posted on September 8, 2000 10:53:11 PM
Most of you have been in the online auction business for quite some time, but I want you to go back to the days when you were a newbie. Remember what it was like when you got your first bid on eBay? How about that first sale, or your first positive feedback? Put a smile on your face, didn't it?
I have been around the online auction industry for quite sometime. In fact, I played a role in the creation of many of the competing sites.
Something that I've noticed lately is that users are no longer having fun. It used to be all about making money while having fun. Now, many users are going for the big score with their $100,000 domain names and others are in it because they have found an easy way to fraud people.
I read a lot of chat boards on auction sites and it is very disappointing to see so many people come together just to B#*!@ and complain. It's obvious that people are simply not happy with the state of online auctions! I know that some of you have created legitimate businesses for yourselves and I think that's great, but what about the hobbyist that used to come and sell a
baseball card or two just for the fun of it? Where did that person go?
There are over one million new people signing on to the Internet each week and I know that some of them have never even seen eBay or Yahoo auctions. I would hate for those new folks to join an auction site, check out the chat boards and see that everybody is miserable. (case in point: "other auctions - more auctions" message board)
My question to this group is what would it take to make it fun again? As a founder of an online auction site (ehum, DutchBid.com) my goal is to make that site a fun (and profitable) place to buy and sell items of all kinds. You are the professionals and that is why I am turning to you. I do not want to decide how to run our auction by having the stuffy managers vote on content and user activities. I want the real auction users to tell me what they want in
an auction site. That is the site that I want to run - one that was built by users and is managed by users. In fact, I would eventually like to put together a group of users that make all of the content decisions. They discuss it. They vote on it and we implement it.
So I will ask you all once again... What would it take to make buying and selling fun again?
posted on October 25, 2000 03:06:31 PM
I'd like a site with an intuitive interface, appealing appearance, site stability, and which doesn't contstantly add new features which are of questionable value and which sometimes interfere with existing functionality.
What's most important is the presence of bidders, and lots of them. That's why most of us stick with eBay.
Best of luck with your site! I hope someone gives eBay some genuine competition one day.
posted on October 25, 2000 03:07:29 PM
dutchbid, to make the group who come here to B*%#@H, it will take a lot to make them happy.
1. totally free site, forever and ever
2. they will make a million bucks and you will ask nothing in return, forever and ever
3. you will force buyers to pay immediately but will never, ever hold sellers to any accountability, they can do anything they want to make an extra buck out of the buyer
4. your system will never, ever crash or slow down, and if it does, you will personally pay seller extra money on top of bids
5. you will ask for no more than sellers name, and that doesn't have to be the true one
If you do all of this, they will still find something to complain about.
Oh I forgot one thing, you also have to provide about 20,000,000 bidders a day at your site.
posted on October 25, 2000 03:41:59 PM
I vote for more bidders. Sellers seem to be easy to attract (free or low fees). It's bidders you need in abundance. And yes, there are bidders on ebay, lots of them. But not quite enough in some categories as compared to sellers.
Beyond that, I'd like to see a site that wasn't nearly so callous as ebay. I truly don't believe they CARE about:
(a) seller abuses -- esp for Power Sellers
(b) fraud (of all types, incl shilling)
(c) things like feedback abuse, etc.
(d) equitable treatment for sellers where outages are concenred
IOW -- take all ebay's glaring faults and correct them. Shouldn't be that hard. You can look here, on ebay itself, on other auction boards and get all the clues you need.
Good luck.
P.S. Sounds like dutchbid.com is only for dutch auctions?
posted on October 25, 2000 03:54:24 PM
I think that 100% refund of fees when one gets stuck with a NPB would be nice. Make it easy to bid so people can sit back and have fun at the auctions. Finding a way to prevent fraud is going to be tough, but making every one who sells post a valid credit card and checking the billing address to make sure everything matches would be a good start. Bidders need to verify their information as well to prevent abuse the other way.
posted on October 25, 2000 05:26:11 PM
Nominal listing fees w/a few free relists to compensate for any down time. Since the auction site gets theirs when the item sells, listing fees should be small and should only exist to prevent frivolous listings.
Site reliability.
Hold SELLERS accountable. I sell and buy, but I recently had two buds buy on eBay and their stories were disgusting. An "Excellent condition" vacuum cleaner that groans when turned on and was filthy and shipped with dirt in the bag. A small item that took two months to receive - seller lost every family member since August apparently - but of course her feedback showed she'd been shipping other stuff. Every seller who reams a buyer, turns a buyer off to eBay/online auctions in general, and ultimately reams other sellers.
Site reliability.
Customer service people who actually know how to read. I shouldn't have to send every question in twice, starting the second one with "Thank you for your response, but you didn't really answer my question..."
posted on October 25, 2000 05:34:43 PM
I say hold BUYERS accountable!
If they bid and win an auction and then don't pay - charge their credit card!
Make buyers be credit card verified just like sellers have to be!
If a buyer doesn't pay for an auction and the seller has to file FVF for that auction, lock out the buyer from being able to leave retaliatory negative feedback!
____________________________________
The only place you'll find success before work is in the dictionary.
