So, once again Royal Mail are adjusting their rates, raising prices to:

• A First Class stamp for a standard packet weighing 101g to 250g will cost £1.45, an increase of 7p.
• A Second Class stamp for a standard packet weighing 101g to 250g will cost £1.24, an increase of 4p
• Special Delivery guaranteed next day service for items weighing between 100g and 500g will cost £5.05, a rise of 30p.

Increases aren’t exactly suprising, after all, Royal Mail like all other businesses need to adapt with inflation, but I am pleased to see some good pricing incentives put in place for large volume traders….

This plays hand-in-hand in conjunction with eBay’s latest updates on Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs). As a business seller on eBay, you have to be competative in various areas in order to survive. Sellers from every corner of the globe had clocked onto this and decide to almost ‘cheat’ buyers (and of course the marketplace software providers like eBay & ChannelAdvisor for example), by charging very low item prices, with extortionate P&P charges.

A prime example would be an item with say an RRP of £12, a BIN price of 0.95p, and a P&P price of £9.95 for Royal Mail Shipping.

This selling strategy saves on listing fees and order processing fees for various service providers (which means a happy seller), but most buyers frown on this activity and believe it is a dishonest way to trade. A high percentage of these items result in UPI disputes, as buyers simply don’t see the postage cost until after they have purchased, leaving the seller without payment, and the prospect of angry buyers just waiting to leave negative feedback.

Sellers who do exploit this loop-hole, will now begin to be punished for their actions, by having their listings blessed with “reduced search visibility”, and as a result reduced sales, reduced success, and - eBay hope - an increasingly buyer-happy marketplace.

You can find more information on Postal Prices here: Royal Mail Website
You can fond more information on eBays DSR updates here: eBay Announcement on DSR

Unfortunately, there is not an easy way to do this but it can be done.

Here is an outline of the steps that you will need to take to get the images from your account:

1. Go to the Tools > Images view.
2. Expand the view to 500 items.
3. click on the “Select” column header to select all 500 images.
4. click on the “View URLs” button
5. Here, you will see two boxes, one that says image URLs and one that says HTML. You will want to copy everything out of the HTML box.
6. Paste the HTML box contents into notepad (TextPad is another text editor that is usually not a default. You may need to download this from the internet, it is free.) 7. Simply repeat and keep adding the rest of the images Textpad, you can only pull 500 at a time.
8. Save the file in HTML format ( with .html as the file extension) Also, choose another name for the file when you save.
9. Open the file with Internet Explorer.
10. After the images load up, in internet explorer, you can go to Page > Save.
11. choose another name for the save.
12. When this is completed, all the images will then be saved to your computer into a folder.

You have 500mb of image hosting with your channeladvisor account and you can upload these on bulk using an FTP client. One is shall discuss today is ‘Smart FTP‘

Your can download Smart FTP Here

When you first log into this application you need to enter the channeladvisor FTP address:

Then your user name with your login prefix (found in settings>image hosting) and your normal account password, the press ‘enter’:

Under the new tab that will pop up you will have a blank bar. You will need to place a / in this bar ( the yellow folder will appear once you press enter):

You can now drag an image into the right hand pane and you will see your image pop in as a file. You can only upload files and not folders.

Make sure you images are re-sized to 400-600px wide and the size you want them. Now go to tool>images in channel management and click ‘bulk upload files using ftp’ and this will start your FTP scan. Your scan might be set to ever hour by default anyway.

As a support consultant we advise our customers use the Cname function with their ChannelAdvisor store to improve search engine optimisation. This is an example of a Cnamed Channeladvisor store : Bling Bling Online. As you can see by clicking on the categories how the URLs seem to be coming from the domain name and not a ChannelAdvisor storefront URL. The domain name registrar (who you brought your domain name from) governs the process of the DNS changes and as I come across the different hosts I will post a simple guide on how to cname using that host. My first guide is going to be about 123-reg.co.uk. I always recommend this company as they will also host your emails for around £10 a year (at the time of going to press) so you can have a fully cnamed store and professional emails.

1) First log into your control panel:

Scroll down the page and ‘Manage your domain’ Select your domain from the dropdown list and click ‘Modify Domain’

*Please note: On this list if you are trying to Cname a .com or .net you will need to ‘Manage Domain Locking’ on this list before you ‘Manage DNS’

2) Click on ‘Manage DNS’

Your need to change your www record to Type: Cname and replace the numbers with stores.channeladvisor.com. Please do not change the @ record. This control your emails!

Your DNS record should look like this:

3) Click ‘Update DNS’ and the changes shall replicate within 72 hours. Please note this will only work if you have NOT changes the nameserver information of the domain ( I.E you brought a hosting package with a company like webfusion.co.uk and they control your emails)

As always if you have any doubt please hit contact support.

Liz Kidson - Frooition Support

In this article I just fist want to mention what the differences between these three entities are. A lot of my clients get confused between these three formats, which causes misinterpretation of what functionality is available to them.

Firstly, an eBay shop:

This is part of the eBay marketplace where all of your listings on eBay can be collectively viewed. You can make this look very much like a website (like the guys from creativebay.co.uk) but it is definitely NOT a website. You have 2 ‘marketplaces’ under the eBay umbrella. Core Listings which get a larger proportion of traffic and seemingly cheaper ’shop’ listings which do not form part of the eBay main search and depend very much on core listings to bring in traffic. Within an eBay store you have custom pages, categories and promotional boxes. With a shop on the eBay marketplace, search engine optimisation is done for you by eBay and your have instant traffic.

A Website:

A website can be custom built to any specification and purpose, as long as your budget allows. Websites need optimisation and maintenance usually by your design company to insure the security and smooth running of the site. As long as you are willing to pay for it (Some full e-commerce websites have been fabled to cost around £7000) a website can be built to perform any task and tick any box. Currently toast making websites are not available; you will always have to do that yourself. Get a toaster.

A Storefront;

Storefronts are commonly part of a bigger picture, but have certain limitations with functionality with regards to a custom built website which is built solely for your purpose. Two ’storefronts’ that spring to mind belong as extra functionality to a complete e-commerce solution. Channeladvisor and Marketworks are both auction and shopping feed inventory based order management systems which have the added benefit of a storefront to showcase your product.

Functionality will always differ greatly. For example, Channeladvisor provides a matrix inventory (product with dropdowns) whereas a Marketworks storefront does not. A storefront is part of a complete solution that you can market and treat as a website, but you will need to check with your provider if the particular storefront will give you the functionality you need.

Examples,

A Marketworks Storefront http://www.findingking.com

A Channeladvisor Storefront http://www.bling-bling-online.co.uk

These guys also have matching eBay dealings:

Marketworks: http://stores.ebay.com/FindingKing

Channeladvisor: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Bling-Bling-Online

Whatever you choose to sell your product please check testimonials of the stability of the sites and services and make sure you can attract a suitable amount of traffic. If you pay £7000 for a kick ass fully functional website but you have no buyer traffic…..well don’t make the mistake many have already!