ExecutiveGirl
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posted on July 29, 2001 01:34:34 PM
I use Auctiva's pic hosting service, and they put thumbnail pics on all my auctions.
Once you click on the pics, they are enlarged so you can see them in better detail.
I'm beginning to wonder if buyers are really clicking on the pics to see them enlarged? Above all my pics it says in VERY large letters to "click on images for full sized pics"
Do you think buyers click on these pics to view them in greater detail?
As a buyer, would you click on pics like that, or do you prefer full sized images in the auctions?
The thumbnails also allow faster loading of the auction.
Your opinions please?
Thanks in advance....
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cariad
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posted on July 29, 2001 01:45:45 PM
I don't like the thumbnails on the auction page....but I have cable modem so loading time isn't an issue for me, usually. I only enlarge if I'm already hooked and enlarging doesn't seem to make them that much bigger or clearer.
OTOH,I am beginning to really notice how bad a lot of the pictures are.....so maybe more people should use thumbnails....doesn't hurt the old eyes as much.
cariad
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crankyoldhag
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posted on July 29, 2001 02:13:39 PM
I don't bother clicking to make it bigger. If I can't see the detail in the images in the auction, I just move on to the next auction.
Just my two cents...
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BJGrolle
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posted on July 29, 2001 02:38:07 PM
If I was interested in the item, I'd click to enlarge. I think that the thumbnail probably should give enough detail to whet a buyer's appetite to either go further or pass on it.
http://bjgrolle.freehomepage.com
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iowaantiques
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posted on July 29, 2001 02:40:42 PM
executivegirl
I use the Auctiva thumbnails myself. 95% of my customers use a dialup connection and the thumbs speed the download considerably. If a shopper has any real interest they will click for a larger picture. For myself, I hate, Hate, HATE, waiting minutes for an oversized bandwidth hog to download only to discover it was something I didn't care to see and I'm sure most others feel the same way. As often as not I decide to move on before the download is finished.
[ edited by iowaantiques on Jul 29, 2001 02:41 PM ]
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NothingYouNeed
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posted on July 29, 2001 02:43:33 PM
Frankly, I find anything that adds another step to the browsing process to be just that...one more thing to do. As the eyesight weakens with advancing age, I can't even tell what is IN the thumbnail pic half the time. If the heading and description interest me enough, I will go ahead and open up the larger picture. Half the time there's a pop up ad with the enlarged image and that's annoying too.
It is still better than the sellers who use "myItem" where you don't even get a thumbnail, just a button to click to view the pic. Unless the heading tells me this is something I really want to check out, I just exit the page.
Gerald
"Oh but it's so hard to live by the rules/I never could and still never do."
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mcjane
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posted on July 29, 2001 02:43:53 PM
EG I always click if I am interested in the item, but would much rather have a larger picture & not have to click.
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packer
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posted on July 29, 2001 02:47:43 PM
I'm glad you brought that up.
I find having to click to enlarge to be very annoying.
I have cable modem, but I still consider it a waste of time to have to click.
Just put the darn pictures on the auction page as they riginally are.
There are just to many of the same thing out there to wasting time for an extra click.
I usually back out and move on to the next one.
JMHO because you asked.
packer
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ExecutiveGirl
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posted on July 29, 2001 03:00:21 PM
Thanks, I appreciate all of your input.
I've been using Auctiva's thumbnails for so long, I was wondering if putting larger pics on my auctions would help my sales any.
I just uploaded 4 pictures to my regular server and they are HUGE! I would not be able to put them in my auction without having the customers scroll to read the description. So I guess the question here is would buyers rather Scroll or Click?
I've had over 23+ auctions end with BIN in the past few days, so maybe the customers really don't mind clicking on the pictures? And for the ones that do, I wonder how many sales I have missed?
Would I have missed more sales if I had large pictures that took forever to load?
Most clothing items are one-of-a-kind on ebay, so maybe clothing buyers don't seem to mind clicking on them?
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NothingYouNeed
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posted on July 29, 2001 03:06:01 PM
If you get in the habit of "editing" your photos (especially reducing the resolution), you can still have great crisp pictures without the huge size. This takes a lot of time (depending on your photo software), but is well worth it in my opinion. Then there are no scrolls and no clicks and your auction pages will load faster too.
Gerald
"Oh but it's so hard to live by the rules/I never could and still never do."
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AnonymousCoward
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posted on July 29, 2001 03:25:23 PM
When interested I always click on the thumbnails except for AuctionWatch thumbnails.
What really gets me (listen up here AW management this is mainly for you) is clicking on a thumbnail to find an enlarged pick 5% to 10% larger than the original thumbnail. I'd estimate that's the case for 50% of the pics hosted by AW sellers. When I stumble on AW thunbnails, I rarely click on them anymore unless I'm really interested to win the item. Otherwise, I just move on to another listing. Thumbnails should have a minimum enlargement standard before they are used. I would say at least double the thumbnail's original size.
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ExecutiveGirl
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posted on July 29, 2001 03:31:20 PM
AnonymousCoward - I do agree with you on the AW pics... all of the ones I have clicked on, the pics were no larger than the so-called "thumbnails". All they do is take you to another page with the pic alone, but the pic is no larger.
With the Auctiva thumbnails, they are much, much larger when clicked on.
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kittykittykitty
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posted on July 29, 2001 04:45:13 PM
i usually don't bother with clicking on the thumbnails - it's just an extra step. unless it's something i'm *very* interested in already from description, and think i might better see some detail i've got a question on. i've also had the experience of clicking on 'see enlarged,' only to find it isn't, or just slightly so. that's annoying.
my preference is nice full-size photos, sized down to load reasonably fast.
pet peeve: there's a seller in my category who has some nice stuff, but puts her whole ad - photos, descriptions - in a .jpeg. they're usually 300+k, and i almost always back out when i realize the item is one of her auctions.
kittyx3
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NothingYouNeed
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posted on July 29, 2001 06:23:58 PM
Strictly speaking, AW doesn't use real thumbnails in auction listings. (The real thumbnails are what you see in the index of your image manager.) AW DOES resize your photos to conform to the auction template. Lots of us crop and resize our photos before uploading them so AW doesn't have to make much of an adjustment (if any) to the size. I think there might be some logic that could be added that if the AW resizing does not reduce the pic by a certain percentage, then the "click to enlarge" line should not be added so browsers aren't inconvenienced.
Gerald
"Oh but it's so hard to live by the rules/I never could and still never do."
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kiara
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posted on July 29, 2001 06:47:05 PM
If AW users go into their account where it says "Seller Preferences", for the auction listings options they can check a box that says "automatically scale down larger images".
When you upload a larger image to AW it will be scaled down. If you upload a smaller image it will remain the same if someone clicks on it.
I can usually tell from a thumbnail image whether I am interested enough in the auction and if so I click onto the bigger image. Most images download quickly on my computer.
[ edited by kiara on Jul 29, 2001 06:54 PM ]
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NothingYouNeed
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posted on July 29, 2001 06:55:27 PM
Hi kiara, I experimented with that choice in seller preferences. I foun that unless all my pictures for a given listing were about the same width, the results were really ugly when AW didn't resize them for the template.
With the resizing turned on, the pics come out with basically the same width (since I use pics in a column on the left) so it looks clean in the listing. AW makes minor adjustments to most of my pics...not enough to make "click to enlarge" worth it, but enough to improve the overall appearance of my listing.
If I only used one pic in my listings, I would turn it off for sure and let the pic ride full size but I almost always have 3 or 4 pics per listing.
Gerald
"Oh but it's so hard to live by the rules/I never could and still never do."
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cariad
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posted on July 29, 2001 07:08:41 PM
I just uploaded 4 pictures to my regular server and they are HUGE
This is what I don't understand. Why are pics so huge? don't you resize??
cariad
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ExecutiveGirl
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posted on July 29, 2001 07:13:13 PM
This is what I don't understand. Why are pics so huge? don't you resize??
I use my Sony Mavica to take pictures (in fine mode), and I use Photomax to crop & do any editing I need to do to my pictures.
I have never resized any pictures before, I never had the need to.
[ edited by ExecutiveGirl on Jul 29, 2001 07:14 PM ]
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kiara
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posted on July 29, 2001 07:24:16 PM
Hi Gerald
I use Microsoft Picture It! for my photo editing. It gives me the option of saving them as a thumbnail, one-quarter screen or one-half screen before uploading them to AW. Maybe that makes a difference?
I have my preferences set to downsize the larger ones so there is the message to click on the pic for those ones. The one-quarter screen ones that I upload do not have a message under them.
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thekismeme
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posted on July 29, 2001 08:32:41 PM
I have the same problem. I used AW until they started charging ~ then I went to Auctiva ~ the whole thing was a disaster ~ I changed so much ~ all mistakes ~ added power sellers logo ~ added a handling charge ~ added Billpoint (I hate Billpoint) and started using thumbnails ~ sales went in the tube.
I tried AW again ~ took the power seller logo out but left the handling charge and Billpoint ~ still sales were not good......
Now I know that part of this is just the time of year...........but when I started using Mister Lister ~ went back to a very basic simple templete ~ and I hosted my own pics ~ sales went up some.......
Then when I took out Billpoint(I take Paypal ~ I have since day one), took out the handling charge and started using ebay as my picture hosting service ~ sales are great! ~ best they have been since Christmas!
The biggest downfall is that I can not use Vrane to relist ~ and I am having to relist by hand ~ but sales are so good ~ I just relisted everything that did not sell in about 30 minutes ~ and I can deal with that.
Most of my auctions only need one pic ~ so it is not costing me to use them ~ but then I try not to sell clothes ~ and I know they require alot more pics ~ so what I am doing is not going to help you ~ but finding a good way to load your pics fast without the tiny thumbnails will increase your sales ~ you also might want to reconsider the Paypal option (not to bring up a bad subject ~ I know you don't care for them) ~ I do know that even when I offered both options ~ must would use Paypal ~ and dropping Billpoint has not been an issue. I still have the account ~ I just don't mention it ~ and not even one person has asked if I take it ~ but people are always asking about Paypal ~ I don't know why they ask ~ the logo is in the auction ~ but they always do.
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ExecutiveGirl
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posted on July 29, 2001 08:44:22 PM
Thekismeme - you are entirely right about Paypal (as much as I hate to say anything good about that company!)
I closed my account with them last November. During this "summer slump" - which seemed to be worse than usual, I had a LOT of emails from potential buyers stating that "I would have bid if you accepted Paypal" - and not to mention the astronomical amount of deadbeat bidders I had... so I decided to give Paypal another try.
My sales more than tripled what they were doing without Paypal! I suddenly have many, many buy-nows, I am moving merchandise out as fast as I'm getting it in!
I still have issues with Paypal ~ and I deal with them on almost a daily basis (every day it seems to be a different problem with them) but I have to admit - adding the Paypal option to my auctions made a HUGE difference that I honestly didn't think would happen.
As far as the pictures, I'm still debating on what to do. I like the fact that with Auctiva I don't have to host the pics on my server, and they stay there for several months (even though Auctiva says they are only supposed to be good for 30 days).
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mildreds
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posted on July 29, 2001 08:58:30 PM
Anybody else noticing the number of auctions with little pictures next to the auction title?
I think you can only get that if you use Ebay's pictures?
I find myself looking at those pictures and ignoring auction titles without. Not good news for me as I use AW hosting.
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ExecutiveGirl
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posted on July 29, 2001 09:06:24 PM
Mildreds - I may be wrong, but I think the only way to get those pics next to the titles is to put them in ebay's gallery for 25¢....
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thekismeme
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posted on July 30, 2001 06:26:51 AM
They are free ~ you just use Ebay's pic service ~ you have to click a box that you want it ~ I myself think it helps too~ something has helped because sales are great and my BUY IT NOW is doing awesome too!
The first picture with the service is free ~ then the rest are .15 each. I did find that you don't always need as many pics as I used to take ~ 1 or 2 plus a good description can often do it.
I have the server space to host my pics ~ but I am just like Execgirl ~ my pics are huge no matter what I do to them and they take forever to load ~ there is a secret to it that I just don't get ~ but whatever it is Ebay does it to my pics because they are just fine with Ebay's service.
ExecGirl welcome back to Paypal! I have had some problems ~ but I find if I go directly to the AW Paypal board they are handled much quicker then if I try to go through Paypal ~ you might try that.
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Microbes
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posted on July 30, 2001 06:37:35 AM
What really gets me (listen up here AW management this is mainly for you) is clicking on a thumbnail to find an enlarged pick 5% to 10% larger than the original thumbnail
I noticed this too. Seems silly to click on a picture, expecting to to be larger so you can get a better look, only to find the picture is a quarter of an inch bigger at most. What a waste of bandwidth.
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rgrem
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posted on July 30, 2001 09:59:15 AM
Using irfanview, (in my oppinion the easiest and best graphics program), I resize my pix to 350 pixels wide which causes no auctionwatch reduction. If the picture needs to be bigger, I make it at least 600 pixels wide so that auctionwatch'es 'click to enlarge' gives a much larger view. The secret with auctionwatch is to remember that pictures over 350 wide will be reduced. So your providing pictures of 375 or 400 wide is what causes AW enlargement to be ineffective. The only thing I really think is needed is the reduction specification to be at the listing level rather than a global spec.
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kiawok
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posted on July 30, 2001 11:46:52 AM
I quit using thumbnail pics a few months back after finding them to be a PITA as a buyer.
I think most buyers would just prefer to see the item with out any additional clicks.
Personally I find eBay's IPIX pic hosting to be the WORST on the net. I've yet to place a bid on an item where the seller used IPIX, as most times all I see is a grainy looking image. I'm one of those fussy buyers who likes to see a quality image/images, and not some distorted blob.
Not to turn this into a PayPal issue, but I've never offered PayPal, haven't offered Billpoint in months, and I still have an 80-90% sell through.
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toke
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posted on July 30, 2001 12:11:30 PM
Hi kiawok...
I know what you mean...I've never cared for the constant clicking either. I think thumbnails are excellent for an online store at your website, though. The buyer can just scroll along your offerings, then click on the pieces they're interested in. I learned to do them when I was contemplating my own website. Still haven't done it.....
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reader99
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posted on July 30, 2001 12:37:16 PM
When ebay went from two free pics to one, I got around it by editing oics in my camera's software. Take one oic with item to the left in the pic, another with item to the right. Cut item from one pic and paste into the extra space on the side of the other. Uploads as one pic.
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cariad
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posted on July 30, 2001 03:09:28 PM
Using irfanview, (in my oppinion the easiest and best graphics program), I resize my pix to 350 pixels wide which causes no auctionwatch reduction
I also use Irfanview, which is FREE! I don't use auctionwatch, resize all my pics to 370 and have good detail, thanks to my mavica and fast loading pics.
cariad
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