Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts

Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Amazon announce UK sales figures...and they may surprise a few

Recently, online marketplace giants Amazon have been making a number of headlines here in the UK, along with other global brands such as Starbucks and Google, after a number of questions by the British Members of Parliament regarding the amount they have been paying as their UK tax.

According to written evidence published on the Parliament website, Amazon have released sales figures for the last three years, including the amount they in UK VAT. In 2009, 2010 and 2011, Amazon had net sales in the UK of £1.65 billion, £2.36 billion and £2.91 billion respectively. This resulted in them paying £172 million, £262 million and £416 million in VAT. 

While this is a significant amount in terms of generated revenue, to many people, this is much less than they were expecting. With a number of large brand retailers in the UK doing well in excess of £8 billion in sales last year, it puts into perspective that the success of Amazon isn't as great as many people have previously thought.

As there seems to be a constant battle for supremacy between Amazon and eBay for online marketplace success, with Amazon's yearly sales much lower than many expected, it begs the question is eBay equally as over hyped as Amazon seems to be? or is eBay in fact head and shoulders above the rest in terms of generating sales through their online marketplace? 

We shall just have to wait and see...

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Tuesday, 9 October 2012

US ruling may spell the end for many online stores

A case due to get underway with oral arguments on October 29th in the United States could have significant ramifications not only for sellers in America, but all online stores worldwide.  

Kirtsaeng v. Wiley came about when student Supap Kirtsaeng decided to buy foreign editions of textbooks abroad and bring them back to the US in order to sell them to college students. However, this seemingly breached a law set in 1978, that has been in place to protect publishers, such as Wiley & Sons, by barring unauthorised importation from abroad when the sale price is different from that in the United States.

Supap Kirtsaeng's defence against this law is that although the book itself does have copyright laws, once Supap purchased the book, he became the lawful owner of the book under the "First Sale Doctrine." This means that in his eyes he should be able to freely do what he likes with the book, such as sell it, because when he purchased the book, the copyright law no longer applied. However, this argument was dismissed by the second circuit who ruled that this only applied to goods that were manufactured in the US.

If the supreme court judge, agrees with the second circuit ruling and decides to come down in the favour of Wiley & Sons, it will mean that eBay stores, Amazon stores and any other online sellers will be unable to sell copyrighted material, as they will be in breach of these copyright laws. While this legal action is based on a publication, the decision could most likely spell the end of being able to sell not just books, but all copyrighted material such as films, music. As ecommerce shopping is now bigger than ever with a number of different online stores selling a whole host of different products, the removal of the first sale doctrine could seemingly cripple this sales platform with many online sellers unable to sell products that were manufactured abroad to customers in the US.

However, the biggest hit within the US will be the library system as it will unable to loan out books that were printed abroad due the fact they would first need to obtain permission to do so from the copyright holder. 

While it will most likely be months before a decision is made, should the judge rule in favour of John Wiley & Sons, it is seemingly going to be a nervous wait for many ecommerce stores who may be put out of business by the ruling.  

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eBay tweak search listings to aid small stores

eBay have made a few alterations to their search results, opting to remove the 'New Shopping Experience' product cards and simply sort results by the best match only.

The 'New Shopping Experience' launched in 2011 was originally intended to rival Amazon's product layouts by placing product cards within the various search results that have the title of the product and then states how many of these are available to buy new, refurbished, used and in the next auction. 

The problem many eBay stores found with this feature was that the search results were rather top heavy with the bigger store's products, meaning that new or not as established online stores often saw their traffic and sales suffer as a result. While it was seemingly good for the customer in terms of grouping a particular product for sale together, it meant that some online stores may have their products appear high up the search results even though they may not have merited it.

The removal of the 'New Shopping Experience' now means that for all ecommerce stores selling within the eBay marketplace, their product ranking within search results will now be entirely dependant on how closely they match the search criteria that the customer has entered. Read 'A detailed guide to increasing your sales on eBay' for detailed information on how you can tailor your eBay products to ensure you have the best chance of appearing as high up the best match search results as possible. 

According to an email sent out by Michael Jones, eBay's Vice President of Merchant Development, the removal of the 'New Shopping Experience' feature is an attempt at "simplifying the path between a buyer's search for popular products and your listings." However, the question many people are now asking is that, now the product cards have been removed, should sellers still use the catalogue feature in order to list their products? The answer in undoubtedly yet. While the product cards feature has been removed, it is thought that eBay will continue to develop the catalogue feature, allowing sellers to specifically link their products to the correct categories, allowing customers to come across the product easier if it is something they are searching for. 



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Monday, 17 September 2012

Amazon giving online sellers a helping hand this Christmas

Amazon are looking to help sellers increase sales for their online store by hosting two web seminars within the next two weeks. 

The first seminar will be held on the Wednesday 19th September from 10am to 11am and will look at how you can increase your brand exposure and conversion rate for your ecommerce store through improving your listings. The idea behind the seminar is to try and improve your listing details to make it easier for customers to find your products both on product searches and when browsing the marketplace Internationally. 

The second webinar will be held exactly one week after the first one Wednesday 26th September at the same time and will look at how you can take advantage of the busy Christmas selling period focussing more so on being prepared for the busy customer traffic through monitoring your stock and data through analytics and stock control. The online seminar will also look at some of the problems you may encounter during the festive period and how to overcome them. Check out 'Royal Mail looking to help businesses through the Christmas rush' to get some more information about many of the problems you may experience over the Xmas period.

Over the Christmas period more than any other time of the year, stock control is of the utmost importance. With literally millions of people looking to purchase products online for friends and family, running out of stock during this period is going to result in you missing out on a large number of sales. If you have a number of online selling platforms or are just struggling to keep track of your stock levels, you can use some stock synchronisation software to keep track of all your stock levels across all of your platforms. As we at eSellution are currently offering users a free ecommerce store, you can sign up now with eSellution and get this stock synchronisation for your online stores for free, well in time for the Christmas rush. 

While both of these seminars are aimed at improving your conversion rate through Amazon, the techniques and information you will gain through this seminar can also be applied to all other forms of online selling such as your eBay store or other ecommerce selling platforms.

Register for the web seminars using the links below.

Improve your listing quality to maximise your exposure and conversion: http://go.amazonservices.com/webinar474041344.html

How to maintain a good performance for the Chrismas period and beyond: http://go.amazonservices.com/webinar474041344.html 

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Monday, 20 August 2012

eBay's grand gesture or cunning advertising ploy?

eBay have announced that they are making all sports collectable items free to list until the end of the year. This will come as great news to some online stores as these items can be listed for free on both auctions and buy now listings.

The sports collectibles section on eBay contains items such as signed photographs of sports stars, shirts, match day programs and various other sporting memorabilia. 


It has been touted for many months that eBay could drop listing fees from some items in an attempt to gain an advantage in their battle with rival marketplace, Amazon, who have seemingly been improving their standing with sellers as of late. 

The new setup for sports collectable sellers means that store owners under the "Basic" account setting can list up to 5,000 items without having to pay insertion fees, with "Premium" and "Anchor" packages able to list up to 10,000. Sellers who do not have an online eBay store are able to list 500 sports collectable items without having to pay the listing fees.

However, while this does seem like a grand gesture on the part of eBay to offer some online sellers the chance to list products on their eBay store for free, other believe that this is part of a greater revenue scheme. One theory is that the removal of the listing price for this item category will result in sellers listing more items. The more items that are placed on eBay, the more advertisements that are going to be seen by buyers, which in turn will result in great advertising revenue for eBay.



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Wednesday, 8 August 2012

eBay launches new shipping service

eBay have announced the release of a new shipping service called "eBay Now." Although currently only in its testing phase in San Fransicso, the idea is to offer customers the ability to have same day delivery on products purchased from a local store. 

The shipping service will only be available on orders made over $25 with a $5 shipping fee. Other stipulations behind the service are that to qualify for same day delivery, products must be purchased at least an hour before the store closes as it will take an hour to deliver. Purchases made with less than an hour remaining will be made at 9am the next day.

The idea behind the new service is to compete with Amazon's same day shipping which is currently offered to 10 major cities in the US. eBay have looked to undercut Amazon with their 5 dollar delivery fee as Amazon currently charge $8.99 with an additional 99 cents for each item purchased.

eBay Now is currently only available to a number of invitees, however, you can sign up to be part of the beta in the future via the eBay Now website. People who sign up to the beta will receive $15 credit on their first order and free delivery on their first three purchases.



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