Auctiva - Powerful solutions for eBay Sellers

I have just begun looking at the Beta tonight. I have some off-eBay stores already, including one that uses Zen Cart and is pretty feature-heavy.

To be competitive, I'd like to see Auctiva have all the features of a Zen Cart site, including ebooks available for download immediately after payment. And including both automatic and manual availability for uploading to Google Base and others---and also store backups that we could do on our own as we built our site and added product, backups stored both on Auctiva site and also on our own computer. That would bring it into competition with a Zen Cart type store.

Somebody's setup a while ago advertised drag and drop customization of the template. What a dream that would be! If the store setup were really simple without confusion with shipping zones, etc.; had simple product addition, including auto-imports from our eBay store; and had a drag-and-drop template customization, it would be an instant winner---and would really stand out. You might look at PrestoStores as far as ease of setup; that "out of the box" capability is what sellers are looking for--plus the more feature-rich aspects of other systems.

Having to pay a large fee to a site developer right off the bat is pretty much out of reach for the typical eBay refugee. Sales are slow, and startup needs to be as inexpensive as possible.

The setup regarding zones and shipping seems a little buggy. It was hard to know when to click Continue. I had clearly picked shipping variation by weight, but it kept giving me a screen for shipping variation by cost. I never found a place for weight setup, and only got the process to move along by putting zeros in the variation by cost grid.

Will the shipping variation by weight be built-in like eBay, or will we need to integrate with USPS like Zen Cart requires?

I'd like to see the option of a built-in shipping calculator like that of eBay, but with the capability of computing total weight and computing fees based on the total checkout weight.

I'd like to see the listing process as simple and compact as that of eBay, which is reasonably intuitive.

As I said, I only started fumbling around with set-up tonight, but I thought I'd make some preliminary comments.

Two questions:
1. What payment methods can be used with your system? I hope at least both Google Checkout and PayPal.
2. Will Auctiva be charging a FVF?

I'll be watching to see some definite information about fees before I proceed, as I have irons in the fire with two St. Elsewheres and the other semi-independent site that uses Zen Cart. Plus I sell on Amazon and Half.

And I think I'm pretty typical of what old eBay sellers are doing these days.

So many of us have spread all around since the Refugee trek from eBay a couple or three years ago----at least that's what I gather from the PSU forums. And we've staggered from one setup venue to another searching for Eldorado. I guess we are becoming jaded about new startups.

Best of luck with this one. Please make it as simple as possible to set up. Buggy setup will turn sellers off right away, so I hope you work on that.

It feels like 40 years in the Wilderness for some of us, and long-time refugees have pretty short attention spans with new startups.

Warmest Regards,

ZeldaFitzg

And I'd like to add . . .

Notice that nowhere in my previous post did I ask for something that is cheap!

Most of the people I know are willing to pay for a quality store that we can setup, customize, and maintain ourselves, as long as the startup cost itself is not expensive. We are leery (and weary) of spending a lot of money on the front end.

But build a good system, and we will come!

Again, best wishes and hoping for the best on the Auctiva venture----

Zelda

ZeldaFitzg, thank you for this great feedback. Sounds like you have been around the block with the various providers. We definitely considered sites like zen cart and prostores when building our solution. We've got an awesome solution so far but we know we can improve it. Please continue to tell us the features you think we should be building.

To everyone - I know it is difficult for sellers to switch store solutions. What is the motivation? We obviously want everyone to come use Auctiva Commerce so if I can understand what would motivate a seller to switch away from the status quo it would go a long way to shaping my marketing efforts.

Are we able to search for items in different stores? It will be a big mistake if this feature is not available. Buyers should be able to find what they want easily and know which stores have the items they are looking for. Besides, buyers can compare prices.

Is there a way to change the way the products are displayed? It would be great if buyer can choose to display how many items per page. Personaly I would prefer to list as many items as possible without large gallery. Secondly, instead of browsing items by items, it would be nice if we can have different view, such as list view and gallery view at Ebay and choose the sorting methods, such as sort by name (which is not available at Ebay). Personally I spend lots of time during research phase so anything that can speed up the process would be very useful.

quote:

Originally posted by Signup99:
Are we able to search for items in different stores? It will be a big mistake if this feature is not available. Buyers should be able to find what they want easily and know which stores have the items they are looking for. Besides, buyers can compare prices.

If you mean all Auctiva stores besides your own I think that would be counterproductive. If a seller is setting up their own standalone store why would they want to invite competition?

Unless I've completely missed something and this is actually just a new marketplace-type venue.

Rick,

Buyers want convenience. Instead of going to different web sites to look for the same item, I would rather do my shopping in one place. Besides, from Auctiva's perspective, if one of the store is unable to make a deal, it would be nice if another store is able to make that deal and let business stay within. Besides, sellers may not want competition, but buyers want it.

Hmm, I think that might conflict with the fact that there are plenty of standalone stores online that do just fine on their own.

If a shopper is looking for the type of items I sell then I want to sell to them. If they're looking for something else then where they go is irrelevant to me as a seller. But I certainly don't want other sellers who sell the same items setting up shop right next door and thereby minimizing my own sales potential.

I think a lot of folks used to the eBay way of life greatly overestimate the necessity of a marketplace venue. Sellers can and do survive on their own without relying on other sellers. Not to mention the fact that there's a whole world out there that doesn't shop by venue, but rather by search engine.

Anyway, there's probably no reason for a big debate. The real issue here is what Auctiva wants this thing to be. My impression is that it's standalone stores with no ties to a venue but I'm not 100% clear on that. Its no-fee competitors are set up as venues but that's something I see as a detractor -- something I'd pay to not have.

Has it been decided that Auctiva stores will be true stand alone stores, or is that still an open question?

Here's my answer to that from another post:

At this point Auctiva Commerce is a platform that will enable you to create and manage your own personal off-eBay storefront. You will be able to have your own custom domain. You would send emails to customers linking them to your personal ecommerce site. The products you enter into your Auctiva Commerce site would be found by customers searching on google and will come to your site to buy from you.

Someone suggested that we needed to allow the buyer to sort search results by "newly added". Would sellers prefer that we sorted the items based on the date and time the item was added to the inventory system in your auctiva commerce admin side? Or would you prefer it if we designated a field in your inventory for you to flag as "new" and you could set this flag for any item? The latter gives you more control but takes more of your time. Maybe a combination would be optimal?

Also, would it be valuable for your buyers to sort by "most popular" or by "highest review"?

quote:

Originally posted by Auctiva Spencer:
At this point Auctiva Commerce is a platform that will enable you to create and manage your own personal off-eBay storefront. You will be able to have your own custom domain. You would send emails to customers linking them to your personal ecommerce site. The products you enter into your Auctiva Commerce site would be found by customers searching on google and will come to your site to buy from you.

So no ties to a larger venue? No way to search for items from other sellers?

Any plans for such a thing?

Spencer, I think you left the door open a little when you said, “at this point,” so I want to give my opinion on mall type vs. stand alone stores.



I have to agree with Signup99 that the majority of buyers prefer to shop on websites with many stores, which also reflects those preferences in the real world, with shopping districts, malls and shopping centers across the country. Stand alone stores are successful, but the question is, how much more sales would sellers have on sites that are true marketplaces that generate a lot of traffic?



Stand alone stores will not get cross over sales, and impulse purchases. This is a benefit for sellers in mall type marketplaces, when buyers browse a site’s “main street,” looking in “sellers’ windows,” and find something they want to buy they had not even thought of. I think that has happened to all of us when we went to the mall, shopping for one thing and bought more than we intended. Well designed, easy to search marketplace websites gain repeat buyers, and as it grows in popularity, sales potential increases for all sellers.



Another benefit for marketplace sellers is when the site is well established, the selling community gains credibility with buyers. (see this reference to Amazon below)



It is true that people do item searches, but keep in mind what the majority of buyers will do first, based on their buyer habits. They will go to Ebay, Amazon, and other marketplaces, and if they cannot find it, may decide to do an item search.



At the end of an article in Businessweek dated Nov. 7th, statistics were given for the top ten sites for the month of September, based on unique visitors, and the pros and cons for each. Here are 5 of the top ten that are marketplace sites.


EBAY
Unique visitors, September 2008: 52,265,000 (Nielsen Online)

PROS: As the largest online marketplace, eBay offers the biggest potential exposure.

CONS: Sellers have complained about changing fee structures and suspensions based on buyer feedback that leave sellers with little recourse to dispute claims.



AMAZON
Unique visitors, September 2008: 47,314,000 (Nielsen Online)

PROS: A presence on Amazon can establish credibility with shoppers unfamiliar with your brand.

CONS: Listing on the site means your products and prices will be displayed alongside competitors who also sell there, and offerings from Amazon itself.



YAHOO SHOPPING
Unique visitors, September 2008: 16,970,000 (Nielsen Online)

PROS: Yahoo store templates can offer a quick way to get products listed online.

CONS: Unlike Amazon or eBay, Yahoo is not primarily an e-commerce brand, so the audience may be less ready to buy.



OVERSTOCK
Unique visitors, September 2008: 9,273,000 (Nielsen Online)

PROS: Overstock offers auctions or fixed-price sales at generally lower fees than eBay.

CONS: While the site boasts lower fees, it also has a much smaller audience.



ECRATER
Unique visitors, Sept. 2008: 847,000 (Nielsen Online)

PROS: There are no fees for selling, although you can pay for favorable placement on the site.

CONS: Compared to eBay, eCrater has just a tiny slice of buyers.


I looked at the Auctiva store and tried a few things, but, the problem is I have difficulty with anything tech related, and cannot give an opinion on what is good or bad because of that. I will say that it was confusing to me.


I did not like any of the template colors, and much prefer the template designs Auctiva offers for Ebay.


I loved the one page listing creator I used when I had My Ebay store, and your picture quality was superb. I was able to show buyers full size pictures to see details which was great.


As to the number of items per page, I lose patience with pages that have too few items, and I look to see if there is a “view all” somewhere. If it’s not there, the site loses me after the first 2 or 3 pages.


Too few items per page lessens the chance of buyers seeing items to catch their attention. Ebay has 30 per page, and Ecrater 20 items.

In my opinion, it should not be less than 20 per page.

I forgot to say that if you look at all the other venues, the majority of sellers also prefer marketplace, mall type sites. I can't imagine by how much that number far outweighs those that want stand alone stores. So, how much of that left over percentage will Auctiva get?

I believe that the majority of sellers and buyers overwhelmingly want what Ebay and Yahoo once offered, in my opinion.

quote:

I did not like any of the template colors, and much prefer the template designs Auctiva offers for Ebay.

There will be many more themes, these are just the initial few to get it out the door.

Spencer,

I think the number one concern about Auctiva Commerce Storefronts is the fee. They call it Feebay for a reason! I hope it is free, there I say it! Seriously, I don't know if you intend to target sellers like me, who sell items mostly less than $2. After deducting Paypal fee, there is not much left.

I think both sellers and buyers do not want to make too many clicks.

It is very nice to have something like wizard to give step-by-step instruction how to setup certain thing. After sellers are familiar with it, they want something like a one-page creator to speed up the process.

Auctiva Jeff,
You asked what I mean by low priced. I sell postcards, cookbooks, craft patterns, etc. My items range from $3.95 to $9.95 as a rule with most falling in the $6 to $7 range.

I do have thousands of items and I'm looking for one place where all can be showcased. That way, as I run them through Ebay I can move them to my own site (or here) and when someone finds a closed listing and emails me about it (or emails and asks if I have such and such) I can point them here.

I will also be doing some PPC ads once I get a store set up. This way I won't be forced to continue to relist things on Ebay month after month.

Prostores had a maximum for the $29.95 level that would not meet my inventory levels.

Prestomart did have unlimited, but I did not care for the way google refered everything back to prestomart rather than my individual storefront so I canceled. They charged $29.95 and no FVF for unlimited.

They also only allowed category levels to go two deep. I need at least three levels.

Ex:
Postcards as a main category
USA as a sub category (with others being International, comic, holiday etc)
Then, Alabama, Arkansas, etc as sub categories of the USA.

Basically, my needs are simple but everything I sell is one-of-a-kind non replaceable. The patterns are all out of print. The cookbooks are out of print 60s and 70s, etc.

Many of the template storefronts (like this) do not want sellers with thousands of one-of-a-kind items with low appeal.

My items have more sentimental value than collectible in many cases. Like a person buys the postcard because they got married there, vacationed there, grew up there, etc. So, it has to be available when the right person happens to be looking for that item.

It does, therefore, take thousands of listings to provide a constant income stream.

Varients is as confusing as you can make it. Please staff go to BISI and see how they do it as way easy.

I sell one item with multiple weights so who wants to create a seperate inventory for each.

Templates are way bright for my taste and appear odd to everyone thats seen them.

Not sure if I would pay for this as it is in demo stage so I would be glad to see this being more user friendly.

I use edirecthost now and it is simple but no varients like bisi. Infact I would go to bisi if it wasnt buggy and had better templates.

Anyways hope this improves as I am interested. Thanks

lindajh wrote:

Prestomart did have unlimited, but I did not care for the way google refered everything back to prestomart rather than my individual storefront so I canceled.

Amen to that!

eCrater also has an irritating setup. If a search is done from the main eCrater page, and the buyer clicks on your item to view, then your item description appears, but the link to further browse on your site is almost hidden. Very bad.

Jeff,
I have only had about 15 min to test so far. As much as I am disatisfied with ebay (mostly policy) there are certain features that I would like to see. In a nutshell I want the format of ebay without the policy and the comunistic rule.

1. Some sort of calculated shipping, being from Ohio it costs more to ship to California than it does to Florida because of zones. Zone shipping could be possible.
2. Shipping based and linked or formated to USPS and UPS for ease of printing labels and weight and zone implementations.
3. Ease of changing features on my site. I am old school, I like my catogories on the left, list of produts on top of each other i. e. list form with thumbnails on left and descriptions to the right of that. I like to be able to click on that which brings me to a larger picture or pictures like your layout you have for ebay now and more detailed description. Then I want a button to order which takes me to a clear easily readable shopping cart with shipping shown and another button to take me to a pay site.
4. You have good formats already such as your stores and ebay layout.

What I want is a site where everything is easily changable, i.e. logo left, right or middle. Listings, list form or side by side etc.

A child or elderly peron should be able to not only buy something from my site with ease of navigation as well as be able to build and promote the site with your help.
Finally what I want is to be totaly free from ebay and its affiliates. A self run auction format such as emovieposter.com has with easier navigation would be a bonus.

Thank you and PLEASE keep up the good work.
Sincerly,
Rusty Rahe
dreclectic

I would like to update that I have figured out the varient problem I was having and I wont even try to figure out what swatches are.

I know this is still in beta as hope this is updated soon with almost all the functions available.

I am hosting somewhere else now and am considering leaving as some templates are growing on me now. Templates are very important to me as who wants to pay 2-3k for them unless you are making alot of money.

Anyways please add the other options available as I will start adding inventory now.

About charging please be kind as charge enough to keep the free loaders off but not much more and dont make very expensive for 1k or over items.

Plus if you do decide to charge a percentage of sale please be transpartent as I read you would be you said in other post. As please help market the sites with some of the funds otherwise it is a big turn off to most sellers.

Alot of free sites and affordable ones out there so dont charge too much and please dont have these massive jumps in price if listing alot of products normally under 1k.

I see alot of ecommerce sites charge like low for the first hundred then whack yea for anymore above that. Bad Bad Bad as I dont belong to them but I do pay alot now where I am but I get a perfect flawless experience everytime. No freezing, No errors as it works just perfect. So I hope your site will as BISI is a goog alternative but lacks speed and full of errors sometimes. Thanks

I received a beta test invitation and would have loved to try it out. But I already have a Zen Cart powered store, and that was great. But my problem is that we also have a physical store, and keeping inventories in sync began to be difficult. It was not too bad when I first started selling online with just a couple orders a day, but now our ecommerce business has grown to the point where it's impossible to keep both inventory databases (online and at our retail locale) in sync. Because of this problem, we just spent $6k for a new BMS that includes an integrated ecommerce engine, they will share the same database.

Currently my Zen Cart store has about 25,000 items, once we have our new store launched we will have upwards of 500,000 items available for online purchase.

So I'm really not looking for another store program right now...but I do love the ebay listing services.

Has anyone had a chance to review our email templates? Go to Admin/Email/Templates. This is where you can create event triggered emails.

We use the NVelocity template engine, which provides scripting capability and dynamic variable support. So you could, for example, use if/then logic to show different email content based on some product attribute such as category, price, or condition.

Currently you can have emails triggered by the following events. Can anyone think of events that we should add to this list?

Payment Authorization Failed
Payment Capture Failed
Order Paid Credit Balance
Shipment Shipped
Order Status Updated
Order Paid No Shipments
Order Placed
Payment Captured Partial
Order Paid
Order Shipped
Order Note Added By Merchant
Order Cancelled
Customer Password Request
Payment Authorized
Payment Captured
Order Paid Partial
Order Shipped Partial
Order Note Added By Customer
Gift Certificate Validated
Low Inventory Item Purchased

We currently have the following templates created for you. Can anyone give me ideas for more emails that would be useful for us to add to the default list?

Customer Order Notification - when an order is placed the customer receives this email.
Lost Password - when a customer requests their password on the store they receive this email.
Low Inventory - when an item in your inventory is below the threshold you set an email is sent to the store admin. as with all emails you can have it sent to anyone else you want as well.
Vendor Notification - when an order is marked as paid this email is sent to the vendors of the products.
Gift Certificate Validated - when a customer validates a gift certificate this email is sent to them.
Order Shipped Partial - when an order is marked as being partially shipped this email will be sent to the customer.
Order Shipped - when an order is marked as shipped this email will send to the customer.
Product Review Verification - this email is sent to a customer after they submit a product review.
Email list signup with verification - when a customer signs up for one of your email lists that has verification they receive this email.
Email list signup notification only - when a customer signs up for one of your email lists that doesn't require verification they receive this email.
Send product to friend - when a customer wants to tell a friend about your products they would be using this template.
Note added by customer - when the customer adds a note to an order this email is sent to you.
Note added by merchant - when you add a note to an order this email could be sent to the customer.