Search engines continue to be a top resource for online shoppers. In fact, a recent study by Compete Online Shopper, a Web analytics company, found that 61 percent of online buyers use search engines when shopping around for products. The second most popular tool cited among these shoppers was coupon sites, with 35 percent of buyers saying they visit these. Retailer marketing e-mails came in third, with 29 percent of consumers reading them when deciding what to buy.

Buyer behavior does vary from niche to niche, but there’s no denying one thing: Search engines are very important to online shoppers.

This comes as no surprise to Auctiva Commerce Product Lead Chris Eckland.

“People utilize search engines, and Google Product Search in particular, to find the best deal on an item that they’re planning to buy,” he says. ”Often, this activity may be just to confirm a deal that’s available locally is in line with other offers, but in many cases a quick online search can reveal online stores with better deals or specials not available elsewhere.”

Search engines are consistently one of the largest traffic sources for Auctiva Commerce, and a primary way for buyers find Auctiva Commerce sellers, he adds.

With this in mind, Eckland reminds Auctiva Commerce sellers to map their products to Google by setting up and automating their feeds to Google Merchant Center. This keeps sellers’ inventory current on Google and makes items easier to find online.

“Our users say they’ve experienced increased sales once they mapped their Auctiva Commerce inventory to Google’s product taxonomy,” he continues. “Intuitively, it makes sense that buyers will be more likely to find items if they’re logically categorized.”

Google’s dominance among search engines is undeniable, says Auctiva Vice President Kevin Kinell. And its role in e-commerce, and the importance of feeds to Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base), isn’t likely to decrease any time soon.

“Probably the most important thing that any seller setting up an e-commerce store can do is to make sure they’re getting their products into Google,” he says. “I don’t see Google’s importance diminishing, I see it increasing.”

Here at Auctiva, we work closely with eBay to make sure we stay in sync with its policies and features, while providing you with the best service we can. As part of this close relationship, eBay employees occasionally visit our Chico offices.

Anytime eBay makes the three-and-a-half-hour drive from San Jose to Chico, you can feel extra energy in the air. Usually we don’t get more than a day or two notice before our guests arrive—which doesn’t give me much time to organize my junk—I mean, inventory. I have a mountain of shoe boxes, bags of Webkinz and Club Penguin plush toys, and stacks of anything and everything in my two cubicles—all waiting to be listed.

eBay’s most recent visit was last week. Most of their time here was spent in meetings with our management team, but our visitors did find a few minutes before they left to swing by my workspace and ask me a few questions about selling. I took it as quite a compliment to be a stop on their tour of our offices. And to be perfectly honest, I was a little nervous, too.

To me, eBay is like a rock star. I’ve been selling on the site for more than a decade, so to get a personal visit from some of the eBay staff is always exciting.

This wasn’t the first time I had met with eBay, but this visit felt different. The last time we hosted an eBay group on our campus, there were two individuals. This time there were six to eight eBay employees around my desk. And our most recent guests mentioned that I had been a topic of discussion over lunch! Apparently, they had been talking about the Zu Zu Pets holiday craze, which I got in on—so they were eager to meet me before they headed back to San Jose. (I guess to them, I’m a rock star)!

As brief as the meeting was, I enjoyed having them here. Over the years, eBay has been good to me. Like many other sellers who are also parents, I credit eBay with giving me the opportunity to stay at home after the birth of my daughter. The extra income I made selling collectibles and various odds and ends helped us pay the bills and put aside a little cash for family outings. eBay was a godsend!

But most important, eBay has allowed me to have what I call my “dream job” here at Auctiva. I’m doing what I love, while getting to help make our eBay-related products easier to use and more efficient for our customers at the same time. Speaking of which, I think it’s about time I get busy and list a few items. Maybe it will help reduce my cleaning time the next time eBay visits our Chico campus.

Rebecca Miller
Product Analyst

In fact, several of our customers are already using our software to create multi-variation listings. As someone who worked on the development side of our Multi-Variation Tool, it’s very exciting to see our customers using it.

When we first decided to support multi-variations, we took a good look at eBay’s process for creating these listings. It requires multiple clicks of the mouse to add variations. Our first thought was, “How can we make this easier for our users?” After all, Auctiva is known for simplifying, and speeding, the listing process.

Our solution? To integrate multi-variations with the current listing process our users go through. We’ve given users the ability to add multi-variations to a listing right from our One-Page Lister if they choose a category that supports multi-variations. To add a variation, users simply click our link to go to our Multi-Variation Tool, where they can decide if they’ll create variations manually or with our Variation Generator. The Variation Generator was designed so that you can quickly create and edit your multi-variations. It can greatly reduce users’ workloads by producing up to 120 variations at once.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to take a look at our Multi-Variation Tool—especially if you sell a lot of the same items in different sizes, colors, etc. It’s not only a time saver; it can also be a money saver.

Few third-party developers support multi-variations because it’s a complex feature that requires a lot of resources to develop for, but that didn’t stop us. And we think we’ve achieved our goal of providing users with not only the ability to create multi-variation listings, but a better way to do so.

You can read more about our new Multi-Variation Tool in our Auctiva EDU article.

Enjoy the new feature!

Shawn Crossley

Auctiva Development Manager

The seasons are changing. We’ll be springing forward in no time.

And for some sellers this will mean their inventory will begin to change. So you may want to start the spring cleaning early and bring out those summer-themed items you picked up on clearance last year. Stores are already stocking their shelves with colorful outdoor decor, barbecue grills and accessories are popping up and bathing suits are hitting the racks.

Planning ahead can mean picking up seasonal inventory at deeply discounted prices and selling it for a hefty profit later on. Our Product Analyst Rebecca Miller scored some summer shoe wear last year, and will soon be putting them up for sale.

The beginning of February is a great time to stock up on seasonal items to resell later. While much of the country is still shoveling snow off of driveways and sidewalks, thoughts are already turning to the warmer days ahead.

Think, too, of the events that have recently passed, or are about to: the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, the Olympics. And President’s Day is just around the corner, which means there will be plenty of sales to take advantage of.

If you want to stock up now to turn a profit down the road, we have a few suggestions on the type of items you should keep in mind as the season—and the weather—changes.

Football gear: With the Super Bowl over, you’ll find plenty of football items on sale: jerseys, sweat shirts, hats, scarves, etc. One site we browsed had NFL jerseys for up to $30 off the regular price, depending on the player’s name that was on them. If you stock up now, you could turn a good profit when football season starts up again this summer.

Valentine’s Day items: Perfumes and jewelry will be on sale as Valentine’s Day nears and passes. This is good news because you can repurpose these items for Mother’s Day, which is just a few short months away. This means you won’t have to wait too long to get a return on your investment. We suggest waiting until the holiday arrives to snap up great deals. You may even want to hold off until Feb. 15; heart-shaped items will no doubt be significantly reduced.

Winter wear: As stores make room for spring and summer clothing, you’ll find heavy jackets, sweaters and other cold-season articles on the sale rack. Our product analyst recently spotted a $200 jacket for around $40 at a well-known department store.

Winter sports: You should also venture into a few sporting goods stores in the coming weeks to check out their prices. As ski and snowboarding season come to a close in the coming months, you could find some bargains.

So you may want to hit the stores and stock up. Your pocketbook will thank you.

Happy Selling!

There are, after all, several factors to consider. So how do you go about deciding how to adjust to get the maximum value out of your listings while not breaking the budget on fees? Glad you asked. While I know there are lots of variables to take into consideration, I’ve come up with a few tips to help you in your quest.

I know each seller is different, but let’s take a look at one example to see how the new fee structure could impact your selling costs.

Let’s say a seller lists 300 books each month with 250 of those being auction style. The auctions have a starting price of 99 cents and sell for $5 on average. The other 50 listings are fixed-priced and sell for $25. Let’s also assume this seller doesn’t have a store.

This particular seller would pay about $35 more with eBay’s new fee structure than they do currently.

However, this total does not take into account any discounts this seller may be eligible for, or other changes the seller might make to reduce his or her fees. For example, the seller could change listing formats, listing duration times, etc.

Now, if this seller does have an eBay Store, almost everything changes. Does the fact that listings will now be in the core search results offset the cost of the store subscription? If a seller opts for a Basic store, how will paying the 20-cent insertion fee for fixed-priced listings affect their bottom line compared to paying the current 3-cent fee per listing?

These are just a few of the details you’ll need to consider as you decide which format and/or store subscription is right for you. Like I said, all sellers are different. Some merchants only sell high-end clothing and accessories. Some sell thousands of collectibles. Others may sell hundreds of valuable baseball cards. Some sell exclusively fixed-price items while others prefer auctions. And, of course, some of merchants are Top-rated Sellers and qualify for fee discounts. And all of these factors will affect your eBay fees come March 30.

My advice, as you decide which route to go, is to look back at the fees you’ve paid in the last couple of months. Compare the insertion fees and final value fees you paid. Note any upgrades or other fees you paid (store subscription fee, listing subtitle, etc.).

And when calculating what your fees will look like under the new fee system, be sure to consider these variables:

•Category(ies) you list in
•Starting price
•Listing format
•Final selling price
•Store subscription
•Top-Rated Seller status

Finding the right path will require some serious number crunching, but if you keep these factors in mind, you’ll have a more solid understanding of your costs, whatever your choice. But this will only be an estimate as selling on eBay is a dynamic process. Be sure to continue the evaluation process even after these changes go into effect to make sure your strategy couldn’t benefit from some additional tweaking.

Best of luck,

Rebecca Miller
Product Analyst

This year, we’ll be releasing several new features. These include multi-variation, which is coming in February. Developing this feature has occupied most of our team’s time during this release cycle. It should be no surprise that this is a big project; few third-party developers have added multi-variation support. In fact, we’re going to be one of the first—certainly in our price range—to support this relatively new eBay feature.

That’s one of the reasons why Auctiva is such a good choice for eBay selling tools: We have the resources to continuously update our software, and we do this often to not only stay up-to-date with the changing world of eBay, but also to continue our long-standing tradition of doing all we can to help you list faster and more easily. It’s out of this philosophy that comes our effort to both support multi-variation listings as well as simplify the listing process for you. We’re glad to report we’ve done so by designing a tool that makes adding variations to your listings a snap.

My experience using eBay’s multi-variation feature was fairly painless once I figured out the process. I listed some women’s leather gloves in different colors and sizes, selling about one-third of my stock. It didn’t take too long to figure out how to use this feature, but ours is definitely quicker, more intuitive and easier to use.

Our developers have spent countless hours developing this feature and are very excited to soon be releasing it. I’ll keep you posted on the progress right here on the Auctiva Blog. In the meantime, I just wanted to thank you for your patience and let you know the feature is on its way.

Rebecca Miller

Product Analyst

In the midst of hunting for her next great find, intrepid eBay PowerSeller and Auctiva Super Smarty Rebecca Miller came across a garden gnome statuette just like the one that appears in the hilarious Travelocity commercials. She’d been looking for one of these pint-sized figurines for some time, so it was quite a score.

Before long, he became quite popular in our Chico office. So we decided to make him our unofficial mascot and give him a proper tour of the city. The first stop was the office of Auctiva CEO Jeff Schlicht.

Where will our roaming gnome turn up next?

Follow us on Twitter for updates and pictures from his exciting journey.

Happy New Year!

Now, what are you going to sell this year to take your business to the next level? Are you going to change anything about how you sell? The same stuff you sold last year? Which of your items sold best in 2009?

If these seem like too many questions, I understand. But you have to admit that although the holiday selling frenzy just ended, you’ll soon have to address these topics. After all, you want to have a great selling year.

The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to look back at your previous year’s sales to get the answers to some of these questions, and to see what selling format worked best, or if details like free shipping got buyers to click on—and buy—your items.

I evaluated my 2009 sales and found a few recipes for successful sales in specific categories. The main problem I had in 2009, though, was that I got bored with the items I was selling during the last half of the year. That’s right, bored.

I got bored of buying the same types of products and listing them over and over and over again. The main reason I had less variety is because of the demands of my full-time day job. Less free time equals less time to cruise yard sales and thrift stores. But this year I want to change that.

To spice things up a bit, my eBay New Year’s resolution is to set aside some time each week to find more interesting things to sell, whether it be collectible glassware or vintage toys. And if I can get my mom, Pat, to help me out, even better. She’s got a good eye for antiques and enjoys the yard sales more than I do. And she can help me carry things. (Sorry, Ma, had to say that)!

What’s your eBay New Year’s resolution? Is there something you want to focus on this year? Now’s the time to think about that so 2010 brings you lots of sales!

Here’s to a successful 2010!

Rebecca Miller
Auctiva Product Analyst

Auctiva Vice President Kevin Kinell answers users' questions during his Customer Support rotation.

In Auctiva’s infancy, when the company totaled a five- or six-person team, everyone regularly answered Customer Support questions, including Auctiva Founder and CEO Jeff Schlicht.

“Spending time talking with our customers really helped give us a better understanding of what customers needed, where they were having problems, and gave us insight into how we should develop features and products,” remembers Auctiva Vice President Kevin Kinell.

As the company grew, Auctiva added a full-time, well-trained Customer Support staff of 34 to handle customers’ inquiries. This allows our users to get prompt service, and gives product leads and developers more time to focus on improving Auctiva products. But as the company grows, Schlicht and Kinell don’t want Auctiva to lose touch with customers and their needs.

That’s why Auctiva utilizes a companywide Customer Support rotation scheme so all employees hear from customers. Everyone participates—be they designers, IT personnel, the communications team, product leads, developers, or administrative and executive staff —rotating in and out of support, two per week.

“The rotations have gone very well so far from my perspective,” says Customer Support Manager Mike Davies. “Everyone has benefited by gaining a deeper understanding of our services that our customers use most and experiencing the reward of getting to help some of our customers use our software to achieve different goals.”

Since May, 19 employees have done their rotations, sitting in Auctiva’s Customer Support office. Among them are Spencer Smith, Auctiva’s business development manager, and Product Manager Steve Swim.

“It was humbling to get out of my comfort zone and learn new things,” Smith says. “At the same time, I had a lot of fun working with people I don’t get to see very often. We often say excellent customer service is critical to the success of our company. This program gives each employee the opportunity to show everyone that we mean what we say.”

Swim agrees.

“I think the Customer Support rotations are a great opportunity for people to interact with customers and get familiar with the biggest issues from the customer perspective,” he says, noting that he’s looking forward to his next stint in support.

“It affords an opportunity to get out of my daily routine and focus in on customers, something that I think is vital for understanding why we’re doing what we’re doing,” he adds.

Rotations are continuous, giving everyone in the company a chance to answer Customer Support questions every six to eight months.

“This is something Jeff and I are excited about, and feel strongly about the benefit it will have,” notes Kinell, who completed his rotation recently.

I can tell you, it’s not too late. There’s still more than two weeks before the big day—plenty of time to list your remaining goods on eBay for those last-minute shoppers to buy!

While it certainly can be stressful listing or relisting items during the second week of December—and wondering if they’ll sell—here are a few things I do during this selling “crunch time.”

Choose short durations. Try a one- or three-day duration instead of the common five- or seven-day durations. The sooner the item ends, the sooner it will ship.

Use Fixed Price or Buy It Now. Buyers are in a crunch, too, and want to make their purchases ASAP. They may not have the patience to wait for an auction to end, especially as the big day nears.

Require Immediate Payment. If you are using Fixed Price or Buy It now, click the box that says “Require Immediate Payment” in the Checkout Options section of the Auctiva lister so you won’t have to worry about waiting for payments. (Yes, you can use this option when you list with Auctiva—it just isn’t compatible with our Auctiva Secure Checkout. Buyers will be directed to eBay’s checkout instead).

Pictures, pictures, pictures. Since you don’t have to pay extra image fees on eBay when you list with Auctiva, why not add extra photos? This way you can show off your items in all their glory. Buyers can never have too many photos when they’re bidding on an item.

Don’t use slow shipping methods. Buyers don’t want to wait two or more weeks for that DVD or video game to arrive. Sure USPS Media mail is cheaper than First Class Mail, but it could cost you much more in the long run if the buyer isn’t thrilled about getting their package in January.

And finally: Use holiday or seasonal Listing Templates. I know we say this a lot, but having a professional-looking listing complete with an eye-catching template really does help. It attracts buyers and shows them you’re a serious seller.

Go ahead, start listing. You still have plenty of time.

Rebecca Miller
Product Analyst