When you can't innovate on your own it always seems to make sense to copy others who can. eBay is now going to make its search results more like Google's search results by adding "eBay adcommerce" to their platform. Adcommerce from what I can tell is a knock off on Google's Adwords. It allows sellers to bid on Keywords to drive traffic to their eBay stores. I actually like the idea and its success I think hinders on whether buyers will actually click on the ads. The negatives to this change are that it will definitely hurt the smaller eBay sellers who can't afford to pay for the traffic. Please post any thought or comments below.
Link to the announcement and more details on Adcommerce-
http://pages.ebay.com/adcommerceintro/
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Donahoe Approval Rating From Employees under 30%
Fortunately for John Donahoe the employees don't vote on who is CEO at eBay. According to Glassdoor.com John's approval rating is coming in at just under 30%. Apparently not even 1 in 3 eBay employees is happy with the job that John is doing at eBay.
According to a Wired.com article, John Donahoe is not rated last but next to last among CEO's with reviews by 50 or more employees. The worst rating that came in belonged to the CEO of Motorola. Although the ratings are probably skewed for a number of reasons such as:
1. A rumor is circling that eBay is going to announce a large lay off.
2. In general employees who are upset post on Glassdoor.com.
3. People who were pushed out when Meg Whitman left, left negative reviews.
Nonetheless, the data shows that a large percentage of the eBay employees is not on board with John and his plans for eBay. Just for curiosities sake I am going to put a poll up for readers to vote on whether or not they approve of John's job as CEO of eBay. The poll's goal is to get an approval rating from eBay users and compare it to the employees.
Also, please post all your comments and thoughts below as to why you think John's ratings are where they are.
According to a Wired.com article, John Donahoe is not rated last but next to last among CEO's with reviews by 50 or more employees. The worst rating that came in belonged to the CEO of Motorola. Although the ratings are probably skewed for a number of reasons such as:
1. A rumor is circling that eBay is going to announce a large lay off.
2. In general employees who are upset post on Glassdoor.com.
3. People who were pushed out when Meg Whitman left, left negative reviews.
Nonetheless, the data shows that a large percentage of the eBay employees is not on board with John and his plans for eBay. Just for curiosities sake I am going to put a poll up for readers to vote on whether or not they approve of John's job as CEO of eBay. The poll's goal is to get an approval rating from eBay users and compare it to the employees.
Also, please post all your comments and thoughts below as to why you think John's ratings are where they are.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Fed Loans $85 Billion to Small Business Owners...wait, no...to just AIG, 1 poorly run large business
This is not going to be a long post but I am still scratching my head about the fed's bailout of AIG. $85 billion loaned to just 1 poorly run company???
Being a small business owner myself, I just wonder if this money was well spent. Now imagine the Fed decided to actually lend this money to hard working small business owners. I think that the taxpayers of America would get a better return on their money if this was the case.
Anyway, I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the government's bailout of AIG.
Being a small business owner myself, I just wonder if this money was well spent. Now imagine the Fed decided to actually lend this money to hard working small business owners. I think that the taxpayers of America would get a better return on their money if this was the case.
Anyway, I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on the government's bailout of AIG.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
eBay is Testing a New Listing and Search Page
An anonymous ebay seller has sent me these images of select screen shots of the new listing and search pages that eBay is testing. It appears from the screen shots below that the Amazonification of eBay is in full gear. The changes emphasize less of the actual seller and their description of the item and put more emphasis on eBay's product details.
In this first picture we see the importance of being in eBay's product catalog because there are only 3 matching items for "Sony VX2000"(you can click on the image for a larger picture). This change will pull out all of the accessories that typically flood the search results.(like batteries and chargers in this category) Although as you can see that the buyers will have to click on the "matching product" to get only those 3 results.
In this image below the seller has blocked out any identifying information. However, you can still get a feel for how the new layout looks.
In the image below, this is what immediately follows the image above on the new listing page. After this last image would be where the seller's description would show.
Please post your thoughts and comments on the changes. For the most part it seems to me as if the changes will allow buyers to find the items they are looking for more quickly. However, by minimizing the focus on the actual seller and more on the product for sale, I believe that this will make it difficult for sellers who are trying to differentiate themselves based on their feedback and customer service. Nonetheless, these are just another bunch of changes that eBay is throwing at sellers and will likely cause some stress for many sellers as they will have to keep constantly changing their listing strategy. Anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts and I would love to hear what everyone else thinks on the topic. Please post your comments below.
In this first picture we see the importance of being in eBay's product catalog because there are only 3 matching items for "Sony VX2000"(you can click on the image for a larger picture). This change will pull out all of the accessories that typically flood the search results.(like batteries and chargers in this category) Although as you can see that the buyers will have to click on the "matching product" to get only those 3 results.
In this image below the seller has blocked out any identifying information. However, you can still get a feel for how the new layout looks.
In the image below, this is what immediately follows the image above on the new listing page. After this last image would be where the seller's description would show.
Please post your thoughts and comments on the changes. For the most part it seems to me as if the changes will allow buyers to find the items they are looking for more quickly. However, by minimizing the focus on the actual seller and more on the product for sale, I believe that this will make it difficult for sellers who are trying to differentiate themselves based on their feedback and customer service. Nonetheless, these are just another bunch of changes that eBay is throwing at sellers and will likely cause some stress for many sellers as they will have to keep constantly changing their listing strategy. Anyway, those are just a few of my thoughts and I would love to hear what everyone else thinks on the topic. Please post your comments below.
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