Randy Smythe compares Amazon US’ to eBay US’ Fixed-Price business to determine who owns the biggest share of that most-desired of all online shopper segments, the price-insensitive fixed-price “must-have-it-now” consumer. Amazon leads (in the US) but eBay’s not all that far behind.
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Is Amazon a more profitable channel then eBay?
Filed Under Amazon 101, Amazon Events, Random Stuff, Seller Insight, Selling Strategies | 2 Comments
Just like the eternal epic struggle of “boxers vs. briefs”, the comparisons between eBay and Amazon will never cease among online retailers. At least as long as both command a significant share of traffic and online sales in the U.S..
To fuel the fire, I am focusing for this week’s e-commerce celebrity death match between eBay and Amazon on SKU profitability with two contrarian views from third-party merchants.
The Amazon Flywheel (ChannelAdvisor Catalyst - Part III)
Filed Under Amazon 101, Amazon Events, Random Stuff | 2 Comments
I am wrapping up my how-much-more-could-you-possibly-be-writing commentary on our Catalyst conference in Pinehurst with Amazon SVP Sebastian Gunningham’s overview of Amazon’s growth model. While not intentional, it does fit nicely with Amazon’s recent earnings announcement of another great quarter of “we’re grabbing more e-commerce market share” 31% growth in the US.
Twittering on Amazon
Filed Under Amazon Events, Amazon Resources & Tools, Random Stuff | Leave a Comment
Okay, so it’s been almost a week since my last post. Have been out (at the beach) but am working on the follow-up posts to our Catalyst conference with more Amazon insights, but wanted to call out two things in the meantime:
- I have started twittering on Amazon at www.twitter.com/amazonwire. The aim here is to share real-time updates and information on anything Amazon.com.
- Next week is ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst conference in the UK with staff from Amazon’s UK team present. If you have questions or concerns about selling on Amazon, this is your time to engage them. I will also attend and will share any noteworthy information here.
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Take advantage of an opportunity to tell Amazon what you think about selling on this channel with a focus on the process and tools rather then let’s say what categories should be open, or that Amazon should launch a marketplace in Australia (which they should). The below questionnaire collects some basic profile data and you will be contacted for the meat + potatoes of the survey. Read more
Great Amazon purchase
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I need to give a shout-out to Calumet Photo for a great Amazon shopping experience. I had been looking to buy the Nikon VR II 18-200 lens for a while and decided to pull the trigger for an upcoming trip. I shopped first eBay to see how much respected sellers (since I don’t want to give $700 to just anybody) were charging, then went to Amazon to compare prices, seller ratings and fulfillment latencies. Read more
More Amazon widgets
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In more “make it easier to find products on Amazon all over the web” news, ReadWriteWeb had an interesting article last week around visualization and more importantly, visual shopping. The section on Amazon listed a few tools that give you an indication what is possible to give consumers better (well, at least more fun) ways to find what they’re looking for on Amazon: Read more
E-consultancy’s Graham Charlton has written a post on mostly usability improvements he would like to see on Amazon. There are a lot of classics on this list (no ability to sign out, misspellings in searches are not auto-corrected) but the biggest challenge is the ever-growing product detail page which is starting to look a lot like search engine results rather then an authoritative product page. In fact, I can see Google rendering a very similar page for Google Product Search: product detail, purchase via Google Checkout, alternative offers (from other third-party merchants), customer views, YouTube videos, Google Group discussions.
Of course with Amazon you have significant guarantees and probably, for most consumers, a long history of successful online shopping.
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A view into Amazon’s future
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Whew, little bit of a break. I was so wrapped up in ChannelAdvisor’s launch of Amazon UK as an online channel that the blog had to take a backseat for a few days. Going to provide an update on this shortly.
I have long been a subscriber to Motley Fool’s Rulebreaker product (with pretty good results) and follow their analysis / coverage of eCommerce and technology companies. Here’s a fun post (thanks to Randy Smythe) that speculates on what Amazon may look like in 2010. Among the predictions you will find: Read more
Going Gold on Amazon.com
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AuctionBytes features an interesting interview with Amazon.com’s Director of Business Solutions Matt Williams about the Pro Merchant program, Gold / Platinum-level requirements, account reinstatements and Amazon’s feedback system. Read more