More eBay Changes affect ProStores merchants

ProStores has sent a note around a couple of days ago advising ProStore owners that the checkout redirect that they can now have with eBay will not be there after 2010… and the nice news is that ProStores has “chosen” not to support the requirements of checkout redirect until then so it will go away much sooner. “As of June 15, 2009, they will only allow Third-Party Checkout through vendors who have updated their checkout pages to meet specific design and functionality requirements. Among the required changes, eBay has eliminated the ability to cross-sell and up-sell items from your own Web store in the checkout flow. ”

Therefore folks, until June 15 when checkout redirect will no longer be used , unless you’re on another system (other than ProStores) who will abide by the difficult to maintain API piece that eBay is now requiring. ProStores will sign off of checkout redirect on July 15.
This tells me either eBay’s requirements are too difficult for anyone to consider, even eBay’s own ProStores platform, or that eBay doesn’t consider it an important item, (which of course they don’t since they are going to put it to bed).

This frankly means that eBay merchants who use any platform for an off-eBay store, I mean a website, will need to realize that eBay if a fantastic traffic generator and a couple of things will need to be in place to help you cross-sell from eBay.

1. a userid on eBay that matches a domain name

2. an “About me” page with links to your website

The first being of the utmost importance because we don’t know how long eBay will allow off-site linking to assist eBay sellers in saving money on fees.