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.
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December 21st, 2009
admin
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.
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November 20th, 2009
admin
Over the past few months we’ve released several enhancements. These new features are sure to make listing easier and more convenient for you.
As an active eBay seller and Auctiva user, of course, I was very excited when our team of developers, engineers and programmers decided to implement many of these features.
They will save you time—and as we all know, time is money!
The first feature I campaigned for was the ability to edit most fields in a closed listing before relisting it. Our Bulk Edit feature only allows users to edit the title, price and a few other fields in a listing. But our new Advanced Relist Editing tool lets you edit the description, category, shipping details, even the template and photos. I can’t count how many times I’ve listed something with a holiday template, and it didn’t sell. Then I wanted to it with a different template but didn’t know how. Ah, what a blessing this new feature is!
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Auctiva’s graphic design department has been busy creating new templates to give you a variety of choices for the upcoming holiday season.
Our new “Thanksgiving Dinner” is the first in a series featuring a vector-illustrated modern woman who knows how to celebrate the holidays in style. The series will include Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Independence Day and Halloween templates.
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It’s been almost a month since we’ve rolled out our new Auctiva Shipping Insurance Auto-Purchase feature, and we’ve received a lot of great feedback from our users. Now it’s your turn to vote on which one of the three most-requested rules you would like to see us release next.
The top three requests are:
1. A rule to auto-purchase insurance only if the item price reaches or exceeds a certain dollar amount you set. Currently, shipping and handling costs are calculated into the total insured value of a shipment, and many of our users don’t want to include that in the coverage. This could keep your insurance cost down, but the trade off is that you would not be reimbursed for the shipping and handling costs if a package is lost or damaged en route.
2. A rule to auto-purchase insurance for packages shipped via UPS or FedEx only if the value of the shipment exceeds $100. These carriers already offer up to $100 of protection, so sellers could set a rule to buy insurance after the first $100. For example, if you bought insurance for an item worth $150, your Auto-Purchase Rule would buy $50 of insurance since UPS and FedEx already cover the first $100.
3. A rule to auto-purchase insurance if the item is sold in a specific category. For example, if you occasionally sell fragile Depression glass items, you could set your Auto-Purchase Rules to only buy insurance for items listed in the Pottery & Glass category.
Please visit our Community Forums and let us know which option you would prefer by taking this poll. We’d love your input.
Rebecca Miller
Product Analyst
Practical Ecommerce recently featured Auctiva Commerce as its Cart of the Week. You can read the article here.
Auctiva Commerce’s product manager, Chris Eckland, discussed the software in detail, and Auctiva Commerce user Bob Heitner talked about his experience with the shopping cart.
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Getting eBay’s certification is a good thing—but it’s definitely not easy.
Last week, Product Analyst Rebecca Miller, the Quality engineers who work on Auctiva.com and I took eBay’s Certified Consultant exam. At the same time, several of our software developers took the Certified Engineer exam.
Certified Consultants must pass a proficiency exam on eBay features, policies and best practices. Certified Engineers must pass exams on eBay technology.
Our examinations are different from the Certified Business Consultant designation, which is awarded to third-party eBay educators who meet the requirements. Unlike Certified Business Consultants, we aren’t certified as eBay educators. Instead, passing our examinations is a major annual requirement for Auctiva to maintain its official status as an eBay Certified Solutions Provider.
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September 9th, 2009
admin
Our latest release rolled out this morning, and with it came some very helpful features.
Did someone say spell check? Well, it’s back! And we’ve made several other enhancements to make listing easier and help you comply with new eBay policies.
As most sellers know, merchants can no longer offer shipping insurance as an optional fee to their buyers. But that doesn’t mean you have to risk shipping packages without insurance. You can insure items and pay for coverage yourself, or include the cost of insurance in an item’s price or shipping and handling fee.
With eBay’s new policy, it is the seller’s responsibility to make sure items arrive safely to buyers’ hands. This means you will have to decide whether to add insurance, or just drop packages off at the post office and cross your fingers. Our new Auto-Purchase feature for Auctiva Shipping Insurance offers a simple way to insure your packages and give yourself some peace of mind.
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September 8th, 2009
admin
We want to ensure Auctiva users know that on Sept. 22 eBay will begin enforcing a new requirement on Good ‘Til Cancelled listings. Sellers will have to specify both a handling time and return policy for their listings. You can read more about this here.
As a part of our Sept. 9 site update, we’re introducing a new tool that that will allow customers to make bulk revisions to their live active eBay listings directly from Auctiva’s manage listings page. This tool—which will be available to all to Auctiva customers on a listing services plan, and those who are still in their free 30-day trial period—will provide support for users who wish to make bulk changes to their Good ‘Til Cancelled listings to meet the handling time and return policy enforcement deadline.
Users who have such listings, and who have opted for our Free Tools plan, can sign up for a paid plan to immediately have use of Auctiva’s bulk live listing revision tool. eBay also provides the ability to edit the fields using the Bulk Edit tool on My eBay.
Making these changes is important since listings that don’t comply with the new requirements could be taken down.
Tony Maxey
Auctiva Product Manager
Congratulations to Auctiva user Miriam Otto for winning eBay’s first “I am eBay” contest this month!
Otto, an adult education instructor, impressed judges by telling how her eBay business has affected her life and impacted the lives of others.
Otto is a PowerSeller and the owner of Blue Frog Shoes. She’s been teaching retirees how to sell on eBay for years and does all she can to make sure her students succeed and have fun selling online.
“I call them my kids,” Otto tells us. “My boss says, ‘They’re not kids, Miriam, they’re students — but most are 60 to 80… and here they are, hooked into a new career. It’s awesome.”
It was this enthusiasm that impressed the judges and earned Otto a $1,000 award, notes Evonne Gomez, an eBay spokeswoman.
To learn more about Otto’s win, read our Auctiva EDU article.
And congratulations again, Miriam!