Here are two examples of web pages that vary from the simple to the extensive.

Basic Web Design: This one is a simple site without a styled logo and with a basic left navigation. No mouseovers, no slides, no flash banners just simple text and some graphic elements. This type of design is a great start and can be modified later to enhance and improve it.

Premium Web Design: This one has a styled logo, top header, flash images, styled left navigation, mutliple banners, etc. This is an example of premium design.

An interesting article appears from 2007 demonstrating that Sprint had more kahunas than most frustrated customer service reps when it “broke up” with a group of high maintenance customers. The note went like this:

“Our records indicate that over the past year, we have received frequent calls from you regarding your billing or other general account information. While we have worked to resolve your issues and questions to the best of our ability, the number of inquiries you have made to us during this time has led us to determine that we are unable to meet your current wireless needs. Therefore after careful consideration, the decision has been made to terminate your wireless service agreement effective July 30, 2007.“

Sprint explains that these customers impact the service given to other customers causing long delays in service.

This leads to the question of the day. Especially during this recession. Should you break up with high maintenance clients?

You know the old addage that 20% of your customers provide 99% of your income and I’ll add to this that at least 10% of your customers demand 100% of your attention at one time or another and don’t care how many other customers suffer because of this. It’s difficult to offer good customer service with these types of clients.

But more importantly the provider has to set the tone for the expectations of the relationship. Nobody likes fine print but when it comes to customer service and support, it seems to be a necessary evil. There is always at least one of your clients that is going to abuse the privilege and skew the system.

During this recession, some of our clients have reported that a good percentage of people  are willing to abuse the system most likely out of lack of funds and desperation to get things without having to pay for them. Certainly on their side they can claim that something is wrong with your service or product, but the fact of the matter is that for some people it’s time to lay down the law or cut your losses.

Life is too short to let a few bad apples to ruin the bunch. If you find that more than 1% of your customers are taking advantage of you, it’s time to write a bit of fine print and put that out in the view of your customers so they understand what you will and will not do to please them. This is especially true of first time customers.

Even Zappos.com has tiered their services for loyal customers vs. new customers.

The retailer had typically upgraded both first-time and repeat customers to overnight shipping even though it wasn’t advertising that perk. But starting in 2009, Zappos will no longer offer overnight upgrades to first-time visitors. Instead, CEO Tony Hsieh is moving those dollars into a new VIP service for Zappos’ most loyal shoppers. [1]

Sprint may have raised eyebrows when they “fired” their high maintenance customers, but in these hard times it ’s becoming more and more important to cut costs and cut your losses early with problem customers.  This provides you an opportunity to provide the type of customer service to the rest of your loyal customers that is needed to survive in the current business climate.