posted on January 27, 2009 11:51:06 AM
I'm thinking about weaning myself from Ebay. Any ideas on what ecommerce website builders I should use. Hopefully it would be simple with templates and not very expensive! Can anybody out there help me with some suggestions? Thanks a lot! Mike From So Very Cold Maine
posted on January 27, 2009 02:14:47 PM
have to agree with stone on this one....
ecrater is a nice looking and very easy site to set up. Lacking the traffic, but in 8 years who knows!
IOFFER is "okay"....I have had more sales there, but also more non-payers.
My AMAZON has surpassed all others...even ebay. NUMBER ONE PERK ---- PAID INSTANTLY! Number TWO PERK --- FREE LISTING! I need to get into there auction side of it very soon. My biggest improvement with AMAZON is that I started loading my own photos into it. Amazon has a growing catalog to list from, BUT lacking in photos
posted on January 27, 2009 02:24:15 PM
I am assuming that you want to run a real business with your brand.
Hang in there and wait for Vendio. Just wait until you see what is just around the corner ....
If you truly want your own store, with your brand and domain address, forget this eCrater stuff, Auctiva, or any of these free boards, where you can't even maintain a proper inventory, or use the current bookeeping tools.
It can pretty much be as simple or as complex as you want it. The shopping cart bundled with it uses the ProStores technology... without the ProStores cost! The advantage to it.. is you can relatively easily import all of your existing eBay listings... and if you actually wanted to... you could launch items from your website to eBay.
Support is great too... 24/7 FREE telephone support. (they've been very helpful when I've had to call). Oh.. and unlike eBay.. I haven't seen an increase in pricing for 3 years!
I'd recommend at least giving them a call and talking to them about your specific needs before you make any decision.
******************************
posted on January 27, 2009 05:55:54 PM
I use vendio's store to sell items from our website. The customer finds our store website. I have our vintage items on the site and request contact for additional information and to see if it can be shipped (we sell mostly furniture). We have a link set up with a photo of some of the items we sell through vendio's store and it works great. I haven't gone full steam ahead with more items b/c I want to set something better up.
Hopefully Vendio is going to step up here, as I really enjoy most of what Vendio offers.
I would prefer something that can be created off-line, then launched when you've updating everything (like SMPro).
I'm actually scheduled to go to an e-commerce seminar tomorrow evening through a local program through Mercy Corps that gave our business a 3:1 matching grant so we could purchase a cargo van.
posted on January 28, 2009 08:20:18 AM
Not sure what Bill is smoking, but I guess he is entitled to his opinion.
I swear by ecrater and I do use auctiva for my eBay listing service. Both work great.
And to follow up on rhpepsi. If you compare traffic to any site versus eBay, then yes they have a big hill to climb. But as far as traffic in general. Ecrater's traffic is decent compared to most smaller sites and personally, I cannot complain about the sales I get there. And the items show up in both Yahoo and Google Search.
posted on January 28, 2009 09:07:46 AM
Bill may be referring to the new store system were putting the final touched on right now and will start putting into beta in roughly 3 or so weeks. A major storefront overhaul has been needed for some time now and rather than patching the existing system further, we'll be moving into a new system to manage store inventory.
As we get a little closer and are prepared to share some screenshots of the beta stores we'll be posting announcements to give users a heads up on the progress.
posted on January 29, 2009 12:10:36 PM
Bill, you need a Yahoo Store.
Sorry, Vendio, but Yahoo is widely acknowledged to be the top store provider.
$39.95 a month for the Merchant Starter plan.
As far as SEO goes, in less than 6 months my JCearrings.com site ranked at the top of search engine results pages. On some search engines it ranks above JodyCoyote.com -- you can't get better than that.
For a limited time, PeSA members get free Yahoo Store setup and the first six months free.
fLufF
-- Jody Coyote earrings, free quick shipping and coupon discounts. Bloggers get free earrings!
posted on January 29, 2009 01:47:55 PM
Your thought process is a bit flawed. Ecrater is the company. It is your own website that also happens to get indexed through ecrater's home page. And yes, search shows up on your own site unlike ebay where you get everyone buy your own site.
posted on January 29, 2009 07:13:04 PM
No. My thought process is not flawed. A store at ecarter has a web address as - xxxxx.ecrater.com/index. This is akin to having a space at an antique mall, or a cart in the common area of the local mall.
Nothing wrong with that, if that is what you want, fine.
Currently, I have four stores. One each at ebay, StampWants, DelCampe, and the tired one at Vendio. I have had sales at all of the stores.
Now, all of these hosts have their brand built at my expense. I might state their locations as my store at ... However, how often do you hear that? Usually, these stores are known as my ebay store, my StampWants store, my Vendio store, etc.
I am looking forward to "my store" at "myname".com.
posted on January 29, 2009 10:16:08 PM
Ecrater is good if you just want a free place to list your stuff but no, your individual store does not get indexed into google searches. ecrater technically gets the hits.
A buyer can find your item but a search from the landing page will take them into ecraters main site. Not exactly what you want if you are trying to cross sell.
I also HATE ecrater's shipping matrix and their inventory control setup is a joke.
Do not put a lot of time into ecrater if you are serious about your business.
bonanzle looks promising too for the smaller seller but serious sellers need a stand alone store front to retain customers once you have their eye.
I am with Fluffy on this one. Right now the easiest is Yahoo but I am looking forward to seeing what Vendio will be offering.
As for search rankings, there are things you can do to pump up your search rankings.
posted on January 30, 2009 05:04:24 AM
We took Michael Donahue`s advice and created a shopping cart system with Volusion. The learning curve was steep (and at times frustrating) though in hindsight I realize that this was in part due to the broad and rich feature set which I now appreciate. The system seems capable of accommodating nearly ever idea we come up with, which allows us to produce sales, coupons, gift certificates and even member-only browsing pages which are attractive to our customers. Important SEO guidance is provided with every page we create which I know will benefit us greatly in the long term and which has helped us to understand what needs to be done to make our pages attractive to search engines. We needed support assistance several times during setup and never had any trouble getting help from capable support reps. The price is good though the credit card processing fees are rather high with the payment gateway we choose (Volusion Merchant Services - Skipjack) and we may investigate other options. So far we are delighted with our new store though I can't wait to see what's coming with Vendio as nothing would please us better than to be able to operate better off eBay with Vendio as our home base. We don’t plan to leave either eBay or Vendio as long as these venues remain profitable and we view our Volusion shopping cart as just another fruit-bearing tree in our on-line business orchard.
Go Vendio! I can’t wait to see what you have coming for us!
And thanks for the tip Michael. I hope that you are doing well up there high atop Mt. Thunder.
posted on February 24, 2009 06:37:33 PM
For the record, I am as particular as they come. Vendio has fell short so far on the "Store", but they have demonstrated that they really nail things that they put effort into. Vendio's interface is THE BEST in terms of being intuitive. I consider them at the top of the food chain with their selling manager software. Like Bill, I have heard that Vendio is coming with a new Stores platform. I've heard a few things through the grapevine and it is my opinion that Vendio is going to hit a home run with their new platform. My gut tells me so. The last horn I'd like to toot for Vendio is that they actually have WONDERFUL customer service. I mean EXCELLENT. I am SURE that you will NOT find that with any other competitor of theirs because I've dealt with them all in one way or another.
posted on February 25, 2009 06:33:45 PM
All of the above means nothing,ZILCH if there is no sales!
This is the problem with most sites,where are the sales?
*
Economic Reform act of Chairman Obama of the socialist States of America :
10 ounces of meat per month,half a yard of cotton per year per adult.
Hellilujah!
posted on February 26, 2009 02:52:51 PM
Re Vendio....
I "attended" the webinar on their new ecommerce venture last Oct. and was very excited. It appeared to offer an easy in-sync solution for my own website in conjuction with eBay and Amazon sales.
My excitement dampened somewhat when I discovered that, although, I could have my own domain, i.e. abc.com it would be redirected to a Vendio site. In other words, once on my site, the url would have the Vendio name hanging off it. Maybe this has changed.
I'm still interested, though. It was going to roll out in Jan. and I just got notice that it would be a few more weeks. We'll see.
BTW, I'm currently looking for an image hosting/eBay management solution. I was using Auctiva, but they've now got the 'Tylenol Taint' after the virus problem. I don't mind paying for the right set-up, I just want ease of use, and minimal third-party branding in my eBay listings. Would Vendio fill the bill? Any comments?
rutabaga - the new store system will allow you to host it on your own domain, Vs the redirecting or frame redirecting that you would do with the current system.
posted on February 26, 2009 04:31:12 PM
hwahwa, I have had many, many sales from my Vendio store. I am no longer an ebay PowerSeller, because I have channeled most of those sales to the Vendio store, email sales, and telephone sales.
I am impatiently waiting for the new Vendio store platform. In the meantime, I am filling the current Vendio store, so that I can migrate inventory when the new store is non-Beta.
Further, I have updated the appearance of my ebay store, and now list on StampWants, and DelCampe. For me, the missing link is the new Vendio store.
posted on February 26, 2009 08:35:16 PM
Bill,good to hear you have many sales!
*
Economic Reform act of Chairman Obama of the socialist States of America :
10 ounces of meat per month,half a yard of cotton per year per adult.
Hellilujah!
posted on February 27, 2009 08:14:07 AMI have had many, many sales from my Vendio store.
Bill, I think that's kind of misleading.
You have your Vendio store aliased to your domain; e.g. http://kozersky.com is actually http://shop.vendio.com/kozersky.
The fact that you make sales there has (in my opinion) nothing to do with the fact that it's a Vendio store and everything to do with the fact that you pay to drive traffic to http://kozersky.com. Your store could be located anywhere.
posted on February 27, 2009 10:23:56 AM
fluff, you are correct. I do pay to drive traffic to the store. At one time I paid both Google, and Yahoo. I dropped Yahoo in November, because my Christmas Seal ads were competing against "engine seals" "envelope seals" and "sealants." And, I bet if they had advertised, the seals at Sea World.
I look forward to the new Vendio platform, because I hope they have SEO capabilities for each item, ability to create sales within the store, email advertising, coupons, multi-channel selling, credit cards, enhanced inventory capabilities, and identity on my own domain.
I have to apologize for any confusion created by the " ...many, many sales ..." statement. I should have been more accurate and thoughtful.
posted on May 30, 2009 08:48:31 AM
I don't know about prestostores, but did you ever find out if Vendio Stores have couponing, gift certificates, etc.?
In my opinion a reasonably serious e-commerce platform has to have these things, at least couponing. Yahoo Stores recently released a new Coupon Manager that lets you generate as many single-use coupons as you want, which is handy for mailings. And they track coupon use so you know which of your offers worked and which didn't.
As far as SEO goes, Google is very much in favor of human-readable file names that correspond to search strings. For example, if someone is looking for 2007 Christmas Seals, a page of yours with a name like this will be well-favored in search results:
http://www.kozersky.com/2007-Christmas-Seals.html
Some store solutions (Yahoo included) automatically generate incomprehensible file names that must be manually overridden.
Some of the most effective and inexpensive SEO anyone can do for their store is to figure out what all your keyword phrases are and create pages with corresponding file names.
Another very effective technique is to create strong page titles.
posted on May 30, 2009 10:15:05 AM
If ecrater is free,how does it pay its bills?
*
Economic Reform act of Chairman Obama of the socialist States of America :
10 ounces of meat per month,half a yard of cotton per year per adult.
Hellilujah!
posted on May 30, 2009 11:46:01 AM
fluff, the new Vendio Store Platform, has all the features that you mention, plus the ability to place items on sale, etc.
I am in the process of reading "Search Engine Optimization for Dummies" which has been a great source of information. Everything you mention is discussed in the book.
